FIVE years ago faculty members at Columbia University advised Saleem Josephs against attempting the “incredibly difficult” task of combining the school’s two dual degree options.

He needed at least five years to do the Doctorate in Dental Surgery (DDS) with a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA), they told him. And trying to complete that and the course requirements for a second option – the DDS with a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) – in less than six years was inviting failure.

“On paper they were correct. It wasn’t a wise idea,” said Dr Dennis Mitchell, assistant dean for the office of Diversity and Multi-Cultural Affairs. “It’s incredibly difficult to accomplish, and most people in the world who would have attempted this would likely have jeopardised their dental education.”

But Josephs felt doing all three degree programmes simultaneously was a “unique opportunity” and achievable “if I had the right level of discipline, perseverance and focus from the very start,” he told the Sunday Observer.

Last week, the 27-year-old Jamaican proved his faculty advisors wrong, creating academic history at and for Columbia University in the process.

He earned the three graduate degrees in less time than it would take most, even the very best of students, to complete.

In fact, approximately 10 per cent of each dental cohort takes five or more years to get their DDS alone.

At his May 18 commencement exercise at Columbia University’s prestigious School of Dental Medicine and Oral Surgery in Manhattan, Dr Saleem Josephs was cited as the first student in the world to complete three graduate degrees, including a doctorate, in just five years of study. There were other accolades.

“Saleem was able to not just graduate from all three schools at once but at the top of the class in all three,” said Dr Mitchell, who mentored and supported the Jamaican throughout the process.

“I’ve been a faculty member at the dental school for 15 years and I’ve never seen a student accomplish what he did,” said Dr Mitchell. “Many of our faculty members advised him it would take at least six years, if he would ever finish at all. It was very difficult, but his demeanour was always jovial and .he seemed to do them so effortlessly.”

Normally, students not taking any of the dual options would complete the DDS alone in four years, the MBA in two and the MPH in two. The DDS MBA is a five-year dual degree programme, requiring students to take a mandatory year off from the dental programme to focus exclusively on their business studies. This way, they would complete the DDS MBA in five years.

Josephs, however, refused to detach himself, continuing to see dental patients and taking public health classes at the same time. It meant that while other business students were carrying a full study load of 15 credits, he was taking as much as 21. At that pace, he actually completed his master’s degrees a year ahead of schedule.

And with that extra time to spare, he took advantage of the opportunity, seldomly utilised by dental students, to cross-register into at least two extra classes per semester. By doing so, he gained additional credits which could easily have gotten him a fourth degree. But that, he said, was not in his plans at that time.

Saleem Josephs is the second of three brothers. The others, Elias and Philip, are also attending Columbia’s dental school. They grew up in Kingston with their father Kamaal Josephs, who currently manages and co-owns the Mayfair Hotel in the capital, and mother Lorane, who died nine years ago. Both parents are from Manchester.

Saleem Josephs moved to Florida, USA in 1996, shortly after graduating from Campion College. He attended Ben Lippen High School for two years before going on to major in Chemistry at Florida Southern College (FSC), where he graduated Summa Cum Laude.

He probably inherited his thirst for community service from his grandmother, Odette Josephs, who founded Girls’ Town, a Christian-based organisation in Jamaica responsible for removing women off the streets and training them in vocational skills.

His extraordinary work ethic and drive to excel was evident, especially after his mother’s death.

“I lost my mom two weeks before my second year at FSC,” he said. “Continuing school while grieving and mourning was a daunting task .to be able to achieve academic excellence to the point of being competitive. It was my spiritual world view and my faith in God that helped to stabilise me. My faith was that there was a greater sense of purpose that transcended my understanding.”

Josephs’s most recent accomplishment crowns five years of intense hard work, diligent study, community service and a string of achievements.

For instance, he was class president and a residence hall director at the dental school for two years, managing the programmes and residential services for over 250 undergraduates; he represented the dental school as senator to the University Senate, which comprises close to 20 schools and affiliates that work collectively with the board of trustees to promulgate policies and weigh the issues confronting the university. He also represented the university nationally and internationally through a host of scholarship and leadership activities.

Perhaps his greatest contribution to the university was reviving a programme that is now an institutionalised means by which dental students are able to give voluntary community service. He also founded the Jamaica Dental Externship programme, which collaborates with other organisations annually to provide free extractions and oral health service to thousands in Jamaica’s rural communities.

For his work he has earned close to a dozen scholarships, honours and awards, arguably the result, he said, of “putting myself continually and insistently outside my comfort zone”. One honour that touched him most was being nominated in 2004 by the president of the National Dental Association to be a special advisor to the United States secretary of human health services.

“Saleem was able to do things other students would not likely have done,” said Dr Mitchell. “I have worked with many brilliant young men and women, but what surprises me about Saleem is he is the total package – brilliantly intelligent, incredibly warm, a welcoming personality and a great leader.”

Josephs’s extraordinary self-motivation may also have been shaped from insights he gained on a visit to Lebanon, shortly after his FSC graduation in 2000. In that year, he toured sections of the Middle East on a bold, self-funded mission to rediscover his ethnic roots. His foreparents of some four generations back had originated there.

While in Lebanon, he volunteered at the Al-Amal Institute for the Disabled and blended easily into the community. What he learnt there taught him to take nothing for granted. At least half the population had applied to immigrate to Europe, Canada or North America in search of a better way of life.

“As I spoke to people there was such despair and hopelessness,” he recalled. “People were saying ‘if I could only get to Canada or America’. My story is actually much more than pursuing three degrees. It’s about seizing and maximising every opportunity the US has to offer.”

Josephs is about to start working at Bear Stearns, an investment bank on Wall Street, but ultimately hopes he can pull together all his training to pursue a career in health care policy and finance for the Jamaican government.