The Dental Assisting Program at Amarillo College was formally granted national accreditation in September, a testament to the perseverance of program facilitators and a milestone presently shared by only seven other such programs in Texas.

The accreditation, seven years in duration, was granted by the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA), which operates under the American Dental Association to establish educational standards of ethics and excellence that help ensure the public receives care from skilled professionals.

Graduates of AC’s Dental Assisting Program will henceforth qualify to sit for a national-certification exam that, upon passage, grants them eligibility to work anywhere in the country.

However, it is because most AC graduates pursue careers in the Texas Panhandle that Program Director Dana Scott set out more than three years ago to meet the rigorous accreditation challenge; CODA’s endorsement will most greatly impact the community served by the College.

“We are obligated to our students to provide them with the best quality education possible, and we’re obligated to our dental employers to provide the best possible employees,” Scott said. “When we do that, we fulfill our ultimate obligation, which is to continuously improve the dental health of our community.

“We worked long and hard to achieve this accreditation,” Scott said. “It was the right thing to do, the very best thing we could do, and I’m especially appreciative of the dedicated members of our faculty—Erica Brassfield and Deborah Darrah—who devoted countless hours to help make it happen.”

Achieving CODA accreditation is an exacting process that officially begins with submission of a program self-study report, which the AC team wrote and submitted a year and a half ago. Yet AC’s Dental Assisting Program was hard at work even prior to that, incorporating CODA standards and practices into labs, classrooms and curriculum in expectation of achieving national accreditation.

Their efforts were well received when CODA representatives made a site visit to AC last spring, and national accreditation was officially granted in September.

AC’s Dental Assisting Program was established in 1974 and provides the entry-level skills needed to work as a chair-side assistant in a dental office and is designed to be completed in one year. The program accepts up to 15 students a year.

They spend approximately 20 percent of the educational experience working in various dental offices within the community. Additional coursework enables them to pursue credentials in nitrous oxide monitoring and x-rays, in which AC students for the past 14 years have demonstrated a 100-percent pass rate. Future students who pass those exams will be qualified nationally.

“National exams are tough, but they carry plenty of clout, and our students have demonstrated time and again that they are up to the challenge,” Scott said. “It is definitely time for Amarillo College Dental Assisting to have national recognition. It is where every one of our students and our constituents deserve for us to be.”

For more information about AC’s Dental Assisting Program, call (806) 371-5000 or visit actx.edu/dental_assisting.

September 29, 2015