School of Dentistry

Academics

The periodontics department offers a tailored Bachelor of Science in Dental Hygiene Completion program to licensed dental hygienists interested in elevating their education.

When students receive this Bachelor of Science degree, they can advance in their career or seek a challenging new position within a wide range of options. Graduate opportunities include dental management, teaching, marketing, sales, and research.

Program Learning Objectives

  • Apply critical reasoning by solving problems and make decisions based on accepted evidenced-based principles utilizing scientific literature for dental hygiene decision-making.
  • Communicate professional knowledge verbally and in writing to patients, colleagues, and other professionals.
  • Commit to self-assessment and life-long learning to impact health promotion and disease prevention for the populations we serve.

Program Outcomes

To frame the outcomes of the Dental Hygiene BSDC program, we have three primary outcomes to guide activities, assessment, and integration of program objectives into the curricula. The outcomes are:

Outcome 1: Critical Thinking to demonstrate proficiency in observation, analysis, and inference when problem-solving.
Outcome 2: Communication to demonstrate competence in self-awareness, adaptability, empathy, and cognitive complexity when using verbal, written, or non-verbal communication through the delivery of multimodal methodologies that meet the needs of diverse populations.
Outcome 3: Life-long learning to obtain the knowledge, skills, and attitudes relevant to ensuring the workforce has the required skills and talent to ensure the health and safety of the patients and communities we serve.

The academic path that students will follow during the course of this program includes courses in advanced periodontics, oral pathology, and clinical teaching.  A sample study plan for the Bachelor of Science in Dental Hygiene Completion program from the catalog shows the normal semesters in which courses are scheduled to be taught.