Why I Teach: With Dr. Tabitha Fair
Dr. Tabitha Fair has a long history with ETSU’s Dental Hygiene Program, which celebrates its 55th anniversary this year.
She began as a student and this year she has been teaching for 20 years in the program.
In this episode, Dr. Fair describes the community-engaged, hands-on learning experiences students participate in as they offer affordable dental hygiene care to the community.
Subscribe to the Why I Teach Podcast!
Dr. Tabitha Fair
We are really proud of our 55-year history of educating students and providing dental hygiene care to those in the community.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Hi, I'm Kimberly McCorkle, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at East Tennessee State University. From the moment I arrived on this campus, I have been inspired by our faculty, their passion for what they do, their belief in the power of higher education, and the way they are transforming the lives of their students. This podcast is dedicated to them, our incredible faculty at ETSU. Hear their stories as they tell us, "Why I Teach." In this episode, we will talk with Dr. Tabitha Fair, assistant professor and program director for the Dental Hygiene Program at ETSU.
Dr. Fair has a long history with ETSU's Dental Hygiene Program, which celebrates its 55th anniversary this year. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Dental Hygiene at ETSU and then continued her studies here with a Master of Public Health degree.
She then completed a Ph.D. in Health Sciences at Nova Southeastern University. She began teaching at ETSU as an adjunct faculty member in 2004, and then joined the faculty full time in 2006. She served on editorial boards for several academic journals in her field, and she brings a combination of clinical, teaching, and research expertise to the classroom. In fact, the College of Clinical and Rehabilitative Health Sciences has recognized her contributions with several Distinguished Faculty Awards in interprofessional education, service, and teaching.
I look forward to hearing more from Dr. Tabitha Fair about how our Dental Hygiene Program is not only making an impact on our students, but also on our community that benefits from the clinical services that we offer. Enjoy the show! Dr. Fair, welcome to the show. I start my podcast with the same question for every guest. Take me back to your first day of teaching at ETSU as a faculty member, and looking back on that day, what is one piece of advice that you would have given yourself?
Dr. Tabitha Fair
Thank you so much for having me here today. It's really an honor, and this is a really interesting question, and there are so many things that I wish I could go back and tell myself because I was so incredibly nervous that day.
I don't really think I even remember what I said in class that day because I was just terrified. But if I could go back, I think the main thing I would say to myself is to believe in yourself. Just believe in yourself, and also believe in those people who saw potential in you. Because I never saw myself as an educator. I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. Yeah. I never even imagined that being a college professor was a possibility. That's just not something that was on my radar. Right. And so when Dr. Faust called me and asked if I would come back to teach in the Dental Hygiene Program, yeah, I was shocked.
And to be honest, I didn't have very much confidence in myself. So if I could go back, I would love to be able to say to myself that this is the beginning of a wonderful journey for you. Yeah. Enjoy it and believe in yourself and believe in those people who hired you because maybe they actually did know what they were doing.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Oh, thank you. I love that. As you know, ETSU's Go Beyond the Classroom initiative focuses on providing our students with hands- on community-engaged learning experiences. Our Dental Hygiene Program has been ahead of this curve since its inception 55 years ago. Will you tell us how this program provides students with those invaluable experiences?
Dr. Tabitha Fair
Well, we're really excited about the Go Beyond initiative because community engagement truly has been the foundation of what we have been doing for decades. But this opportunity to designate some of our courses as community-engaged learning courses has really given us the opportunity to reflect on those courses and build in that critical reflection piece that's so important.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
That's great.
Dr. Tabitha Fair
So I would really like to brag on Dr. Laura Minton. She's one of our faculty members, and she actually was able to have our very first Dental Hygiene course certified or approved as a community- engaged learning course. Excellent. She's been working with Dr. Michelle Lee in the Nutrition Department to allow the Dental Hygiene students and the Nutrition students to work together. And that has led to some really great experiences for both sets of students and our patients in the clinic as well. But like you mentioned, we've been doing this for decades. We just haven't designated it as community-engaged learning, but every day, our students treat patients in the Dental Hygiene clinic, so they're interacting with people from the community.
We go to a lot of other clinics in the community, such as Keystone Dental Care, Healing Hands Health center. We're also affiliated with Remote Area Medical. We've been attending those clinics for years, and some of my most memorable experiences actually are from attending those clinics with students when I first came to ETSU. We work with Healing Hands in a lot of special events that they have, like their dental day for veterans, their children's dental day. We also are able to include a lot of community engagement into our didactic courses as well, though. I'm really lucky that I get to teach the geriatric dental hygiene course and also the community and rural dental health course. Right. And in both of those, the students are pushed out of their comfort zones. I think these are two courses that they are really afraid of. They dread them, to be honest.
