Articles - Fall 2008 - return to index
Student Follows Her Dream
-By Chris Cunningham
Amber Adams wanted to keep sight of her professional goal, so in bold lipstick strokes across her bathroom mirror, she wrote: “I will become a dental hygienist.”
Amber, now 22, is entering her second-year in Lane’s two-year Dental Hygiene program. This program provides students with academic and clinical training to complete the Oregon state practical examination and the National Dental Hygiene Board Examination that are required for dental hygiene licensure and employment.
“Dental hygiene has been my all-time dream and passion,” says Amber, who has been working as a receptionist in Dr. Daniel Vodvarka’s dental office since she was 17. This work experience has given her a closer look at the vital role that dental hygienists play in health education. That’s part of Amber’s passion and the main reason she chose the profession: to educate patients about oral hygiene and the ramifications if one ignores or is unable to receive preventive care.
First-year students learn to give preventive care in Lane’s Dental Clinic under the supervision of local dentists who devote countless hours to the clinic, such as Lohring Miller, D.M.D. The students provide dental sealants, exams, teeth-cleaning and x-rays to low-income children and seniors and other underserved populations, says Dental Hygiene Program Coordinator Sharon Hagan.
As part of its ongoing efforts to provide dental care to children and adults in the community, the Dental Clinic will offer a range of dental hygiene services in October to families in the Head Start program.
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| Top photo: Lane’s Dental Clinic before remodel. Bottom photo: Lane’s expanded and updated Dental Clinic was funded by the last construction bond. |
Lane’s last construction bond financed the clinic’s remodel and expansion. These improvements have increased the clinic’s capacity to treat patients from the community and expanded the amount of practical experience that is available to students in the Dental Hygiene program.
The need for dental hygienists is growing faster than community colleges can train students, Hagan says. The U.S. Bureau of Labor currently ranks dental hygiene among the top 10 fastest growing occupations, and yearly entry-level salaries range from $18,000 to $40,000. Lane, Benton, Lincoln and Linn counties in Oregon expect shortages of hygienists, and, therefore, increasing numbers of populations without access to preventive dental care.
Hagan took the lead in launching Lane’s online distance learning for Dental Hygiene students in 2007 when the college received a $1.97 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to develop regional dental hygiene training to address workforce shortages in Oregon and Idaho.
Lane’s online Dental Hygiene classes make it possible for residents living in rural communities across the Northwest to conveniently pursue a dental hygiene career. During fall term 2007, Lane partnered with Linn-Benton Community College and began a distance education site on the LBCC campus where no dental hygiene program had been in place. Similar partnerships will begin in fall 2008 with Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho and Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. Hagan says that, historically, about one-third of Lane’s students have commuted more than two hours to attend classes and labs.
Amber is eager to be part of a tight-knit group of practitioners who share the common goal of improving community health through preventive dental care.
“I can’t picture myself doing anything else,” she says.
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