Kerney Laday Scholarship for Miller
Clint Miller, a fourth-year dental student, received the Kerney Laday Scholarship, an award given to one recipient at Texas A&M University Baylor College of Dentistry each year.
Dentistry is not Miller’s first career path in the health professions. After obtaining a master’s degree in health science and a physician assistant license in 2001, Miller worked at orthopedic practices in Oklahoma, Oregon and Washington state before starting dental school in 2011.
In addition to working as a physician assistant in a part-time capacity at the WB Carrell Memorial Clinic while in dental school, he has served in leadership roles as president of the college’s Odontological Honor Society chapter and as the president and founding member of a TAMBCD student chapter of the American Dental Education Association.
Miller volunteers at the Hope Clinic in Cleburne, Texas, and serves as a mentor with church-based mentoring and counseling programs. At TAMBCD he has helped classmates as a mentor for the Great Expectations program and as a faculty-nominated tutor in the subjects of microbiology, human anatomy and physiology.
The scholarship criteria includes qualities that encompass much of Miller’s activities, such as academic achievement, clinical proficiency, and community and college involvement, including volunteer work benefiting underserved populations.
In Miller’s scholarship application essay, he shares his philosophy on the profession.
“Dentistry is a team with the dentist being the team captain, and each team member must buy into the ethical practice of dentistry,” Miller writes. “The dentist must lead by example. … We are not perfect people, but when the right mechanisms are in place situations can be avoided, mitigated or promptly corrected if something does arise. The dental profession is a service and deals more intimately with a person than most professions. I have had the privilege to see what ethical practice in dentistry looks like and can aspire to live that out in whatever practice I become part of in the future.”
About the scholarship
Energy Future Holdings established the fund in 2008 in recognition of former Xerox Corp. executive Kerney Laday’s service to what was then the TXU Corp. board of directors. Laday, who passed away in September 2012, was devoted to helping dental students fund their education.
—Jenny Fuentes