Starting a pre-dental club?

[HenryH]

Currently, my college has no pre-dental (or medical) club, so this seems like the perfect opportunity to start one and buff-up my application with a shining extra-curricular. I ran a search on the subject, but most threads just seemed to detail the dos/don'ts.

For those of you that run one of these clubs, how do you actually go about getting things in motion? Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks, guys...

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[dr.rex]

you must go to a really small school, but what you should do is go to the preprofessional advisor

 

[djeffreyt]

Starting a club varies at every school. Without some basic info about your school, I doubt any advice would be that helpful. How about your tell us:

- does your school have a prehealth advisor through which you would be able to contact potential predent members?

- how large is your school? 1000 students, 10,000 students, 30,000 students?

- are you a college or a community college?

- is there an official organization recognition process through your school?

-around where is your school located?

- is biology or the prehealth major a large chunk of your school? DO you think anyone else would join a predent club?

 

[SugarNaCl]

I started a chapter of a medical fraternity at SUNY-Buffalo where I went to undergrad from 1998-2002. I started it in 2000. It is a HUGE amount of work. Make sure you take time for school first. The medical fraternity was a professional organization (phi delta epsilon) and it took up so much of my time with our 25 members that soon I was spending 6 hours a night on it. Needless to say, my grades fell starting that semester. If you feel its ok on your part, this is what I did.

I had no help through the school, but eventually we made our way into student government (it took a year) Since I came up with the idea, I served as president of our organization, but I did have 3 of my good friends willing to serve as VP, sec and treasurer until we passed it on.

1. I made a sign up sheet and a flyer. I put about 4 fake names on the sheets so people weren't intimidated to sign theirs to it. Then I asked the professors from the largest general (ie bio, chem, physics) lectures bc we had 400+ people in those lectures, if I could make a general announcement before class started and pass the sheet around. Only one of 7 had a problem with this. HAHA... I think he may have swore at me in Chinese before kicking me out of his classroom.

2. I hung signs all over to promote us

3. I made an email list with all the people who signed up that they were potentially interested. The fee was $50. Out of maybe 100-125 signatures, 25 people ended up paying the $50 and getting in.

4. Had an induction ceremony with a speaker... then assigned diff committees, fundraising/promotion, recruitment, planning

5. After EVERYTHING was set up and we had $$ in our account from a sweet fundraiser called basemarket that doesnt exist anymore I asked a well known chair from the medical school (bc I thought we would have a better chance getting pre meds than pre dents but pre dents were welcome to join too) to sponsor us. We needed that to be in student govt.

6. We were on our way..held meetings every 3 weeks with pizza, talked to the ARC and had blood drives, community service events, 9-11 fundraiser etc.

IT WAS A LOT OF WORK and to be honest, while I am happy I did some of it, I have some huge regrets...mostly about the time and the GPA slip bc of how demanding it was. I had NO IDEA it would be a full time job on top of full time school and a part time job...so please, be prepared for a tough few years. I was glad to finally pass it on.

UB is a school of about 26,000 students. I was shocked however when people that I never saw before started coming up to me and saying "are you SugarNacl (insert real name here)...the one that started Phi Delta Epsilon here?" It was a bit surreal.

HAHAHA... I fear that will be the end of my UB "personal legacy...ahahahah" they don't seem to want me for dental school 🙁 . I <3 VCU though...and in a big way, it was my first choice anyhow, so all is well.

 

[HenryH]

Starting a club varies at every school. Without some basic info about your school, I doubt any advice would be that helpful. How about your tell us:

- does your school have a prehealth advisor through which you would be able to contact potential predent members? Yeah -- they're pretty much the same guys who advise the biology students.

- how large is your school? 1000 students, 10,000 students, 30,000 students? My school's website (www.colstate.edu) says that 7,500 were enrolled during the fall 2005 semester, so I'm guessing a little more or less than that.

- are you a college or a community college? It's a 4-year uni.

- is there an official organization recognition process through your school? I just found out on the website that organizations must be registered by the 3rd week of the spring semester! 😱 There's a chance they'll let me slide on that, though...

-around where is your school located? Columbus, GA.

- is biology or the prehealth major a large chunk of your school? DO you think anyone else would join a predent club? I don't think so, but there's still a decent number. Last semester, there were two general chemistry sessions, each being filled with about 70 students (140 total). This semester, there's only one gen. chem. 2 course and it has, I think, 60 students.

.

 

[djeffreyt]

I browsed briefly the Colgate Clubs website...I think the above Poster's advice should be heeded. Starting and maintaining an organization is a huge endeavor. It doesn't have to be as big a deal as Sugar since you're not going to be a nationally recognized affiliate, but it still takes time and effort.

I'd say you need to start by doing two things:

First, speak with a professor in the bio department or with one of the pre-health/bio advisors and ask if they would be willing to be the advisor for your Pre-dental Club. Also, at the same time, you should look for a few individuals to work with you to start the club (the initial officers of the club). Hopefully you know a couple of other pre-dents who might be willing, but if not, post up a few flyers about starting up a predental club. maybe create an email address on Yahoo or Gmail and put it on the flyer saying to contact that email if you are interested in starting one up on campus and even ask professors to announce it in class. You can't be a club of one, so start making noise.

Then, you need to review the club and org handbook for your school and look at all the forms that need to be filled out. Even if you are too late this year to be "officially recognized" there is no law saying you can't form an unofficial club. You just don't get all the privelages of being official right away.

Then, after you have a small group of interested people, plan a first meeting day and time and bring with you some ideas for what you'd want to do with the club, the forms that need to be filled out for recognitions, and food awlways helps. At this first meeting you can all discuss what you want out of the club, ideas for things to do, and, if people are willing, start electing and selecting officer positions to handle certain parts of the club.

Beyond that, running a club is just listening to what people need and finding the right people to get what they need for them. Some of the things that pre-dental clubs often do are:

- table and give out health info at school or local health fairs (contact a local dental society to see if theey have brochures and such things you could use)
- bring in dental speakers (ask local dentists or specialists if they would come speak about their professions. Forensic dentistry is also very cool if you have a local dentist who works with the county forensic team)
- Bring in dental school reps (if you have a decent sized club, dental school reps...especially ones that are close by...are often happy to come speak about their schools. My best suggestion is to advertise these events widely at other local colleges and community colleges)
- Hold fundraisers (either for yourselves or to donate to a particular cause)
- have people come in and talk about the application process (at our school we hold a dental applicants roundtable where people accepted to or interviewed at dental schools in the last year come answer questions for newer predents)
- Have people come in and talk about interviewing skills
- Create a mentorship program where you set up students with local dentists to visit and observe and possibly volunteer at their offices throughout a semester.

and so on and so forth, etc. Pick and choose what you can handle and what you feel the students need most...don't try to do everything all at once unless you have an army of predents to help.

also, a fun social event is a great way to help make everyone feel a little more together. I go to happy hours with local dentists who help our organization and the officers in our organizations pretty regularly. We usually hold a christmas party too. Also, I think this year we're going to rent The Dentist, staring Corbin Burnsen, and watch it one night on campus after a meeting.