BLUEFIELD, Va. — Bluefield College has announced plans to launch a dental school, which it hopes will impact Appalachian communities underserved by oral care providers.
When classes begin in the fall of 2015, the school will be one of only three in the central Appalachian region, and apparently the only one in the nation operated by a college with Baptist ties.
“Dentists and professional dental care are limited in Central Appalachia, but this new dental school will address that problem, and begin to fill our understaffed clinics with the personnel needed to provide rural residents with sufficient oral care,” said Bluefield president David Olive in a press release.
Bluefield College president David Olive (left) signs an agreement with Tazewell County board of supervisors chair Mike Hymes (center) and industrial development authority chair Doyle Rasnick to create a new dental school. (Bluefield College photo)
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The initiative is a collaboration with the Tazewell County board of supervisors and its industrial development authority, which are providing facilities in The Bluestone, the county’s new 680-acre regional business and technology center. The Bluestone is about three and a half miles from the college’s main campus.
The new school will offer the doctor of dental medicine degree, one of two standard degrees — the other is the doctor of dental surgery degree — conferred by dental schools in the United States. In addition, it will have the potential to provide programs in dental hygiene and dental therapy.
Accreditation will be sought from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, the Commission on Dental Accreditation and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.
“Through partnerships with local and regional clinics, our hope is to provide sliding scale dental care for uninsured low-income citizens,” said Tazewell County administrator Jim Spencer. “It’s heartbreaking to see so many people suffer from oral problems and associated ailments and not be able to get the help they need. This new school and its supportive programs in dental care and nursing will help address that longstanding problem in our region.”
The American Dental Association has reported that oral care is limited in rural communities in part because dental school graduates, burdened with debt, are drawn to more lucrative urban areas. To counter that trend, Bluefield aims to partner with rural outreach clinics to implement a block scheduling system for students which will keep tuition as low as possible. School officials will aggressively recruit qualified applicants from the Appalachian region.
“We don’t want to educate and export our graduates to urban areas,” said Olive. “We want them to stay at home to provide quality care to communities that are losing dentists and to mentor future dental students.”
Participants in the program will participate in community service projects to educate public school students about tooth decay, obesity, diabetes, hygiene, nutrition and exercise to break the cycle of poor health outcomes in their communities.
County officials said the dental school will generate hundreds of new direct and indirect jobs and millions of dollars annually as a result of an increased demand for housing and services and the creation of ancillary businesses.
“The economic impact of this school will be significant and will provide employment diversification for our area,” said Mike Hymes, chair of the county board of supervisors. “Establishing a dental school will allow Tazewell County to participate in growing good paying jobs while providing affordable healthcare service to area residents.”
Cost of the dental school is expected to be about $14 million, said Chris Shoemaker, Bluefield’s director of marketing and public relations. The 90-year-old college, with an annual budget of about $11.5 million, enrolls about 500 students.
The new venture comes a year after Bluefield launched a nursing program to provide RN-to-BSN degrees for local health care professionals to address the region’s shortage of registered nurses.
Two universities in central Appalachia operate dental schools — West Virginia University and the University of Tennessee. Other dental schools in the Mid-Atlantic region are at Howard University in Washington, the University of Maryland at Baltimore, East Carolina University in Greenville, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
Bluefield, affiliated with the Baptist General Association of Virginia, apparently will be the only educational institution with Baptist ties to operate a dental school. Baylor University, whose main campus is in Waco, Texas, operated a dental school in Dallas for about 50 years but relinquished control of it in the early 1970s. While it retains Baylor’s name, it now functions under the auspices of the Texas A&M Health Science Center.
Robert Dilday ([email protected]) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.