Fox Valley Technical College logo (IMAGE: Courtesy of Fox 11 WLUK)
GRAND CHUTE, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Fox Valley Technical College showed off its dental program expansion Tuesday.
The $2.1 million, 3,400-square-foot expansion includes six more training areas and 12 simulators with mannequins.
Students in the Dental Hygienist, Dental Assistant and new Expanded Functional Dentistry Auxiliary programs will be using the labs.
“We’re going to go take a tour of our dental labs and show you what state-of-the-art technical education looks like. We want to make sure that the students here get the skills and experiences they need to help go to work,” said FVTC President Chris Matheny.
A $170,000 grant from Delta Dental of Wisconsin Foundation contributed to the expansion project.
Jennifer Lanter, vice president of learning and chief academic officer at FTVC, said Wisconsin desperately needs more workers in this field.
“We know that these programs are in high demand and that there’s a workforce gap that exists for these particular programs. We were looking at data recently and of the [72] counties in Wisconsin, 34 of those counties specifically identified an area where we’re experiencing a work shortage in dental health,” Lanter said.
So we know that this is a need, and this expansion allows us to serve more students in these programs than we had previously, which means more hygienists, more assistants, into the community and into the workforce, quicker.
FVTC is also hosting an open house at all its campus locations from 3-7 p.m. The event includes truck rides and a truck driving simulator in the transportation building, ethical hacking challenges in the cybersecurity facility, flight simulator experience in the SJ Spanbauer building at the Oshkosh campus and tours of the public safety training center.
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