But at the end of the semester, they're so happy and proud of themselves that they were able to get out into the community, get out of their comfort zone, and learn a lot throughout the process.
So in the geriatrics course, they actually work with a long-term-care facility. They go into those facilities, and they perform an in-service for nursing home staff. So they teach the nurses how to clean dentures, how to check the oral cavity for lesions, how to assess the patient as to whether they need a dental exam, those types of things. They also work with a resident who lives at that facility as well, and I think that is a very profound experience for a lot of those students. Many of them have never been to a long-term-care facility.
And many of them actually will go back and continue to visit that resident even after the course is completed. And I think that really says a lot for the experience that they have there. In the community and rural dental health class, they actually go out, and each individual student teaches a lesson to a classroom about dental health, and that can be any classroom that they choose from preschool age up to high school, depending on how brave they are and what they want to do. They also work as a group, and they get to choose an underserved population. And so they actually assess the needs of that group. They develop an intervention, and then they assess the success of that intervention afterwards.
So it's really great to see them grow and to become confident in themselves and their ability to do those things and to see that they can do anything they want to do. Maybe they don't want to work in private practice forever. They see that maybe they could go out and work in public health or education or some of these other areas.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Wow. What a rewarding experience for the students.
Dr. Tabitha Fair
Yes. Yeah. Yes.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Tell us about the impact this program has had on the health and well-being of our community and our region over the years.
Dr. Tabitha Fair
We are really proud of our 55-year history of educating students and providing dental hygiene care to those in the community. I feel like the Dental Hygiene Clinic and Lamb Hall has been so impactful on this community for several reasons. The first is that we are able to provide care to over 1,600 patients each year. Wow. And we provide services such as oral exams, oral cancer screenings, nonsurgical periodontal therapy, fluoride treatments, sealants, X-rays, dental cleanings cost $20, and they are free for ETSU students and anyone over the age of 55. So it's just a wonderful resource for the community.
Over the years we've also had the opportunity to open our clinic to various groups by having special clinic days for organizations like the Boys and Girls Club, Little Bucs, and Head Start. And those are always some of my favorite experiences, yeah, because we have the opportunity to help children have a positive experience in the dental office. And it also allows our students to experience that excitement. And helping children to not fear the dentist is so important to their oral health throughout their lives. Dental anxiety is very real, and a lot of the adult patients that we see are still very anxious about coming to the dentist because of negative dental experiences that they had as children. So I think the opportunity to help children have positive experiences is very valuable. Yeah.
So our clinic serves many in the community, from children to ETSU students, staff, and faculty to others in the community. But beyond that, our program has been training registered dental hygienists to serve the region for almost 55 years, and that's a lot of dental professionals. So you'll find our graduates in most offices in the region, and we're very proud to see them out there promoting oral health every day.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Yeah, that's just, it's fantastic. And to think of this clinic being on our campus, it's just, it's wonderful.
Dr. Tabitha Fair
And I'm so excited to do this because a lot of people still don't know that our clinic exists.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
So last year I had the opportunity to join you and others in the college as we celebrated the renovation to Lamb Hall, including the Sturgill Family Dental Hygiene Clinic. Tell us how this space has evolved to meet the needs of students and patients.
Dr. Tabitha Fair
Well, I would just like to say first how beautiful Lamb Hall is now. It's just a gorgeous building. And when I have families who come to campus to see me, they come to visit the Dental Hygiene Clinic, they, they're so impressed by the building. And I always make sure that I take them up to the third and fourth floor, show them those student lounges, the patio, it's just a beautiful space.
And yes, I honestly feel like I grew up in Lamb Hall a little bit, honestly, between my dental hygiene degree, my public health degree, yeah, when I came back to teach, I was actually what's considered a full-time temporary employee. So I would work all day, get there about 7:30 and work all day, and then I would go upstairs for public health courses. So sometimes I would be there from 7:30 to 9:30, just depending on the day. And I'm actually in my fifth office in Lamb Hall now. I hope I get to stay put for a little while, but it's just amazing to see the change that has occurred in the building, yeah, and I'll be perfectly honest with you, when I first met with the architect, and he said to me, "We are going to take your dental hygiene student lounge and make it smaller, and they won't have eating areas and things like that."
