FW: Oulton College Dental Education Center Opens

This past summer we finished the construction of our new Dental Education Center.

The Dental Assistant and Dental Hygiene Programs used to be offered in our main building where there were two classrooms and a clinic area with five dental chairs and one x-ray room.

Now, the Dental Assistant and Hygiene Programs are offered in a separate building which has seventeen dental chairs and four x-ray rooms, along with classrooms, student area, offices for instructors, and a reception area.

According to Patterson Dental, the company that builds these clinics, it is one of the most state-of-the-art dental clinics in Atlantic Canada right now having been built this summer using the latest technologies for chairs and equipment.

The class sizes have remained the same at about thirty students for Dental Assistant and twenty four for Dental Hygiene, but offering the students three times the facilities which allows for more hands-on practical learning.

The program is very much build on hands-on learning rather than mostly theory. The Dental Education Center runs as a real dental clinic with a constant in and out of patients. In the very first week, student are experiencing clinical work. They spend about half the day in class and half the day in the clinic reinforcing what they learned in class.

The Dental Assistant Program is a fully nationally accredited program. It has passed the accreditation process each of the last four years since we began the course. The board has now given accreditation to the program for the next four years without having to go through the accreditation process each year. Every year since we have begun the program every student in the program has passed the Canadian Dental Assistant Board Exam and obtained their liscence as a Dental Assistant and their job placement rate has been over 90% since the course began.

As you may or may not know, there are some Dental Assisting Academys that have been in existance for over ten years have not received accreditation. Therefore their students will need to attend additional classes at an accredited school in order to qualify to write their board exams and obtain their license as a Dental Assistant. Their are some programs that have been around for many years and still haven't had a year where the entire class has passed the Canadian Board Exam.

As far as Dental Hygiene is concerned. It is a two step process towards accreditation and we have passed step one and now have to have some graduates to pass step two. Our program started last year so our first graduating class will be this spring. We are hoping to complete the final step later this year. Like Ontario and some other provinces, it will be possible to work as a Dental Hygienist in New Brunswick from our program even though it is not Nationally Accredited. Dentists in the province have helped us build the program and have mentioned that accredited or not they will still hire our graduates. Even though this is the case our objective is to be Nationally Accredited. If someone moves to a province that requires accreditation and doesn't have it, they would need to write a provincial exam or Canadian Board Exam to qualify to work in that province.

These are by far two of our more popular programs and there are only a few seats remaining for this fall. If you have students interested in these programs, they should be applying in the coming weeks to avoid the waiting list. We will be offering our own university level (taught by a prof a Universite de Moncton) first year Biology and Chemistry courses in English this summer during consecutives weekends in May and June if someone does not have all the pre-requisites now.

They can write an aptitude test to see if they would qualify to take the summer courses that lead to acceptance into Dental Hygiene.

Please see attached, I have included a few pictures of the Dental Education Center.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Best regards,

Robert

Robert Dubé
Vice President - Admissions
Oulton College
55 rue Lutz Street
Moncton, NB
E1C 0L2
1-888-757-2020
(506) 858-9696
Fax (506) 858-8490
Cell. (506) 381-2304
rdube@oultoncollege.com
http://www.oultoncollege.com/