Dentistry Student Discovers Unexpected Path to D.D.S.

David Herce earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and loves to entertain his toddler twin daughters, Lily and Clara, with the sounds of the African hand-drum and Irish flute.

So how did this classically trained orchestral musician end up as a student in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Dentistry with his sights set on a 2011 graduation?

It all started with a 7-foot-tall purple “Skippy the Kangaroo” costume.

While teaching in Texas after graduation, Herce spent his weekends volunteering at the Children’s Hospital of Austin as its kangaroo mascot, Skippy. He hosted the Skippy Pre-Op Program and gave patients and their families tours of the operating facilities to help them feel more comfortable about their upcoming procedures.

“The appreciation of the kids and their parents was my first real glimpse at how rewarding a career in health care could be,” Herce said. “Dentistry represented the perfect mix of hands-on healing combined with longitudinal patient management. The technical demands of surgery appealed to my musical training and I knew the relationships I could build with patients would give me a voice in advocating their health and well-being.”

So Herce contacted Michael Healy, D.D.S., the VCU School of Dentistry’s assistant dean for admissions, to learn more about the program and begin the application process.

“I have constantly been made to feel that the people around me genuinely care about my success,” Herce said. “Students are surrounded by talented educators that seek to maximize their contribution to the profession by the high standards of performance they instill in us.”

Herce received an academic scholarship upon acceptance to the school and then in spring 2009, he earned the Robert and Ann Wong Scholarship — a fund established at the MCV Foundation by alumnus Jonathan Wong, D.D.S., in honor of his parents.

“This scholarship, along with others like it, demonstrates that others who came before me and were shaped by a similar process still believe in it and continue to value the contribution it stands to make to our communities,” Herce said. “As the son of two educators and a former teacher myself, I find the choice to invest in the education of others to be a powerful gesture.”

The former teacher in Herce also left him with a soft spot for pediatric dentistry.

“Sometimes I find myself missing working with young people all day because they keep you young, too,” he said. “So the thought of doing pediatric dentistry feels like going home and makes me smile. Then I walk into our general practice clinic and am reminded how we are all just kids that still need to be shown that someone cares about us from time to time.

“That,” Herce added, “makes me smile just as big.”