Community College and University Interprofessional Collaboration: Student Centered Partnership Between Nutrition and Dental Hygiene Faculty

Interprofessional education (IPE) is critical in today’s educational and healthcare arenas. This article describes the initial design, implementation, and evaluation of a Community College/ University IPE collaboration that enabled dental hygiene graduate students to satisfy course requirements and service learning competencies, promoted faculty development, and also served the community. Under the direction of a community college dietetics professor, students and faculty from both academic institutions had opportunities to participate in community outreach events. Experiences included teacher recertification training for community college credits in the local school system, paraprofessional workshops, community-based health fairs, career counseling, guest lectures, expanded internship sites, and access to daycare personnel studying childcare. Step-bystep procedures for implementing such a model offers guidance for other institutions seeking to replicate the arrangement. The model presented in this paper can serve as a guide for curriculum integration with a variety of nursing and allied health programs. Partnerships of this nature provide rich environments for faculty development, program marketing, transfer counseling, student service learning experiences, IPE collaborations, and access to community at-risk populations