Scholarship, Teaching, and Service: Dr. Lorel E. Burns demonstrates these pillars as the recipient of the Foundation for Endodontics & Specialty1 Partners ADEA Scholar
The Foundation for Endodontics and Specialty1 Partners sponsor an endodontic educator's participation in the American Dental Education Association’s (ADEA) Leadership Institute. The program helps to further develop dental faculty and enables a growing pool of outstanding academicians to become academic leaders in dental institutions.
We had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Burns, the 2023-2024 scholarship recipient. Dr. Burns shared how she has ventured down various paths to create a multifaceted and service- oriented career in endodontics and academia while embracing the pillars of scholarship, teaching, and service.
Q: When in your school experience did you decide to become an endodontic educator? A: I was in college during the height of the healthcare reform movement. I became interested in healthcare policy and studied healthcare markets, so I always saw things within this bigger context. Not only did I decide relatively early that I was interested in endodontics, but I also began evaluating how I could make dentistry the career that I wanted for myself. I knew the answer was broader than clinical practice, only. I didn’t initially think that that would mean a career in academia, but I started to realize in residency that for me to have this more macro impact – to be able to provide patient care, assess policy implication and engage in evidence-based research – that academia was
the perfect environment for addressing all these things. The opportunity to have access to the power and resources of an educational institution motivated me to enter academia full-time,
immediately after finishing my endodontic training. I became committed to focusing on academia as a career, so it was not something that I fell into. Q: How did you first get involved with the Foundation and how has it been beneficial to you? with the Foundation when I applied for the Endodontic Educator Fellowship. At that time, it was clear to me that the Foundation was there to support educators, and that it was going to be a resource for the things that I wanted to do throughout my career in academia. I've been so grateful for the support I've received through the Educator Fellowship, and A: I first became engaged
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foundation.aae.org
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