Congratulations to Dr. Jennie Ison on receiving the University of Kentucky College of Dentistry (UKCD) Class of 1968 Faculty Development Award. The annual award provides $5,000 to an early career UKCD faculty member who shows exceptional potential for career development. 

Ison received her Doctor of Dental Medicine from UKCD and after graduation  practiced as a general dentist in Lexington for a few years. She later completed her Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology Residency at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. Since joining the college last year, Ison has held the positions of Lab Director and Oral Pathology Division Chief, in addition to her research and teaching. 

“I practiced as a general dentist for several years in Lexington and the surrounding areas and found that I was a magnet for patients with pathology. Due to time and knowledge constraints, it was necessary to refer those patients to other providers for diagnosis and treatment. I found these particular patients to be incredibly interesting and wanted to be the provider with that knowledge base and skill set. It has been such a fulfilling and stimulating change for me and my family,” shared Ison on why she decided to pursue oral pathology.  

Ison plans to attend the Eastern Society of Teachers of Oral Pathology’s Annual Meeting with the award, where she will have the opportunity to learn from those who have years of experience in her field, specifically in the educational component of this discipline.  

When talking about the benefits attending the annual meeting will bring to her and UKCD students, Ison said, “Teaching oral pathology is unique from other disciplines in dental education in that we can’t replicate in a didactic or typical clinical setting the actual experience of spontaneous discovery of a pathologic lesion. While there is a readily available pool of patients that need diagnosis and restoration of caries or replacement of missing teeth via prosthodontics that can be simulated in a lab setting and then translated into practice in the clinical setting, the actual number of patients with pathology is comparatively quite small. Though a small proportion, many entities, such as malignant or premalignant conditions, can have significant implications and repercussions; compounding the issue is that some of these lesions are rare, and even common lesions can present in many different ways from patient to patient or may change morphology as it progresses from early to late stage. Because of all these reasons, we are somewhat limited in how we can present the material to students, as well as translate that into an actual learning 'experience'.” 

Sharing how teaching heavily relies on photographs and radiographs as actual patients or realistic models are generally unavailable for a classroom-based setting, Ison adds, “Repetition is extremely important when learning and correlating the signs, symptoms, demographics, and settings in which some of these lesions occur. Finding multiple quality images, especially of rare conditions, can be a real challenge, leaving students with only the mental picture of a single presentation in a single patient. Attending the annual meeting of the Eastern Society of Teachers of Oral Pathology provides attendees access to a repository of high quality, thoroughly worked-up teaching cases, that one can use in the education of dental students for both lecture and examination purposes.”  

“This year the review committee, which included members of the UKCD Class of 1968, met and selected Dr. Jennie Ison to receive the award. On behalf of the committee and the college, I am delighted to share this news with you and show our appreciation for our forward-thinking alumni who have chosen to honor our college and our exceptionally talented faculty such as Dr. Ison,” shared Dr. Craig Miller, UKCD Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Development.