"During the 50s there was no official quota but somehow each class of 160 had two women. This was a great improvement over the southern schools of the time, though; Emory, for example, told me that as a woman, they could only take me in their schools of dental hygiene to be a hygienist because that's what woman did in dentistry. In 1955, one of my favorite teachers, Dr. Walt Cohen, was an instructor in Periodontics. He asked me to report to the clinic to assist a visiting clinician doing a demo. The visitor was referred to as 'professor' and when he found I planned to go into pedodontics, he started a running commentary as to why I should go into perio instead of pedo, and kidded me and Walt. When we left, I asked Walt who he was and he replied the man had been Dr. Henry Goldman, who at the time was the country's leading academic periodontist. I gave Walt a 'you rascal' look, and he, ever the gentleman, said, 'I didn't want you to get nervous'. In my third year I took the Inlay Exam. My professor said in front of the patient, 'I would grade this an A, but as you will just get married, have children, never practice, and as you are taking a man's place here, I am grading it a B.' I exited the clinic with my vision clouded by tears and literally bumped into Dean Lester Burkett, who wanted to know the cause of my distress. I hesitated in telling him but he insisted. Two hours later, the professor was seen leaving the school with all his personal effects -- Dean Burkett had fired him. I went on to practice and have just closed my 44-year pedo/ortho office in order to devote myself full-time to research."
-- Frances B. Glenn, DDS'56
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