Student profile: Dental Hygiene student Keri Slane

Editor’s note: The following article was published in July in Kellogg Community College’s Summer 2012 edition of CareerFocus magazine with the headline, “Student profile: Dental Hygiene student Keri Slane.”

Keri Slane is taking a longer road than some to dental school.

The 25-year-old West Unity, Ohio, native went to Albion College with the idea that she’d enter dental school after she graduated with her bachelor’s degree in Economics and Management. When she graduated and things didn’t pan out at the time with dental school, she was looking for her next step.

Slane applied on a whim to the Dental Hygiene Program at Kellogg Community College, which she had heard about from some friends at Albion.

“Once I got in I realized that this was the plan for me,” she said of the Dental Hygiene Program.

Slane began her second year of the program this fall. Important points for her in deciding to enroll were the facts that it’s a two-year program and that it offers hands-on clinical experience in the dental field, the latter which she said is huge when she thinks about the future.

“When you talk about jobs, it’s all about your experience in the field,” she said. “We’re going to see that stuff when we start practicing, and it’s good to handle it now so that in the future we know how to focus on it.”

Slane also credits the program’s faculty and staff, as well as her fellow students – “future colleagues, hopefully working together someday,” she said – with helping prepare her for her future as a dentist.

“The faculty is hands-on, ready to go to explain to you why things are the way they are,” Slane said. “Anything you need, they’re here for.”

While earning a bachelor’s degree before starting her associate degree may seem like a “backwards path,” as Slane put it, her bachelor’s degree may be uniquely suited for someone with plans to start their own practice.

“I’ve always seen myself in the dental field,” she said. “I think this is just a start for me.”

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For more information about Kellogg Community College’s Health Career Programs, visit www.kellogg.edu/alliedhealth.

Pictured above, Keri Slane stands in the Dental Hygiene Clinic on Kellogg Community College’s North Avenue campus this summer.