Student Development Division s2

Annual Program Review Form

2010-11

The completion of this form is part of the institutional program review process. Please submit a completed form to the Program Review Committee and to your School Dean or immediate supervisor by February 25, 2011. Combined responses to questions 1 through 6 should not normally exceed four pages.

Department: Dental Assisting

Contact Person: Ren, Tiffany

Date: February 25, 2011

Please check this box to certify that faculty and staff in your unit discussed the major planning objectives: o

Description of Programs and Services and their Locations

The Dental Assisting Program is located on Phelan Avenue Campus in Cloud Hall on the 3rd floor. Our facility is restricted to the department’s use only, due to radiology equipment and other equipment requirements.

Our program provides credit courses for students interested in pursuing a career in the dental assisting profession. In addition, we prepare our graduates to pass the California Registered Dental Assisting written & practical exams and the Dental Assosting National Boards.

The purpose of the Dental Assisting Program Self-Study is to evaluate the educational program based upon the extent to which program goals, intuitional objectives, community needs and accreditation standards are met. The quantitative and qualitative assessment of the program will provide the department, validation team and the institution with the information and data needed to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the program. Included in this self-study is an overall assessment of instructional methods, curriculum, student outcomes, faculty, staff, resources and outreach activities.

At the completion of the self-study from the American Dental Association Accreditation Site Visit (2006), our evaluation was perfect – no recommendations or even a suggestion for improvement. Our next accreditation site visit will be in 2013. We intend for the same result, a perfect evaluation. In addition, our program completes an annual review of our program to the ADA. This annual report is about 100 pages in length. The department chairperson, instructors and advisory board members have determined that the dental assisting program has a comprehensive and relevant curriculum with clear objectives. The faculty members are well qualified and participate in professional growth activities related to the academic area. Students are adequately prepared to take the dental board examinations and are provided with the knowledge and skills necessary for communication with secondary schools.

1. Please provide reflections on the above data trends for your department. If you have additional data that you would like to provide, please also include that here.

According to the data provided, there has been a slight increase to our enrollment up to 2010. However, in 2010-2011, the enrollment increased dramatically, making it one of the biggest classes in the past 10 years. The graduating class is about 25% more than previous years. We feel that this is due to the economy. The numbers from the Bureau of Labor Studies show the Dental Assistants employment is expected to grow 36% from 2008 – 2018, which is much faster than the average for all occupations. In fact, dental assistants are expected to be among the fastest growing occupations over this projection period. Therefore, our graduates can easily find employment opportunities, even in this bad economy.

Our faculty members are well qualified and participate in professional growth activities related to the academic area employment as a dental assistant. The department participates in numerous outreach activities and taken an active role in establishing communication with secondary schools, providing career presentations and primary schools with dental health education. Our classes consist of lecture, lab and clinical and the numbers per student / instructor ratio is mandated by our accreditation. Our program has only one full time instructor with the other classes taught by four part-time instructors. The restricted number of students per lab and clinical classes increase the costs of our program. In addition, the cost of disposable supplies, infection control products, etc. adds to the costs of our program. The instructional team uses their professional contacts to request and receive many supplies and educational audiovisual items – reducing our overall costs.

The FTE numbers seem accurate with just slight changes. The demographics and success rates of our students are quite consistent. However, the figures for expenditures do not seem to be accurate as the numbers fluctuate very drastically. In particular, the number that stands out the most to us is the Unrestricted 4000 amount in 2008-2009, $1,719. Our program spends several thousand dollars each year in supplies from our Unrestricted funds. Primary, the funding goes to purchasing x-ray films, solutions, protective gears, infection control and disposable products, and other supplies and material. While other figures appear to be consistent, the amounts in 2008-2009 seem to vary greatly compared to other years. Therefore, we question whether the data for expenditures are accurate.

2. Please describe any internal or external developments affecting your department since the last program review.

As previous mentioned, this is the biggest class in the past 10 years. Our class size is usually about 30-35 students. However, we started the fall semester with 50 students. As the semester progressed, a few students dropped and 43 students completed the courses. Due to the increase of enrollment, we had to add an additional section of lab for our dental radiology course. We have to be in compliance with the number per student/instructor ratio which is mandated by our accreditation.

Furthermore, one of our part-time faculty (former Chair of the program) tragically passed away at the beginning of the semester. In addition, another part-time faculty was not able to return to teach due to personal and health issues. As a result, our program had to do 2 emergency hires at the beginning of the semester. Also, another part-time faculty will be retiring after this semester. Therefore, we will be hiring new faculty again. Although there have been changes to our faculty team, we are confident that our faculty members are well qualified, providing excellent learning experience to our students and preparing them to succeed in their careers upon graduating.

3. Summarize your department’s progress since the last program review on implementing your six-year plan for reviewing all courses, programs, projects, and services. Please also update the Excel spreadsheet that contains your timeline for this review and for the assessment of student learning outcomes. If your unit does not offer courses, use this space to discuss your plans for assessing your administrative unit outcomes.

