Peninsula College celebrates new dental hygiene program
Published 4:30 pm Monday, September 7, 2026
PORT ANGELES — After years of planning, fundraising and a lengthy accreditation process, Peninsula College cut the ribbon on a dental hygiene program that the school and local providers hope will help ease a persistent shortage of hygienists across the North Olympic Peninsula.
The first class of 10 students will start the two-year associate degree program this fall and is expected to graduate in June 2028.
Peninsula College’s is just one of just nine dental hygiene programs among the state’s 34 community and technical colleges.
The number nine is small for a good reason, President Suzy Ames said, because starting a dental hygiene program is one of the most difficult things a school can do.
“Dental hygiene programs, like most healthcare programs in higher education, are very expensive to create, operate and sustain, especially for a small college like us,” Ames said.
Establishing the program cost more than $5 million — enough for construction of the facility in the college’s Allied Health Building and for its first two years of operation.
The project was seeded with a $1.96 million congressional appropriation secured by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., in 2024.
“Without that federal contribution, we’d still be talking about a hypothetical dental hygiene program,” Ames said, adding, “We could not have even begun to think about the reality of this without Sen. Murray’s support.”
Delta Dental of Washington contributed $800,000, including a $100,000 challenge that local health care organizations, dental providers, businesses and community members met with matching support.
The First Fed Foundation contributed $50,000 toward construction of the clinic and instructional space.
Peninsula College Foundation Executive Director Cheryl Crane said donors have committed $4.67 million so far.
“This project really shows us what happens when the community invests in education,” Crane said.
“It’s improving community health and addressing a very credible need.”
The expenses won’t end with construction, however.
Ames said the program will cost more to run than it brings in, because it will serve lower-income patients while maintaining full clinical staffing and meeting accreditation standards.
“Every college president that runs a dental program knows it loses money when it does well,” she said.
To help cover ongoing expenses, the Peninsula College Foundation is establishing an operational endowment to help sustain the program.
While Peninsula College’s program may be a rarity, the problems it’s built to solve are not.
“We’re facing a critical dental health workforce shortage, and too many people residing in rural areas and other medically underserved communities don’t have sufficient access to care,” said Mark Mitschke, president and CEO of Delta Dental of Washington.
The initiative to start the program began in March 2022 with an employer advisory committee of local dental providers.
Early targets to launch in 2023, then 2024, slipped as the college worked through the requirements of the Commission on Dental Accreditation, the sole agency that accredits dental education programs and meets just twice a year.
Constructing the clinic — with its eight dental treatment stations, sterilization center and a simulation lab where students train on mannequins — proved faster than CODA approval.
The college finally earned accreditation this winter.
“When we had the site visit from CODA, we walked away from the intensive two-day review with no findings,” Ames said.
Paula Watson, the dental hygiene program director, said patients treated by students at the clinic can expect the same level of care they would get at a dental office.
“We will be providing the full array of dental hygiene services within the scope of practice for Washington state, which is probably the most extensive in the country,” Watson said.
Those services include ultrasonic scaling, X-rays, local anesthesia, sealants and composite restorations.
The program also will prepare graduates for the six written and practical exams required for their license.
For this first class, 21 people completed applications, 16 were interviewed and 10 were accepted. Requirements for admittance included completing prerequisite coursework, submitting an essay, interviewing a working hygienist and providing a letter of recommendation.
After practicing on the mannequins — and then on one another — students will begin seeing the public during the winter quarter under the supervision of faculty hygienists.
For friends Shannon Bish, 29, and Chelsea Williams, 35, both mothers and former dental assistants, it is also a leap. The two left their jobs to commit to the program full time — the only way to do it, they said — and were eager to sharpen their skills and do more for patients.
Dental health, Bish said, is about more than teeth.
“I know that what I’ll be doing is treating the whole body,” she said.
“You can tell a lot about someone’s health by looking at their mouth.”
“It’s going to be a lot of hard work,” Williams said. “We get to do this together.”
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Reporter Paula Hunt can be reached by email at paula.hunt@peninsuladailynews.com.