Dr. Lorel E. Burns Q&A – Part I: To Mentor and Serve

This month, the Foundation spoke with Dr. Lorel E. Burns, DDS, MS, who is the 2023-2024 ADEA Scholarship recipient. Dr. Burns shared how she has ventured down various paths to create a multifaceted and service-oriented career in endodontics and academia, embracing the pillars of scholarship, teaching, and service. 

Please enjoy Part I of Dr. Burns’ story in this edition of the Foundation Newsletter and check back in September for Part II.

Dr. Lorel E. Burns – Part I:  To Mentor and Serve 

Q: What inspired you to pursue dentistry and continue into endodontics? 

A: I knew since high school that I wanted to be a dentist when my orthodontist introduced me to the concept of pursuing dentistry as a profession. I first embarked on my dental school journey, wanting to be a cosmetic dentist. Loving aesthetic in my personal life, I thought it might be fulfilling in my professional life as well.

But in my first year of dental school, I didn’t think dentistry was really for me. I found it to be too subjective in terms of aesthetic considerations and certain treatment planning components. I didn’t want to feel like I was selling treatment to a patient and that’s one of the things that drew me to endodontics.

Endodontics is based on sound biologic principles where the diagnosis has clear implications – you either needed the treatment or you didn’t. I wanted to provide a service for a patient to eliminate pain and maintain the natural dentition. I wanted my work to be foundational and discovered that endodontics met that need and reinvigorated my interest in dentistry. I started seriously exploring the specialty early in dental school and became engaged in endodontic research with Dr. Jennifer Gibbs, who was teaching at NYU at the time.

Q: When in your school experience did you decide to become an endo educator? 

A: I was in college during the height of the healthcare reform and became interested in healthcare policy and studied healthcare markets, so I always had 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 only clinical practice.

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 umbrella for 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: Your involvement in endodontics spans from healthcare reform policy, to academia, and then to establishing the ‘Saturday Academy Pathway Program’ for high school students in NYC who are underrepresented in the dental professions. How did the ‘Saturday Academy’ come to be? 

A: I acknowledge that so many people helped me to get to this level: both to get into the dental profession and then to be able to specialize in endodontics. I always knew that I wanted to help other people in a mentorship capacity, and that is where the Saturday Academy comes in.

My good friend and colleague, Dr. Cheryline Pezzullo, and I established this program during my second year as an NYU dental student. Saturday Academy’s mission is to help high school students from underrepresented backgrounds prepare for the college application process and to introduce them to the profession of dentistry, through hands-on activities.

It has been running for ten years and I’m so proud of it! In addition to providing mentorship, we track our alumni and publish our outcomes (Journal of Dental Education 2019, 2021, 2023). Our earliest alumni are now in dental school, and in fact, one of the earliest Saturday Academy alumni is graduating from dental school next year!

It is exciting to see that somebody I started helping in high school is now going to be a dentist next year. When you do it right and you’re committed to sustainability and data collection, it facilitates your ability to see the positive outcomes. It is that sustainability that makes the Academy feel so special to me.  

Q: How did you first get ‘Saturday Academy’ off the ground? Did you have funding coming in to help you start it? 

A: I went to a conference and became inspired by programs at other dental schools.  They provided a framework and a model for me to be able to envision what Saturday Academy might look like. Nothing was exactly like Saturday Academy, but just seeing that other places had something established was really important for me.

I wanted to introduce the concept of dentistry to those who may have not considered dentistry to be a viable career option. I also saw Saturday Academy as a way to meet a more immediate need in their stage of life, which is why we do the college application prep. We have the college application process to meet their needs now, and we also spark their interests for the future by introducing them to the many aspects of the dental profession.

Saturday Academy has always been very grassroots. We work with a very small budget, and the program is free for the students who participate. We are very fortunate to have dental students that volunteer their time and effort to help mentor the high school students. It’s grown much bigger than just me and my cofounder, Dr. Pezzullo. We have dental students who really take the commitment seriously and are excited to mentor.

Over the past 10 years, Saturday Academy has run over the course of seven sessions every fall. This aspect of the program is institutionally funded. We’ve had some external funding from the ADEAGies Foundation and the Delta Dental Foundation of Virginia. Delta Dental was interested in modeling a program off Saturday Academy, and thanks to our advising Delta, they gave us a donation. We’ve used our external funding to award small scholarships to program alumni applying to dental school and to host summer professional development conferences for alumni. The outside funding really helps to make Saturday Academy a more sustainable program.

To celebrate our 10-year mark, we’ve launched a big fundraising campaign and are hoping to hear some good news soon about some major funding that will help us not only grow but continue our sustainable model.

To find out more about Dr. Lorel Burns’ Saturday Academy program, please visit:  

https://dental.nyu.edu/globalreach/saturday-academy.html 

The Foundation Newsletter will feature ‘Part II’ from our conversation with Dr. Burns in the September newsletter.