I thought to myself, "Why would you do that?" Right? But now I get it, because now I get to go upstairs. I see all of the collaborative spaces that are there. Right. Right. It's so nice to see our students get out of their little silo and their little area, right, and eat lunch and mingle with other people from our college. So that's, that's been a really nice experience. And they all had to look back at that and say "Okay, they knew what they were doing." I get it. I get it. Why they did that. Yeah. So that's, that's beautiful. And like I said, everyone is always so impressed. And as far as the dental hygiene space, I'm so grateful for the generosity and support of the Sturgill family in working with us to update the dental hygiene space and continue our mission. As part of that project, we were able to renovate our patient reception area and student receptionist workspace to be more efficient and more comfortable as well as purchase new digital X-ray equipment, X-ray mannequins, and new nitrous-oxide equipment. Yeah. All of those things are vital to training our students for the current workforce and will positively impact the educational experience of our students in the treatment that our patients receive.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
It's, it's beautiful space. It really is. The Dental Hygiene Program has also had extremely successful job placement and licensure pass rates over the years. Tell us how you and your colleagues prepare our students for success.
Dr. Tabitha Fair
Thank you for those kind words. It really makes me proud to meet dentists who speak so highly of our graduates, and that happens quite often, which is great.
I think there are a lot of factors involved in that success. The first being that we have excellent students; we accept 24 students per year from many strong applicants. They're motivated. They've worked incredibly hard to be accepted into our program, and so they want to do well, and they want to make us proud. We also have dedicated and hardworking faculty who truly care about student success.
We are very student-focused, and we want to see them do well, and our faculty go above and beyond every day to guide and mentor these students. I see our clinical coordinators offer extra clinical sessions when students need them. I see our supervising dentists stay after clinical hours to help students in the dental lab.
And all of our faculty obviously have posted office hours, but I see the many extra hours that they spend when students are in need, when they need guidance; whether it be about their academics or about personal issues, they're always there for them. And I think at the end of the day, that truly makes a difference.
And when I think back to myself, I think of the faculty members who played an important role for me. One of those would be Dr. Charles Faust, who is retiring this year, and I can't thank him enough for all of the guidance that he has given me over the years. He was the program director before I took this position. Wow. Yeah. And so having him available to answer questions and be there for me has meant a lot. The other would be Dr. Debbie Dotson, who retired two years ago, I believe. Yeah, she had been my confidant and mentor and lunch buddy and shoulder to cry on for a really long time. And it's really funny.
I remember my very last semester in Dental Hygiene school, the Dental Hygiene Program. My mother came in to get her teeth cleaned, and Dr. Dotson actually was the instructor that day, and she checked my mom, and she made the comment that when I graduate, I should come back and teach with them. And my mom, after we left, she said, "Oh, that was really great. You should really think about that."
And I said, "Mom, she says that to everyone's mom. You know, she's just being nice. She didn't actually mean that." And so she really believed in me from the beginning. She taught a lot of our courses that were writing intensive and research based and oral intensive. And so she got me over my fear of public speaking, and she really made me believe in myself and the ability to go pursue a master's degree and later to pursue a Ph.D. So she has always been a great, great mentor.
And then Dr. Victor Hopson, he was our supervising dentist at the time. And I will say he was always my biggest cheerleader. I mean, that's a nice thing to have. I was really young when I started teaching Dental Hygiene courses. Yeah. And so I found out much, much later that he would always talk me up to the students and, you know, talk about how qualified I was and how smart he thought I was, you know, and all those things. And while embarrassing, looking back, you know, he, he was being my biggest cheerleader. And he really wanted to make sure that the students knew that I deserved to be there, I think is what he was trying to do. But, you know, those are people that made an impact on me. And if they had not been there for me to encourage me as a student, right, and then as an adjunct faculty member, I definitely wouldn't be where I am today. And so I think having all of those types of faculty members to guide you, that's really important. And I think we still have that, I know we still have that with the people that I see every day. So it's a great example of how exemplary mentors in our professional lives help show us how to be good mentors, right?
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I want to say if Doctors Faust, Dotson, and Hopson are listening, thank you for all you have done for ETSU, and congratulations on your retirements.
In your bio, I mentioned that you've been recognized for your commitment to interprofessional education. Why is interprofessional education important for your students and the other health sciences students across ETSU?
Dr. Tabitha Fair
A few years ago, I was approached about the possibility of some of our students participating in the asynchronous IPE program. And I thought, "What is that? I have no idea what this is." But as I learned more about the program, I was very intrigued and excited for our students to participate. So I went to our senior students at the time, and I explained the program, and I said, "Who would like to participate?" And each year, I've had several students, and each year, it became a little bit more who wanted to participate.
