SHAWNEE STATE WORKS TO IMPROVE WORKFORCE SHORTAGE, ACCESS TO CARE WITH HELP FROM ODA FOUNDATION GRANT
The ODA Foundation provided grant funding to the Shawnee State University Dental Hygiene Program for 12 Charlie Manikin Simulators.
Shawnee State University received a grant from the ODA Foundation in 2025 to purchase Charlie Manikin Simulators to expand and enhance the SSU dental hygiene program.
“The ODA Foundation was formed in 1995 to help fund grants and scholarships to programs and students in the dental community throughout Ohio,” said ODA Foundation Chair Dr. Brett Pelok. “Dental workforce shortages, especially with our hygiene team, has presented an opportunity for everyone in the profession to come to the table with ideas to help solve this shortage. Our Foundation’s grant committee was presented with one such idea. Shawnee State University is attempting to increase their hygiene class size. With this increase, dental simulators are needed, and the Foundation awarded the program a grant. This collaboration is the type of amazing efforts your ODA is making to help the dentists of Ohio and the workforce shortage.”
With the grant, the program was able to purchase 12 manikins. These manikins will help support the program’s efforts to expand its dental hygiene program from a single 27-person cohort to two 30-student cohorts annually.
The program is currently asking CODA for two cohorts of 30 students with two admits, one in the fall and one in the spring.
“By expanding the dental hygiene program, we are positioning ourselves for an increase in enrollment, which will allow us to graduate more dental hygienists,” said Georgeann Kamer, R.D.H., M.S.A, associate professor at Shawnee State. “By doing enrollment for fall and spring we will be producing two groups of graduates per year, one at the end of spring and one at the end of summer. With this schedule we will not be putting a large group out at once but at two different points in time, which will reduce graduates applying for the same jobs but rather meet the needs for dental practices throughout the year.”
Discussion for clinic renovation began two years ago, and Shawnee State is set to begin construction for the dental hygiene area in September, with a construction completion goal of April 2027.
“We will be going from an 18-chair dental hygiene clinic to a 25-chair dental hygiene clinic and four additional chairs for a retail dental office,” Kamer said. “We are very excited to have an on-site dental office to give patients the option to be treated for all their dental needs.”
Students will begin using the Charlie Manikins in fall of 2027 in their first-year pre-clinical course.
“The benefit in having the manikin allows students a much more realistic experience over just working on a typodont,” Kamer said. “It helps them with positioning both patient and operator, and with ergonomics. We used the Charlie Manikins for the second-year students during a practice mock clinical board exam. This created a very comfortable environment for students working on Acadental typodonts with the manikin.”
The program is working toward a goal of purchasing a total of 30 manikins that would be installed in a newly configured simulation lab, allowing first-year fall semester to be taught fully outside of the active dental clinic. This would free up clinic space currently used for training and open up chair time for more community patient appointments.
According to their grant application, “As SSU prepares to scale enrollment from one 27-student cohort to two 30-student cohorts annually, the simulators represent foundational infrastructure for growth. The equipment will be used across multiple courses, including pre-clinical instrumentation, dental materials, and local anesthesia, and will benefit all students in the Dental Hygiene Program on a recurring basis. The investment also supports SSU’s role as a Safety Net Dental Care provider for Appalachian Ohio. By expanding student readiness and clinic capacity, SSU will provide timely, preventive care for more of the region’s underserved residents.”
The Shawnee State University Dental Hygiene Program serves as a Safety Net Dental Clinic in Southern Ohio and serves residents in Scioto, Pike, Adams, Lawrence and Jackson County. The clinic has more than 3,100 active patients. Many SSU Dental Hygiene Clinic patients are either uninsured or on Medicaid and rely on the clinic for affordable, quality care.
According to their grant application, “By investing in simulation equipment that enhances training outcomes, the ODA Foundation will be directly supporting both pillars of its mission. Better-prepared graduates will enter Ohio’s workforce, filling much-needed positions in clinics and private practices across the state. At the same time, community residents in one of Ohio’s most vulnerable regions will benefit from improved access to high-quality preventive and therapeutic dental services. In short, this project is about more than equipment. It is about improving outcomes for students, for the profession, and most importantly, for the people of Ohio.”
The ODA Foundation has been awarding grants to organizations that help improve access to dental care in Ohio since 1995. In 2025, the Foundation awarded a total of $33,600 in grants to eight organizations.
Additionally, increasing the number of dental assistants and hygienists in the workforce has been a top priority for the Ohio Dental Association over the last several years. The ODA has met with all of Ohio’s dental hygiene program directors concerning expanding their capacity and class size and continues to work with Ohio’s hygiene programs to increase the number of dental hygienists in the workforce.
