Photo by Amanda Lewis
A cohort of 10 students has enrolled in the college’s new dental hygienist program.
AACC added an associate degree for dental hygienists this fall.
The five-semester program, which enrolled 10 students in its first cohort, offers clinical experience and workforce-ready training that will prepare students to take their licensing exams, work for a dentist or enroll in a master’s degree program.
“There’s a huge shortage of hygienists,” B.P. Patel, director of dental education, said. “This program is about workforce development and getting students job ready, fast.”
Nationally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the number of dental hygienists will grow by 9% from 2023 to 2033. That compares with a prior estimate of 38% growth from 2018 to 2028.
“We are witnessing a complete reversal of the once-oversaturated hygiene market,” North Carolina hygienist Lori Hendrick wrote in the trade journal Dimensions of Dental Hygiene. “We are experiencing a shortage of working dental hygienists across the U.S.”
AACC’s curriculum is one of seven two-year dental hygienist programs in Maryland.
As part of their training at AACC, students—who are required to practice their skills for 15 weeks before they can sit for their licensing exams—will offer services such as cleanings, dental scans, and fluoride treatments to students, faculty, staff and members of the surrounding community at reduced prices.
Cleanings, for example, cost $35, and scans, $25, Patel said, adding that the school accepts dental insurance from these patients.
“It gets access to care to people that don’t have that access to care,” said Patel, a registered dental hygienist who earned his master’s degree from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
Patel said graduates can earn up to $140,000 in jobs as dental hygienists.
Before enrolling in AACC’s program, students must complete six prerequisites in microbiology, biochemistry, math, English, psychology, and human biology or anatomy/physiology.
Among those in the first cohort are a few students enrolled in the college’s dental assistant program.
Kailey Howell, a first-year dental assistant student, said the hygienist program “is great for a lot of students like me who [are] in the dental assisting program who want to further their education. I think it just gives them that opportunity to, you know, be a hygienist, and a lot of people are interested in that. I think that that’s great to have here.”
Howell predicted the new program will be a success.
“I know people who go to the Baltimore [City] Community College and other community colleges around us just for their dental hygiene program, so I definitely think that people will come here,” Howell said.
Athena Dyer and Xavier Johnson contributed to this story.