Former NCAA volleyball competitor sets new heights in dentistry as she prepares to make
history in Hunt School of Dental Medicine’s groundbreaking program
Fourth-year dental student Sydnye Fields stands tall above most of her classmates – literally. The 6-foot-3-inch former NCAA women’s volleyball middle blocker is easy to pick out in a crowd.
The fourth-year Hunt School of Dental Medicine student is on the cusp of graduation. For residency, she matched with Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago in the first round last November for a dental anesthesiology residency.
Fields and her classmates started four years ago, in 2021, as part of the dental school’s inaugural class. As the first new dental school established in Texas in 50 years, the Hunt School of Dental Medicine soon proved to be the most innovative.
Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, and raised in Missouri City, Texas, outside Houston, Fields
knew at 7 that she wanted to be a dentist.
“Every time I went to the dentist, I had so much fun,” she recalled. “I was told I was such a good patient and got stickers and toys from the toy chest.”
Fields attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her achievements on the
volleyball court included breaking the school’s 30-year-old record for blocks by a player and
earning her ACC Player of the Week honors.
However, her desire for dentistry lured her back to Texas in her senior year. She completed her Spanish degree with a chemistry minor at Texas A&M University, where she received a full athletic scholarship.
Returning to Texas meant paying in-state tuition. This would keep her cost of attending dental school down.
Richard Black, D.D.S., founding dean of the Hunt School of Dental Medicine, and Wendy Woodall, D.D.S., MAGD, wanted Fields for the first cohort of students admitted in 2021.
“Sydnye’s leadership and drive are a testament to the kind of talent we aim to cultivate,” said Dr. Black. “She has embraced every challenge, setting a standard for future students. She embodies the innovative, compassionate care we strive to foster at the Hunt School of Dental Medicine.”
The enthusiasm they showed for the program impressed Fields.
“I flew in, and they canceled their meetings that day to meet with me,” she recalled. “That was significant to me – they’re deans, after all. Despite their busy schedules and opening a new school, they stopped what they were doing to talk with me.”
That’s all it took.
“I ultimately made my mind up and decided to come here,” she said. “No regrets. It's been a great experience!”
The school also pitched in by providing Fields with an Electric Company Charitable Foundation Dental Student Scholarship, which eased her financial burden.
What impressed her most about the school’s unique program was working with patients at the Texas Tech Dental Oral Health Clinic during her first semester. Most dental schools do not offer clinical practice until the third year, following two years of classroom studies.
In her first year as president of the Student National Dental Association chapter on campus, she met many dental students from across the nation.
“People were like, ‘Oh, you’re part of that new school, right?’” she shared. “When I told them I'd already performed a filling on a patient, they were blown away. They couldn't believe that we'd done a filling and root canals, and they were still in the classroom, reading textbooks.”
“That was kind of cool, being able to show off and say that I had performed procedures they wouldn’t do for another two years,” she said, flashing a smile.
As the inaugural members of the school’s first dental class, Fields and her classmates didn’t
benefit from working with upper classmates who could show them the ropes.
“It could have been a struggle,” she said. “But I think it wasn't because our class size is so small. I may not have had a fourth-year student to lean on. But our professors were always willing to give us feedback.”
The small class size was another feature of the program.
“I had friends at NYU where there were 300 people in a single class,” she said, comparing it to her class of 40 students. “Even though they have upper classmates and professors, they would wait 30 minutes before someone could come by to check their prep.”
In May 2025, Fields will shed her scrubs for a graduation gown. She will make history as part of the first graduating class of the Hunt School of Dental Medicine.
Thanks to her residency at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, Fields will specialize in
dental anesthesiology, which focuses on the advanced use of general anesthesia, sedation, and pain management to facilitate dental procedures. Like her medical school peers, she must spend at least another three years in a residency program.
While most of her fellow students were biology majors, Fields had minored in chemistry at Texas A&M University. It was during her anesthesia class that something clicked for her.
“Anesthesia is interesting to me because of the pharmacology of the drugs that they use, how it interacts with the blood-brain barrier and the rest of your body,” she said. “It just sparked my interest because it was a little bit more what I was used to studying.”
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