Scholarship Recipient Andrew Ryser

"I am thankful for the privilege of receiving the Thomas L. Mountain and Richard C. Mountain and the John F. Linn and the Emma C. Doran Families Endowed Scholarship Fund. This award will be incredibly helpful in paying for the costs of attending dental school and will allow me to spend more time focused on my education rather than how I am going to fund my schooling. I am very thankful for this opportunity and will use this award to help pursue my dream of becoming a dentist.

Since growing up as a young child in Hubbard, Ohio I desired to be a Buckeye and to accomplish my goals wearing scarlet and gray. I decided to continue my education at Ohio State for many reasons, but the main reason is that Ohio State provides endless opportunities to help others and make a difference that will impact someone's life. As an undergraduate here, I was able to experience everything Ohio State has to offer, making it an easy decision to continue my education here at the College of Dentistry.

Dentistry is the profession I chose to pursue mainly because of the lack of quality dental healthcare available to me while growing up. Going to the dentist was always a time I dreaded, not for the reasons most have, but because our family dentists never provided a treatment that corrected the problems I had and usually ended up causing more problems. I decided as a young child, I wanted to grow up trying to prevent children from dreading going to the dentist and having the awful experiences I had.

Having this fantastic opportunity to attend Ohio State's College of Dentistry has been a lifelong dream of mine. As a student veteran, I have worked tirelessly helping to find solutions to problems student veterans face here at Ohio State, and there are many things I would like to improve and implement for our military students and the veteran community here in the College of Dentistry. I envision military students being better prepared for their military duty upon graduation and for a more knowledgeable military student population here in the college. This past spring, I successfully organized a new student organization at the College of Dentistry called the Armed Forces Club (AFC). The AFC will be working on many things over the next few months to provide dental treatment to veterans and to educate the veteran population on the importance of maintaining good dental health. Upon graduation, I will continue my career as a soldier in the Army providing dental care to my fellow comrades and hopefully going on to specialize in pediatric dentistry or even oral surgery.

I am honored to be able to attend this great institution and even more honored to be able to say thank you for receiving this scholarship. My dreams are becoming reality thanks to Ohio State and this award has given me the ability to focus on not only my education, but also the ability to continue my dedication of serving the community and my country by helping veterans and military students."