As the University counts down to Commencement, UConn Today is featuring some of this year’s outstanding graduating students, nominated by their academic school or college or another University program in which they participated. For additional profiles of students in the Class of 2012, click here.
Marcus Moss did not always envision himself as a dentist. In fact, when he began his undergraduate degree at Oakwood University in Huntsville, Ala., he was planning on pursuing a career as a medical doctor.
“I love sciences. I always thought I would go into medicine. But the summer after my freshman year, I went to India with an outreach program that was doing some building and also some dentist work,” says Moss. “I had just had back surgery, so I wasn’t able to do much of the building, so I helped the dentists. They encouraged me to go shadow a dentist before deciding on medicine.”
Moss says he enjoys the connection between medicine and dentistry, especially the way the two programs overlap at the University of Connecticut.
The Kansas City, Mo., native also decided to come to UConn because it was something totally different. “I knew I might not have another opportunity to live so far out of my comfort zone. I remember coming to visit the Health Center in the fall and it was so pretty outside. I thought this would be a beautiful place where I could learn.”
But the change of pace from his southern upbringing was not the only appeal to choosing UConn’s dental school. Moss says he really likes the small class sizes and proximity of the dental school to the medical school.
“Our first year of dental school was a lot like the first year of medical school,” he says. “Dentistry is kind of like a specialty of medicine. It can’t really be separated from medicine.”
Moss says the dental students learn to reinforce what a patient’s primary care physician recommends.
“We take vitals every visit, regardless of the nature of the visit,” says Moss. “We’re always on our patients about having good overall health.”
Moss says that repeating advice given by medical doctors isn’t the only way dentistry connects with medicine. He says a lot of diseases in the body are similar to those in the mouth.
Moss’s next step is studying pediatric dentistry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
“I always liked kids,” he says. “I like to be able to teach them and work with them.”
Moss attributes his success to the support of his family and his faith in God. He says you need to give something time to flourish and whatever God’s plan is, will happen. And that is exactly what he plans to do with his career in dentistry.
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