Due to the impact of COVID-19, the school’s next accreditation site visit has been delayed one year to October 2022.
Accreditation is a non-governmental, voluntary peer review process by which educational institutions or programs may be granted public recognition for compliance with accepted standards of quality and performance. Specialized accrediting agencies exist to assess and verify the quality of educational programs in particular professions or occupations to ensure that individuals will be qualified to enter those disciplines upon graduation.
The dental programs that will be reviewed in October 2021 are: predoctoral (DDS and IDS), dental hygiene, and residency programs in Advanced Education in General Dentistry, orthodontics, and endodontology.
The Commission on Dental Accreditation
The Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA) is the specialized agency recognized by the United States Department of Education to accredit programs that provide basic preparation for licensure or certification in dentistry and related disciplines.
The Accreditation Planning Process
An Accreditation Oversight Committee (AOC) was created by the Dean in 2017 to oversee preparations for the 2021 site visit. The AOC is chaired by Dr. Cindy Lyon, Associate Dean of Oral Health Education, and consists of representatives of all programs to be site visited in 2021: Dr. Daniel Bender (predoctoral), Dr. Johnah Galicia (endodontology), Professor Lory Laughter (DH), Dr. Heesoo Oh (orthodontics), and Dr. Allen Wong (AEGD).
Each program is expected to develop a comprehensive self-study report that documents how and to what extent the program is in compliance with current accreditation standards. For the dental hygiene and residency programs, there is normally a single committee that produces the self-study report. In the case of the predoctoral program, there are nine self-study teams that organize ad-hoc committee reports into a single self-study used in the accreditation process. Self-study teams are divided by standard as follows: Institutional Effectiveness; Educational Program — Instruction, Curriculum Management, Critical Thinking and Self-Assessment; Educational Program — Biomedical Sciences; Educational Program — Behavioral Sciences; Educational Program — Clinical Sciences; Faculty and Staff; Educational Support Services; Patient Care Services; and Research. Leads of each investigative group comprise the Predoctoral Steering Committee (PSC), which has general responsibility for the production of the predoctoral self-study report.
Learn More
Please direct any questions about accreditation to Dr. Cindy Lyon, Associate Dean of Oral Health Education at clyon@pacific.edu or Dr. Daniel Bender, Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs, at dbender@pacific.edu. More information will be posted to this web page as the process moves forward.
