LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas's first dental school, the Lyon College School of Dental Medicine, broke ground on Thursday, marking a monumental milestone for the state.
The school hopes to enroll its first class in Summer 2025. It is located in the old Blue Cross Blue Shield building in Little Rock's Riverdale neighborhood.
According to Burke Soffe, the college’s founding dean, a place like this is long overdue in Arkansas.
"The need has been there for, for many, many years,” Soffe said. “Arkansas ranks lowest in oral health in the nation, second to lowest in dentist to population ratio."
Soffe also said that the school will benefit Arkansans who need dental care and those who want to provide that care.
"We hope to be the number one option for all Arkansans that want to be dentists,” Soffe said.
Arkansans like Carson Stewart and Caleb Hooton are first-year students at the University of Tennessee’s dental school in Memphis.
Both Stewart and Hooton said they’re glad a dental school is finally coming to their state and that Arkansas will benefit from the graduates it produces.
"Arkansas needs the dentists, with the rural communities that are basically spread throughout the whole state,” Hooton said. “They really need the dentists to spread out. And I think it’ll be good for the state."
The school would still have been a lengthy drive for Hooton, who's from Jonesboro.
But for Stewart, who’s from Maumelle, it would’ve been just minutes away, and there would also have been other benefits for both students.
"Typically, dental schools in the state are a lot cheaper for the students and residents of that state,” Stewart said. “As opposed to out of state where I have to pay an extra x number of dollars to go to Tennessee."
They both said they're happy would-be dentists in Arkansas will now have an opportunity they didn't have before because location can be everything.
"To me, at least, I want to be close to family [and] close to home,” Hooton said. “Because I think that's integral for staying healthy in a tough environment, a stressful environment like dental school is known to be."
But the school isn’t up and running just yet. Soffe said the school still has to be accredited before it can take its first group of students.
“We are in the thick of the accreditation process," Soffe said. "We've been in for over a year now."
He said that a group of accreditors will visit the school in September to ensure that all programs meet current standards, and then they will vote on their accreditation in February 2025.
If all goes well, the school will then be able to begin teaching students that summer.