CHERAE FARMER-DIXON Taking every opportunity to have her voice heard and be a role model for women in the profession. The summer before Cherae FarmerDixon DPH 14 started her junior year in college, she sat down with her advisor, and told him she wanted to go to dental
More than three decades after she matriculated at Meharry (and with a brief departure for the Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine, where she did
remembered, and told her that he wasn’t certain she would be a strong applicant.
in dental public health), Dr. Farmer-Dixon is still there – but now, she’s the dean.
Farmer-Dixon had known since before she even set foot on campus that she wanted to major in biology and she wanted to be a dentist. At the time, though, dentistry was still considered a male profession: Her personal dentist was a man, the dentist she shadowed in high school was a man, said Farmer-Dixon. Farmer-Dixon didn’t have a mentor to Her college had a career counseling someone who really guides and advises
But instead of taking her advisor at his word, Farmer-Dixon took it as an opportunity to prove him wrong: She second semester of her junior year, found an advisor who supported her career accepted to four, and enrolled at Meharry Medical College School of Dentistry. 14
IMPRESSIONS
who broke the barriers and went to [dental] school, many of them will say it was were told they were taking a spot a man today, we have come a long way and we’ve made a lot of advances, but that does not The gender distribution in dental school enrollment has made steady progress over the last two decades, according to the American Dental Education Association (ADEA). In 2000, the entering class of dental students was about 39 percent female; in 2018, it was 50.5 percent female. At Meharry, the entering class of 2018 was almost 60 percent female. Farmer-Dixon attributes the growing number of women in dentistry, in part, to the fact that the profession allows for a manageable work-life balance. Women don’t have to choose between being a leader in their career or having a family:
said. In other words, they can have it all.