Hi there, my name is Marie Paulus. I am the Director of the Dental Hygiene program at the University of New Haven. It's nice to meet you all today. I've been a Dental Hygienist for 28 years. That sounds like a really long time. To me. I don't feel old enough to be a Dental Hygienist for that long. But I guess that's the truth. I've been an educator for 15 years and I've been here at the University of New Haven for five years.
So I'm going to start our discussion today by taking you to our waiting room. So this is our newly renovated waiting room in our Dental Hygiene program at the University of New Haven this was just renovated last summer. So this is where our patients start when they come to see our students to get treatment in the Dental Hygiene program. And then next, I'm going to bring you into our clinics. So we have a 19-chair clinic, where patients come to get treated by our students, we have three X-Ray rooms. We are all digital, which means we have computers everywhere.
So every clinic dental unit has a computer and every radiology room has a computer. So we are all digital. We utilize a lot of technology in our clinic. So our program is as you would guess highly clinical. Our program offers a three-year Associate's degree, a four-year Bachelor's degree. Most of our students do earn their Bachelor's degrees. An important point to mention here is that when you are accepted into our program, you are accepted into the Dental Hygiene program as a freshman. That's not the case with all programs.
And your freshman year is mostly core classes. You do have one Dental Hygiene class as a freshman, I actually teach that class. And in that class, you are required to do some observation in the clinic. So you observe junior students as they're working on patients. And usually, the freshmen really like that because it makes them feel involved in the program, right from the beginning.
And then in your sophomore year, you begin to get into the clinic, you start off by working on fellow students, and then you begin seeing patients in the spring semester. In your junior year, you see a lot more patients, you take your board exams at the end of your junior year. And then your last year, your senior year is offered online. So after you take your board exams at the end of your junior year, you can get licensed as a Dental Hygienist. And then you can begin working if you like.
So that final year which is offered online, you can do part-time if you'd like or full-time and you can work as a Hygienist if you'd like. So a lot of people like that because it offers them flexibility to start working and making some money. So why should you do Dental Hygiene and our program? Well, there's many reasons. We are ranked number 11 by an organization called The Best Colleges, so you can find that online. And out of-- that's out of over 300 colleges across the country that have Dental Hygiene programs.
Most of our students do participate in either study-away or study-abroad opportunities. We are fully accredited, our faculty go above and beyond every opportunity they get. And the employment opportunities for Dental Hygienists are really really good right now. I just looked it up again on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the job opportunity for Dental Hygienist is expected to grow by 11% From now until the year 2028. And that is much higher than most other professions which are ranked up by percent. Even tech jobs which are considered very good right now are expected to grow at a rate of eight to 10%. So Dental Hygiene is a really strong profession right now.
So in addition to our new waiting room, we also have new lab spaces which we've been utilizing. And we have new student study spaces. I mentioned the study-away or study-abroad opportunities. These are for college credit, and they are accompanied by our own Dental Hygiene faculty. I mentioned our faculty and I can't say enough about our faculty. They're brilliant and in addition to being brilliant, they also will do everything in their power to make sure that you are successful. They're there for you every step of the way. We offer a lot of in-house tutoring, and they're there for you every step of the way like I said.
We have strong partnerships in the community. We do work with community health centers, our students do outside clinical rotations at many other sites around the state. And we do provide transportation to those sites within our programs. So we work together with students who have cars, and we make sure that all of our students are able to get transportation to our outside rotations. So you might have heard already about our different pathway programs. So if you want to get your Master's degree, we offer a Master's in Public Health and in Healthcare Administration. And if you declare that early, then you could get your Master's degree and five years instead of six. So not only is that convenient, but it's a big cost savings as well.
So please reach out if you have any questions I'm listed on the website. My email address is mpaulus@newhaven.edu. And I'm happy to assist you with any questions you might have. Thank you very much!