The Dental Assisting Program regularly updates our course outlines/SLO due to our yearly American Dental Association (ADA) written Accreditation Report. (This report is approximately 75 pages in length.) In addition our program undergoes a seven-year site visit from ADA. In addition to the two-day visit from the site team, our program must submit a written report. The staff works on this report for over a year. This report consists of 2 curriculum books of approximately 300 pages each, a self- study of over 100 pages and an addendum book of over 100 pages. (The curriculum book consists of the course outlines with our very detailed SLOs, the weekly schedule for both, the lectures and labs, procedure sheets, evaluation sheets, quizzes, midterms and finals for each of our classes. Our self-study consists instructor’s current national and state licenses, educational background, as well as continuing education, teaching hours and student / instructor loads and ratios, budget for supplies, equipment, buildings, salaries, benefits, staff development, support staff, offices for staff, etc, etc, etc. In addition to the ADA accreditation, the CCSF Dental Assisting Program is accreditation by the CA Dental Board. The CDB accepts the ADA accreditation as it is much more stringent than the CDB’s. The ADA and CDB work together during the submission of yearly reports and at the site visits to assure the duties allowed for Registered Dental Assistants to perform in CA. Different states allow RDA’s to perform different direct patient care duties so ADA needs to work closely with the state dental boards. The CCSF Dental Assisting Program underwent our last site visit in 2006 and at this time we received NO RECOMMANDATIONS – very few programs undergo a site visit with no recommendations necessary. Our next site visit will be in 2013 and we anticipate the same excellent result.

The CDB has recently changed many of the direct patient care duties that are to be taught to the Registered Dental Assisting students. CCSF’s Dental Assisting Program will be adding and removing some of our SLO’s to meet the CDB requirements. This additional duty, the placement of sealants would increase the salary of our graduates. Our instructors take updating our course outlines/SLOs very seriously as we not only have to meet accreditation requirements so our students can take their state and national exams but we want our graduates to be the most competitive in the job market. We will need to complete updating all of our SLO’s before the next accreditation site visit.

4. Summarize your department’s progress since the last program review on the plans for improvement in courses, programs, projects, and services based on the assessment of student learning outcomes. If your unit does not offer courses, use this space to discuss your progress in improving your services based on the assessment of your administrative unit outcomes. What is working particularly well? Are there items you need help with?

We will be reviewing and/or make changes to our course during the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 years due to the changes of the RDA direct patient care duties. The CDB is still trying to establish the level of competency the duty needs to be taught.

5. Summarize your progress to date on the major objectives you identified in last year’s program review (excluding progress already cited in #3 and #4).

The major objective for the Dental Assisting Program is to provide students with a quality instruction program that meets both dental community demands and that of the accrediting body of the American Dental Association and California Dental Board. Our goal is to provide students with the necessary skills, knowledge, and experience to pass the state board examination and succeed in their career upon completing the program. We have purchased the necessary equipment needed to meet the new RDA duties. The instructors have obtained the necessary training for teaching these new duties and have incorporated into our curriculum. Along with our strong curriculum and state of the art equipment and technology, our students have an advantage when competing for employment.

In addition to meeting the accreditation standards (they provide a task analysis, which identifies the content that must be included in the curriculum), the department consults with advisory committee members, dental professionals, students and alumni to determine whether the curriculum meets the needs of the industry. Objective grading criteria is established for each course. Courses with multiple lab sections use the same synchronized grading criteria. Grading distribution by course is evaluated to determine if there are any unusual patterns developing. The director conducts regular meetings with the instructors to discuss any concerns. Faculty members participate in staff development workshops and are evaluated by peer and students.

Peer evaluation is a part of all lab courses. Students receive instructions and demonstrations on lab procedures. These procedures are practiced while being observed and evaluated by a classmate. Some of the lab activities are structured so that the students are graded based upon their partner’s performance. This forces the students to take an active part in their classmates learning process because of the impact on their grade.

Our students also receive a written evaluation for their clinical rotations at the Arthur A. Dugoni Dental School – the University of the Pacific and at least two other dental offices. These evaluations provide input at their entry as well as their exit levels.

Students make individual and group presentations about topics being covered for a particular class. “Open Mouth” examinations are sometimes given. Students work in groups when taking a test. Students must convince their classmates of the best answers for the examination questions and the justification. Students select the answer as a group. They share the grade for better or worse.

Students are encouraged to form study groups when reviewing course content or studying for examinations. Some semesters, we are able to hire graduates from our program as tutors as our graduates are continuing their education in order to apply to other dental related programs. Having a tutor every semester is not always possible as the tutor must be taking 6 CCSF units and part-time dental assisting positions pay at least double the salary of a tutor

6. What are the department’s major objectives for the 2011-12 academic year? Cite linkages, where applicable, to college plans. You may also cite linkages to the department’s review of courses, programs and assessment of student learning.

One of our major objectives for the next academic year is to continue to build our team of faculty. As mentioned previously, one of our long-time faculty will be retiring. We will actively seek for a new faculty member to join our program and provide a smooth transition to teach our specialty courses.

In addition, the program will continue to update our course curriculums and SLOs to meet the college’s expectations and accreditation requirements. We will also need to start preparing for our next accreditation site visit especially with recent changes of faculty team members.

Lastly, this year was one of our biggest classes in the past 10 years. Before, we have to turn away dental offices who want to participate in our internship program. This year, we barely have enough offices to meet the requirement needs, each student must intern in at least 2 offices. With increasing enrollment expected for the upcoming semesters, we will continue to build collaborations with local dental offices and seek additional internship sites for our students.

Bonus Question for 2010-11: What progress has your department / program made on the college-wide initiative to improve textbook affordability and access for all our students? Please indicate what discussions you have had and what strategies you have developed to combat the high cost of textbooks.