Date of Award

Summer 8-23-2025

Document Type

Dissertation in Practice

Degree Name

Ed.D. in Higher Education

Organizational Unit

Morgridge College of Education, Higher Education

First Advisor

Darin M. L. Stewart

Second Advisor

Laura E. Sponsler

Third Advisor

JoAnn Gurenlian

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Keywords

Dental hygiene, Community health, Academic-community partnerships, Dental hygiene clinical education, Developmental evaluation

Abstract

Today, dental hygiene education commonly occurs in community college settings which are removed from dental schools thus dental hygiene students graduate with relatively little to no exposure to dentistry or directly with a clinically practicing dentist. With dental hygiene workforce shortages at an extremely high level, locally and nationally, it is imperative to matriculate students who are poised to be successful in the changing landscape of healthcare.

The purpose of this program evaluation was to investigate via the developmental program evaluation model, the perceived benefits of a potential collaboration between the Colorado Mountain College (CMC) dental hygiene program and a dentist within a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) system. The two evaluation questions that form the basis for the study include:

1. What contributions does a community healthcare partner, specifically a FQHC dentist, make to the dental hygiene student at CMC?

2. What characteristics are needed from the evaluand (CMC) and the strategic partner (FQHC) to be successful academic-community partners in a shared oral health clinic?

My framework aligned with Patton (1994) and the developmental program evaluation. Developmental evaluation is an especially appropriate approach when programs are emerging (Fagan et al., 2011-09), which was the circumstance for the Colorado Mountain College dental hygiene program.

Since this academic-community collaboration was an uncharted model, the significance of this program evaluation may lead to a paradigm shift in dental hygiene clinical educational models both locally and nationally.

Copyright Date

8-2025

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Laura Jacob

Provenance

Received from author

File Format

application/pdf

Language

English (eng)

Extent

186 pgs

File Size

1.4 MB

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