When he was a child, Ebosetale Okoruwa thought his mom, a pediatrician, had a pretty cool job. Then, when he was about 7 years old, she showed him a video of her helping deliver a baby. At that moment, the young Okoruwa decided medicine wasn’t for him after all.
Even so, Okoruwa remained intrigued by the sciences. A decade later, when he came to the University of Iowa as an undergraduate, he decided to study biochemistry. During his junior year, a period when Okoruwa was thinking hard about career choices, he shadowed a pediatric dentist in his hometown of Council Bluffs, Iowa.
The experience showed Okoruwa another way he could help children, and another way to use scientific and medical knowledge in a career.
“The dentist I shadowed had such a presence in his clinic and in the community, and he could talk to anyone—to kids and to their parents,” says Okoruwa. “The experience really was a springboard for me into dentistry.”
Okoruwa often reflects on how far he’s come since he started dentistry school—a path that has allowed him to learn from nationally recognized professors and researchers.
“Thanks to my mother, I was exposed very early on to health care and medical professions,” Okoruwa says. “I always knew it was something I wanted to pursue. Now, as I prepare to graduate, I feel like I’m realizing a goal I set for myself when I was still very young. It’s an incredible feeling.”
Now in his fourth year at the UI College of Dentistry, he recently finished a rotation in a pediatric dental clinic in Denver, Colorado, and is already thinking about his next step: a residency program in pediatric dentistry at the University of Minnesota.
Getting accepted into the residency program was made easier, Okoruwa says, by the fact that the UI College of Dentistry has a strong reputation in dental and oral health research. During his interviews, professors asked him about specific UI research efforts, as well as the professors who spearheaded them.
“The University of Iowa is definitely right up there at the top in terms of best dental schools,” says Okoruwa. “Everywhere I went for residency program interviews, people were like, ‘Oh, you’re from Iowa,’ and they wanted to talk to me about the faculty and the research we do here. I feel like the college’s reputation definitely gave me an inside edge.”
UI College of Dentistry Dean David Johnsen says the college’s balance of top-notch professors and cutting-edge research sets it apart from its competitors. For students, the opportunity to work with researchers and learn about the science behind dental techniques also is a way to stand out in the job market.
“Our students regularly outperform students from other dental colleges on national board exams, and all of them are highly sought after upon graduation, either for jobs in dental practices or for advanced programs such as residencies,” Johnsen says.
As Okoruwa prepares to leave the UI, he’s also cognizant of what he’ll be leaving behind: a college that has been his home for the past four years, and a group of professors and friends he will never forget.
“For me, the college was always a very welcoming place, a place where people always say hello and always have time to stop and talk with you,” says Okoruwa. “I feel like we’re sort of a big family, and that’s been a great environment to be in for the past four years.”
About the UI College of Dentistry
- About 80 percent of Iowa dentists are alumni of the UI College of Dentistry, delivering an estimated $800 million in dental care to Iowa citizens.
- An estimated 98 percent of Iowans are within a 30-minute drive of practicing alumni.
- The college received 882 applications for 80 slots for the 2017 entering class.
- The College of Dentistry dental clinic had more than 170,000 patient visits in 2015–16.
- The college has 27 outreach programs that served 98 Iowa counties in 2015–16.