Mesa Community College is named after its location in Mesa, a suburb of Phoenix, which is about a 30-minute drive away. There, students can enroll for the Associate in Applied Science (AAS) in Dental Hygiene, which is the minimum academic requirement for entering the field. MCC students take courses in subject areas such as pharmacology, community oral health and dental disease prevention.
Phoenix College, aptly named after the city of its location, offers an AAS dental hygienist degree that requires at least 98 credits for completion. Fifty-eight of those credits are from mandatory courses in the program. They include: Dental Radiography; Dental Anatomy; Embryology and Histology; Dental Materials; Periodontics; and Dental Hygiene Theory. The rest of the curriculum consists of prerequisite courses in subjects such as biology, chemistry, English, physics and sociology.
The associate program in dental hygiene at Pima Community College requires less minimal credits than Phoenix College, at 87. The maximum is 101 credits, as opposed to Phoenix's 102.5. Twenty-two to 35 of these credits are in prerequisite courses such as Microbiology, Computer Fundamentals and Critical Reading. The core courses of the program include Dental And Oral Morphology, Pain and Anxiety Control for Dental Hygiene and Community and Dental Health Education, which comprise 47 credits. The remaining 15 to 16 credits of Pima's dental hygiene curriculum consists of support courses in psychology, sociology, oral communication and writing.
Like Mesa, Tempe is a suburb of Phoenix; it is about a 20-minute drive away from the metropolitan area. It is home to Rio Salado College, where dental hygienist students can take between 98 to 102.5 credits for completion of its AAS program. Oral Pathology, Head and Neck Anatomy and Dental Anesthesia are some of Rio Salado's core courses, which like Phoenix College, comprise 58 credits of the curriculum.