New Year Tenure Review: Interview With The President

On the 24th of December, the press sat with the UADS president to discuss progress with his plans for the office.

A summary of the President’s progress with plans made.

Underway

1) Indigent student scholarships. Sponsors are being reached out to and this will begin soon.

2) Dental student instruments bank: A sponsor stated that he already sent instruments but did not know why they were not in use. Plans to speak directly with him could not be executed due to exams. Some other sponsors are also being reached out to. The plan is to give everyone enough time to send whatever they want to send to us. 

Done

1) Exam welfare packages: So far, 3 exams have held: 2k26’s part 1, 2k24’s part 2, and 2k23’s part 4. All the classes were beneficiaries of personalized exam packages. The no-dues-no-package rule could not be implemented as dues were not collected on time due to website integration issues. There’s still room for improvement.

2) Pre-MB engagements: Mock exams are mostly done for MB 1, as the students have never been exposed to an MB setting. This tenure, the MB1 class had an online mock exam done. There was an MB-talk for the 2k24 dentistry class. The speakers were Dr. Rex and myself, Patrick Okelue. There was also an MB talk for the 2k26 MB1. The speakers were Akinrinola Akinfolabi and Oluwo Damilare. Both programs were arranged by the General secretary.

3) Timely orientations. There was a Clinical Dentistry orientation for the 2k23 class and it was timely. There haven’t been any new clinical or pre-clinical sets since the tenure began. There will be a clinical orientation for the 2k26 class once they cross to the clinical side. (This orientation held online on the 24th of January, 2026. The speakers were Sanni Babawande of the 2k23 class and Oluwo Damilare of the 2k24 class)

4) Improved DSA collaboration. Since the beginning of the tenure, I have established a good personal relationship with some of the presidents of Dental Student Associations in the South-West at least. We have good relations with DSA presidents from Unilag, Unimed(where we had a quiz outing in November), OAU and Afe Babalola University. We have also established relations with the NADS president and some other executives.

5) Publicity: Things are not where we want them to be. One of the reasons for this is the reduced number of designers for this tenure. The plan is to have a sustainable graphic design training, not a one or two-day affair. That way, people can learn design skills that will be useful to themselves and to the association. The public perception of the association has been good so far. The only hiccup was when we were blacklisted as an association by the office of the Dean of Student Affairs. Thankfully, that has since been resolved. We have secured our registration and we received our confirmation letter on the Sixth of November.

6) Fund raising: We are planning to reach out to new sponsors and we have kept good communications with our old sponsors. On alumni relations, I did my best to be at the alumni reunions of the 1995 Class and the 2000 class and the University of Ibadan Dental School @ 50 Anniversary to meet with dental alumni and establish relations. Also, sponsorship for student prizes has been secured. Awarding of these prizes started at the last graduation. The hope is that when the funds currently available run out, there will be sponsors to fund a new endowment.

Dentatics Press