Scholarships

A new effort from School of Dentistry Development is connecting dentistry students with their scholarship donors, building partnerships across generations of gophers.

Mohammed Akl, DDS, MS ’22, received the 2022 University of Minnesota President’s Student Leadership and Service Award.

Nearly seventy members of the President’s Club, alongside other notable donors, came together to celebrate the School of Dentistry and honor the ways donors make achievement possible. The School of Dentistry offered a special welcome to new President’s Club members Stephen Bejarano, DDS ’91 and Elizabeth Rydell Bejarano, DDS ’91.

Amy Full, DDS ’19, grew up in a cornfield. And today, she’s practicing dentistry in those same cornfields, fulfilling her lifelong dream to practice rural dentistry. Part of what made that dream possible was scholarship funding.

Sofia SooYoung Park, DDS ’25, won first place in the Student Competition for Advancing Dental Research Application (SCADA) Basic and Translational Science Research category at the American Association for Dental, Oral and Craniofacial Research’s 2022 Annual Meeting

The School of Dentistry is proud to embark on a transformational fundraising campaign in support of our students. Learners to Leaders: The Drive for School of Dentistry Students, seeks to fuel the passion and potential of tomorrow’s oral health professionals by increasing the number of scholarships and awards we provide to our students.

The Student Summer Research Fellow Program at the University of Minnesota provides funding for incoming DDS students and students completing their first year of the program, who wish to spend the summer. Over a 10-week period, each student undertakes a structured research program. Fellows attend weekly training seminars, with an opportunity the following spring to prepare a written report and a poster for presentation at local and regional student research meetings. In the past, some of these students have attended national meetings such as the American Association for Dental Research.

When Peter Wilkinson, DDS ’22, reflects on what drew him to dentistry, one aspect stands out: the people. “I started out college in engineering, then I got a job in a research lab and considered pursuing a research career,” recalled Wilkinson. “But that seemed socially limiting and when I thought about what I really cared about, I realized I wanted to work with people and make a difference in their lives.”