Mentoring and Advocacy — Gwen Essex, RDH, MS, edD

Students with interest in diversity and inclusion have partnered with Dr Essex for mentoring in research in this area. Most recently Wendan Li, UCSF Class of 2017 worked with Dr Essex to investigate student perception and satisfaction with faculty diversity. The work was rewarding with several significant findings leading them to begin to plan a followup study.

Much of Dr Essex' mentoring and advocacy involves the UCSF Gay/Straight Dental Alliance, a dental student organization that Dr Essex has helped found and mentored since 2008. Click for more information about the GSDA and the work they are doing to create a national LGBTQQAAI dental student organization.

GDSA at ADEA 2016

Wendan Li, D3 & Dr. Gwen Essex with the poster for the study on dental student perceptions of faculty diversity.

The GSDA from UCSF brought four people to the #ADEA2016 annual meeting in Denver, CO. There were several goals for the trip; Julia Goldstein, GSDA Pres and D2 student, was co-presenting a session with Dr Gwen Essex focused on social equity. Wendan Li, a D3 student was presenting a poster on student perceptions of and satisfaction with faculty diversity mentored by Dr Essex. This was an opportunity to network with similar student groups focused on LGBTQQAAI issues in hope of coalescing our efforts to support the goals of such diversity alliances, and one another. To that end we recruited Waise, D4, and Dr Micahel Le, Alumn and current D1 clinical faculty, to join our team to make ensure we had plenty of effective person-power to spread the word of our intent as quickly and effectively as possible during the short time of the conference.

We all arrived at varied times on Saturday and took some time to strategize how to best cover the mtg and ensure we had people at the sessions we felt would draw people interested in our project.

Waise working on content for the website that was created during the trip.
www.gsdaucsf.squarespace.com

The four of us managed to burn through most of the 500 cards we used to get the word out to others.

Waise and Julia addressing those attending the UCSF ADEA dinner at Rockbottom Brewery.

Julia and Gwen preparing to give their presentation. Spelling errors aside, it was a great session filled tremendous energy and engagement.

Session participants working on identity profiles as one of the interactive aspects of the session.

Some of the people who joined us to show support for a national LGBTQQAAI student organization.

Some of the students from Eastern area schools that made it to our informal mixer.

We also quickly made excellent use of the skills present in our assembled crew by mobilizing to create a gsdaucsf webpage to help us connect with those who may receive a card after the meeting, or received one but were unable to meet us in person. We can see that as we grow and develop the structure of a national organization that the website will be an asset to that cause, and it felt right to go ahead and get something up for all to be able to communicate in one central area. We don't want to lose an ounce of enthusiasm!

Our team had a very busy Sunday attending many different sessions and personally speaking with lots of people from different schools both with, and without student groups with goals similar to GSDA. However, there was a uniform enthusiasm that was simply marvelous to feel whenever we discussed the goals of our effort.

Additional content pending.