The following is an excerpt from the Feb. 29 issue of The Wichita Eagle. Wichita State dental hygiene student Liz Kristek contributed to the article. (Subscription may be required to view full story.)

In the 14 months she took classes to turn her associate degree in dental hygiene into a Bachelor of Science degree, Liz Kristek worked full time as a dental hygienist, kept up with her toddler and gave birth to her second child.

She found the time to take as many as 12 credit hours of classes at once because the Registered Dental Hygienist-to-Bachelor of Science in Dental Hygiene (RDH-to-BSDH) degree completion program at Wichita State University is entirely online.

“I spent a lot of Friday nights and Saturdays in class, which I never would have been able to do in classic setting,” said Kristek, 32. “There were some days when it was rough, but the flexibility of being able to pull out my laptop at anytime and do the work made it possible.”

WSU offers one of the nation’s eight fully online bachelor degree completion programs in dental hygiene, said John Sandlin, an online academic adviser for WSU.

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