Beginning this year, Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM) will be able to offer scholarship support to dental students from underrepresented minority backgrounds with financial need through the Freeman, Grant, Franklin Scholarship. The endowed fund was recently activated with a capstone gift made by Colgate-Palmolive Company. It has also been supported by HSDM alumni and community members dedicated to expanding diversity in dentistry.

... Read more about New Scholarship Represents a ‘Decisive Step Forward’ Toward Greater Equity in Dentistry

Danielle “Danni” Burgess, a first-year resident in Harvard School of Dental Medicine’s Periodontology program, was inspired to pursue a career in dentistry so she could help individuals like her grandmother who struggled with periodontal disease and tooth loss. A new Periodontology Fellowship is helping her take a step closer to her dream. Burgess is the first recipient of the fellowship that was funded last year with the support of the program’s alumni and friends.

“I grew up in Seaforth Village, Jamaica. I was raised by my grandmother, who struggled with periodontal disease...

Fifty years ago, Dolores Mercedes Franklin, DMD74, PD76, became the first woman of color to attend Harvard School of Dental Medicine and one of the first five women to earn a DMD degree. A trailblazer throughout her life, Franklin, a global leader in oral health policy, achieved many firsts in her career, paving the way for future generations of women and individuals of color in dentistry.

Today, she sees a pressing need to address racial inequities in oral health care in light of COVID-19. She...

Ahead of November’s election, Harvard launched the Harvard Votes Challenge (HVC), which is a non-partisan initiative aimed at increasing voter registration and participation among members of the Harvard community. Through different events such as National Voter Registration Day and training sessions for election volunteers, the Harvard Votes Challenge is engaging community members in new ways, with an emphasis on building a civic-minded culture at Harvard...

What happens when you take a hands-on, interactive dental curriculum and turn it upside down? Four new publications in the Journal of Dental Education authored by HSDM faculty and students reveal how dental education during the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly adapted to deliver aspects of the curriculum in virtual ways. The authors took a close look at what worked well, and what needed improvement, to inform how to best deliver dental education in new and uncharted territory.

“As we all know, dental education has a very interactive curriculum and invaluable aspects to...

Gerardo Alvarez, a native of Valencia, Venezuela, comes from a family where dentistry and medicine are a passion. Within his immediate family, Alvarez has an uncle who is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon and an aunt who is an orthodontist. His mother Maria is a foreign internal medicine doctor. After arriving in the U.S. at the age of 16, Alvarez and his mother settled in Miami, residing with his aunt. Alvarez spent many afternoons at his aunt and uncle’s dental practice where he developed a love of dentistry. After high school, Alvarez attended Davidson...

Abigail Marshall, a graduate of Miami University of Ohio, comes to HSDM from Sunbury, Ohio. After growing up in a small farming town of just 5,000 residents, Marshall is excited to move to Boston in January and start exploring local sights, sounds, and cuisines. During her undergraduate studies, Marshall majored in biology and premedical studies with a minor in disability studies. She was also a Division I athlete, competing on the Women’s Varsity Field Hockey team, where she won three conference championships and made an appearance in the NCAA tournament. She is...

Joe Montesano, DMD24, grew up in Roxbury, New Jersey, a small suburban town in the northern part of the state. An alumnus of Seton Hall University, Montesano graduated with degrees in biology and philosophy.

Before enrolling at HSDM, Montesano spent a gap year working as a dental assistant in the same dental office that sparked his interest in dentistry several years prior. Even in the midst of the pandemic, this dental office remained open and busy treating patients from all over the state.

In addition to dentistry, Montesano is interested in...

Meet Sapna Nath, DMD24, a Long Island, New York, native and member of HSDM's newest class of predoctoral students. A 2019 graduate of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Sapna received a B.S. in Economics with concentrations in Healthcare Management & Policy and Business Analytics and minored in Chemistry. During her undergraduate years, Nath was a research assistant at Penn Dental Medicine in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology and the Department of Basic & Translational Sciences. She also conducted policy research at the Leonard...

Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM) welcomed 36 new DMD (Doctor of Dental Medicine) students as they began Orientation last week. The Class of 2024 hails from 17 different U.S. states, and four other countries: Canada, China, France, and Korea. They represent 33 different undergraduate institutions. The class composition is 61 percent female and 39 percent male. Twenty-six percent come from populations underrepresented in dental medicine.

This is the first time in HSDM history that an incoming class began their four-year program virtually.... Read more about A Virtual Welcome for the Class of 2024

The Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) at Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM) is offering its Bridge to Dental School program for the second year in a row. The free 10-session program is aimed at encouraging diverse representation in dental school applicants by providing prospective students with mentorship and coaching from current HSDM DMD students. The interactive program held on...

In early March 2020, Harvard University and Harvard School of Dental Medicine began closely monitoring the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. As the situation changed rapidly, the top priority remained the health, safety, and well-being of students, faculty and staff, on and off campus. 

The School began working on several contingency scenarios and taking decisive, informed action to limit the spread of COVID-19 while ensuring the continuity of teaching, research and patient care. These efforts involved rapidly moving to virtual learning, ramping down research labs,...

As Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM) students and residents learned that the academic year would take an unprecedented turn due to the COVID-19 pandemic, several jumped into action, finding different ways to turn the challenges presented by the pandemic into opportunities to help. Whether through community outreach, research, or care, they quickly honed in on ways to aid their local and global communities.... Read more about Dental Students Combat COVID-19 Through Volunteerism and Action