And now all of our students are, and that has been a really great progression to see, and I'm so grateful that we have been included because for too long the dental profession has been considered separate from many of the other health professions, and this has been a wonderful opportunity for our students to learn about the other health professions that our colleges have to offer, and also for them to realize the value that they have to a team and build their confidence in their ability to work as a part of that team. I think it's also been valuable for the students from other programs to learn about what dental hygienists do and how we can help improve patient outcomes. I think the reason that we're often seen as separate is the fact that we work in dental offices, and people see that as completely separate. But people, you know, I think would be surprised at how much time we spend on patient education about things like healthy lifestyle factors, nutrition, tobacco cessation, and the fact that oral hygiene also plays an important role in systemic health. The pathogens that cause periodontal disease have implications for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and things like ventilator-associated pneumonia. And I want our students to realize that they can improve a patient's overall health. We aren't limited to scaling teeth and teaching people how to floss. Right. And unfortunately, that's what a lot of people still think of when they think of dental hygienist.
But I've been lucky enough to work with the IPE program as a facilitator for the asynchronous program for two years now. And I also serve as our college representative on the IPE working group, and I'm really grateful to have a voice within that group. They've been very welcoming of our students, and they've actively looked at each of the IPE experiences to build on opportunities for the dental hygiene students to participate and contribute. So I appreciate them for that.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Yeah, that's fantastic. What sets ETSU's Dental Hygiene Program apart from others?
Dr. Tabitha Fair
I think our program is unique in that we offer a bachelor's degree in dental hygiene. Yeah. A lot of the programs for dental hygiene are still associate degree programs. And while all of those offer fantastic clinical education, I think we're fortunate to be able to offer courses that focus on interprofessional collaboration, writing, research, and communication skills.
Our students are known as strong writers, presenters, and communicators, so each year they participate in state table clinic presentations at the Tennessee Dental Hygienist Association annual session. Yeah, they seek out leadership roles in the national association. They participate in research activities, and they participate in community- service activities throughout the region. I think a lot of our students are also very active on campus in different organizations, and I feel like the culture at ETSU encourages that, encourages them to pursue those activities. I meet with students regularly who tell me that from the time they came to ETSU for the first campus tour, that it felt like home. Yeah. And I don't think that all universities can say that.
And so my favorite thing that I get to do in this role is participating in the Open House events and meeting with families that are here for their campus tours. Yeah. And they truly, truly love this campus. They want to be a part of the culture, and I think that significantly impacts their experience and their success while they're here.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Do you have a particular student success story that that you'd like to share?
Dr. Tabitha Fair
There's so many students that I'm proud of. I think, again, like I said, my favorite thing is meeting new students, potential students, and their families. And so I get to know them, and I get to know their backgrounds. And I think there's so many of the students that I could talk about.
But one that comes to mind is a student that I interviewed. I met with her in the very beginning, and she came from a very rural background. And it made me think of myself, you know, as a first-generation college student who didn't really have the mentors, maybe to help me along the way, but I got those people here at ETSU, and to see the way that this profession has changed her life has been incredible. She now has a job that she absolutely adores, and she is getting to help people in public health. Yeah. So just to see that progression, it reminded me of myself, to be honest. Yeah. We also have so many other students who have gone on to do things that they love. Some of them teach, some of them work in sales. Yeah. You know, it's just really impressive to see the things that they go out there and do when they leave us, so, that's nice, I've always said my favorite thing about this job is just being able to watch the students grow.
And before I took the role of program director, I was the preclinic coordinator. And in that role, I really got to see that from the beginning, you know, from the day that the students showed up, so excited to be in their new scrubs. Right. And they got to open their brand-new cassette of instruments and just be, it's like their birthday, to get to see all of these things, to watch them progress from that to where they are at graduation is just incredible.
So I'm proud of all of our students, and I hope that they all know that.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Thank you for sharing. Finally, what impact do you hope that you've made on your students?
Dr. Tabitha Fair
That's a really big question. Obviously, I hope they remember all the things that I've tried to teach them in the clinical setting, but much more than that, I hope they remember me as someone who truly cared about them, believed in their dreams, and treated them with respect. And I hope that they will be that for someone else. Yeah. I hope they always remember their why for becoming a dental hygienist so that when they receive a request from a student who wants to come in and shadow or observe them, that they will actually do that and guide that potential student. So I hope they never forget the impact that they also can have on others by encouraging them to pursue their dreams.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Thank you, Tabitha. I really enjoyed our conversation today. Congratulations to the Dental Hygiene Program for its 55 years of service to our students and our region. And thank you for your 20 years of outstanding service to ETSU and your commitment to our students.
Thanks for listening to "Why I Teach."
For more information about Dr. Fair, the College of Clinical and Rehabilitative Health Sciences, or this podcast series, visit the ETSU Provost website at ETSU dot edu slash provost. You can follow me on social media at ETSU Provost, and if you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to like and subscribe to "Why I Teach" wherever you listen to podcasts.