- The design is quite intentional, because we know that if we can go out into rural areas of this state, particularly areas that need dentists the most, when we first envisioned this concept of bringing a school of dental medicine to ECU, I was actually in the chief of staff role here more than a decade ago.

And the idea was that if we go out to those rural areas and bring those students from the rural areas to ECU and let them train here, they've developed relationships, they have family members, they have a cultural connection to these areas where our service learning centers are.

And it is just incredible to see them graduate from this place and then go back to their home communities and serve those communities in ways in which we never could have imagined.

There were four counties in North Carolina with no dentist when we started this school, as I said earlier.