by Joanne Noto, Toni Alderson, and Bridgete Clark
The Cabrillo College Administration has recently mandated that the Dental Hygiene Program will not be taking an incoming class in summer 2015. The Dental Hygiene Program disagrees with this mandate. Since College enrollment is down and 232 TU’s have been reduced yearly, Dental Hygiene faculty wonder why their program have to take a cut of roughly 100 Teaching Units (TUs), or 43% of the total cut in TUs for the College this year.
Dental Hygiene is a two-year program. For example, the cohort that entered in 2014 graduates in May 2016. DH has two cohorts running simultaneously. The DH applicants who were informed in spring 2014 that they are in the class entering in 2015, have now been told they will enter in 2016.
One fundamental mission of Cabrillo College is Career Technical Education (CTE). Dental Hygiene is crucial to CTE. It should be remembered that the vast majority of students in the dental hygiene program are women and typically 35 to 50% are women of color. Upon graduation and successful completion of their clinical and written licensing exams, these graduates become employed and earn a significant income.
It is often noted that Dental Hygiene is a more expensive program than others at the College. Why is this the case?
The national accreditation standards are set by the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA). These standards mandate a student/teacher ratio in lab courses (10 to 1) and in clinical courses (5 to 1). This ratio is substantially higher than an English, History, or Math course with one instructor to dozens of students.
The DH program chair and faculty have worked to bring in additional dollars. DH has already reduced seen reductions in TUs. (We made changes that resulted in giving up nineteen (19) teaching units.) DH lost a full time faculty member in 2011 and our instructional assistant position went to a 50% contract from 100%, from 40 hours per week to 20 hours.
BA/BS pilot programs just signed by Governor Brown AB 850. DH is not offered at CSU or UC, so it is a logical program for the bachelor’s degree
If these cuts go forward, the Dental Hygiene applicants, 71 wait-listed students, current 1st year students, 14 adjunct faculty, patients, and community members will all lose!