A Prescription For Success
The Medical University of South Carolina says mentoring program is key to retaining minority medical students.
By Herb Frazier

CHARLESTON, S.C.
A record-setting number of 11 Black men who were admitted last fall to the Medical University of South Carolina are all doing well academically as the school year ends this spring.

The 11 students, who were among 135 students admitted to MUSC, are believed to be the largest group of Black male, first-year students in a predominantly White medical school in the country, says Dr. Deborah Deas, the college’s associate dean for admission.

In all, this class includes 30 underrepresented minorities, and next year’s class promises to be similarly diverse, Deas says.

When compared with other predominantly White medical colleges, MUSC’s efforts at diversity put the school in a league by itself. The college uses traditional and non-traditional recruitment efforts to identify students and track them through the admissions process.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, medical schools in the United States — excluding historically Black schools — in 2005 admitted an average of 1.5 Black men to their first-year class.
Dean Jerry Reves began the effort to improve student diversity at the medical school in 2002.

“I would not call this an affirmative action program,” says Reves, who became dean in 2001. “This is a recognition that 30 percent of [South Carolina’s] population is African-American and a recognition that African-Americans represent less than 5 percent of the physicians in this state.

“I view this as an initiative designed to get the number of physicians in our state to look like the population because we don’t have the physicians to relate to the population,” he adds.

Deas, Dr. Thad Bell, an associate dean for diversity at MUSC, and Myra Haney, the medical college’s director of academic and student support, lead a student support program called Mentoring Ensures Medical School Success. It is designed to help Black, Hispanic and American Indian students transition into medical school. Each month, Bell mentors the men and Deas and Haney meet with the women students.