Spotlight Culture
When One Plus One Doesn’t Equal Two Dr. Karen Kemp-Prosterman
P
erhaps you have heard the quote by Joseph Campbell, “If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.”
For many in their professional careers, there comes a point when the path forward isn’t easy to find. The timing of this lack of clarity may vary, but if you practice long enough in dentistry, it may undoubtedly find you. For me, a practicing pediatric dentist in Connecticut, that moment arrived in 2021, but the journey began much earlier than that. I had been one of the lucky ones, who discovered her specialty passion in dental school. Pediatric dentistry with all of its unknowns and unpredictable patients, brought me the excitement and energy I craved in a profession with boundless possibilities for positive change. The impact of creating healthier outcomes for children, modifying their behaviors, and delivering quality healthcare in creative and efficient methods was and still is very appealing to me. My matriculation through dental school followed by a post-graduate residency led me to the unexpected world of not just being a pediatric dentist but also an educator, teaching, and eventually leading a pediatric dentistry residency program. Varying professional paths in private practice, hospital dentistry, and ultimately academia have defined my more than 15 years of practice. However, it is in the world of dental education that I made some of my biggest discoveries in the current disconnect and divide that exist for many academics of color.
14 Spring 2022 Dental Entrepreneur
The benefit of differences in experiences should be growth. Implementing from experience, the advantages of what works best, while learning from the mistakes of what does not, is the very nature of progress. But what happens when the outlook of that experience is limited? Or the benefit of varying perspective, brought by both diversity of culture and thought, is missing? Then perhaps the outcome is an educational pool not fully reflective of the vast communities that they serve. Academic development for faculty within dental schools in the US, has taken on a greater importance in organized dentistry within the last 15 years. Despite the strides made in individual institutions and national organizations, the faculty support for dental educators of color, and specifically African Americans, is still lacking. This road being less traveled, in dental education, took a significant turn in 2020, when the country as a whole entered a period of social unrest. Dentistry, like many other sectors within America, had to address this social reckoning and for many dental schools like mine, it meant engaging the students and residents in support and expression. One forum answering the call was the resurgence of a minority student mentorship group for both medical and dental students at the university. While a multitude of African American physicians, both full- and part-time faculty, rose to the occasion, I was the only African American dental faculty present to support the dental student participants. Not because the others had prior obligations or possible conflicts, but because in 2020, like in 2019 and 2018 and so on; I was the only African American Dentist Faculty in the School of Dental Medicine. DentalEntrepreneur.com