For Carolyn Bradford, graduating from the UConn School of Dental Medicine means there’s one last stop before she steps off the educational train and into the real world.

Chosen as commencement speaker for the Classes of 2017 at UConn Health, Bradford says she and many of her classmates are embracing the trend of seeking higher and higher education.

“We’re delaying the point at which we enter the workforce by gaining these higher certifications and degrees to ultimately make our world a better place,” says Bradford, who will go to Virginia Commonwealth University for a two-year residency in orthodontics. “Our world needs doctors, dentists, and Ph.D.s, all these people who are in this graduating class. It’s certainly not an easy path, but we need some people to do it.”

It’s a path Bradford was convinced she’d take since her early teens.

“I had a lot of cavities as a kid,” she says. “I really, really liked my dentist. I figured having as much dental work done as I did, I was either going to love my dentist or just hate going to the dentist, and I loved it. So I knew that was what I wanted to do.”

Bradford grew up in the small upstate New York town of Canastota, which she says is known for little other than the International Boxing Hall of Fame. From there it was downstate to Ithaca to study biological sciences, focusing on genetics and development, at Cornell University.

When it was time for dental school, she was ready for a smaller school again. She was drawn to UConn by the class size—43 are graduating this year—and by how the faculty knew and interacted with the students.

“And I really liked how much of an emphasis they put on the biological sciences in the early years to really help draw that in to clinical practice,” Bradford says. “Now that I’m up treating patients, I really appreciate having that knowledge, even though it made me a little stressed out for those first two years.”

Bradford considers several members of the UConn School of Dental Medicine faculty as mentors, including Drs. Jacqueline Duncan and Ajay Dhingra, whom she credits with providing the exact amount of help needed to shape her as a dental provider, and Dr. Sarita Arteaga, who conducted her admissions interview and encouraged her to apply to be commencement speaker.

Bradford says she’d like to return to the Northeast after her residency, and after some experience on her own, she hopes to be a preceptor in a dental school residency program.

“I really do want to have that academic impact,” she says. “I can think of so many instances in my education where clinical faculty have really helped me or told me something that really changed the way I do things for the better, and I’d like to be able to share what I learned with future orthodontists.”

As for the Class of 2017, Bradford will remember it as a group that was mostly younger students straight out of undergrad, but with enough older students who entered from different careers. She says that mix brought valuable perspectives.

“I feel like we’re all really supportive of each other,” Bradford says. “We’ve grown a lot, and we’ve grown a lot together.”

And her most memorable moment with them?

“During second year, my classmates and I were a bit surprised and super nervous when we learned that we would be practicing local anesthesia administration on each other before offering our numbing services to the general public,” Bradford says. “That year, the day that the faculty chose for us to practice injecting each other happened to be my birthday. As it turned out, everything went smoothly, with no teeth, tongues, cheeks, or friendships damaged. And my birthday dinner still tasted delicious!”