Danielle Johnston

I've been in dentistry for more than 40 years, so dentistry is my life, I love it. I am the program director for a dental assisting program that is CODA accredited at Lorenzo Walker Technical College. My particular program is accredited times 2 - we have an overall school accreditation and then we also have CODA accreditation, so I spend a lot of time making sure that we meet all of our accredited needs. I teach 24 students myself and am the director and co-teacher of the dual enrollment program as well. Between the juniors, seniors, and the adult program, we can run 70-something students every year. It's a CTE school, so CTE schools teach a career in a year. The program that I have is 1,230 hours. I have an MBA, my highest degree level, which helps me when it comes time to doing all the business ends of running a program, and the dentistry is the fun part for me. I do a lot of volunteer work as often as I can. You've been gifted an opportunity to do things that other people can't, and you just need to take advantage of it any way you can. You may not change the world, but you can change the small part that bumps up against you.