Experience at ADEA Educational Pathways
This summer I was given the opportunity to intern at ADEA, specifically at their Educational Pathways branch. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, I was unable to fly to their Washington D.C. headquarters. Therefore, the entirety of my internship was conducted through Microsoft Teams. Prior to the internship, I did not know what to expect and was not sure what projects they would assign to me. On my first day, however, I met with the Senior Vice President for the Educational Pathways, Dr. Carolyn Booker, and she assigned me to work with operational manager, Yolanda Jones, and Senior Director of Application Services, Emily Rhineberger. Yolanda and Emily assigned me the task of contacting and manually updating different residency programs across the U.S. on the ADEA Postdoctoral Application Support Service Search Engine.
In addition to my main project, I assisted on several other projects. For one project, I worked alongside the another ADEA Educational Pathways intern to help provide feedback and suggestions on the ADEA GoDental Virtual Fair earlier this year. Here, the ADEA Educational Pathways team aim improve and update each of the upcoming virtual fairs so that it aligns with the current needs and expectations of pre-dental students. My last side project, focused on gathering contact information of pre-health and pre-dental clubs from different universities across the U.S. By contacting these different organizations, the ADEA Educational Pathways team aim to help increase awareness for upcoming pre-health and pre-dental conferences.
Although my time at ADEA Educational Pathways did not expose to the clinical aspect of dentistry, I was able to gain an in-depth understanding of ADEA’s application services and the programs offered. The field of dentistry is comprehensive, and it is important to gather information from the different fields within. If you need any assistance with navigating the application service for dental schools, do not hesitate to reach out and contact me! I would love to meet with you all and provide any information that I can to help you all along your journey to the field of dentistry!
Written by: Justin James Donato
