By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer

In 2002, the Medical University of South Carolina implemented a minority-recruitment plan that helped increase the number of black students enrolling in the school.

The problem was that half the minority students accepted into MUSC ended up attending medical school elsewhere, said Deborah Deas, MUSC’s associate dean of admissions.

To reverse that loss of potential students, MUSC paired black MUSC students, called “student ambassadors,” with black undergraduates who had been accepted into the medical university but had not yet committed. The ambassadors showed the prospective enrollees around the university and made them feel comfortable. Ambassadors also encourage the undergraduates to choose MUSC over other medical schools to which they may have been accepted.

The student ambassador program worked. In the year prior to the program’s installation, 10 blacks had enrolled at MUSC.

In 2003, that number rose to 18, and the university’s minority attrition rate dropped from 30% to 12%, Deas said.

Another way MUSC’s college of medicine has increased its black enrollment is by having recruiters visit most of South Carolina’s colleges and all of the state’s historically black colleges.

Also, the medical university hosts a one-day Ernest E. Just Symposium in which students from the Southeast’s historically black colleges come to MUSC to learn about the medical university and receive applications and other materials. Just (1883–1941) was a black Charleston biologist.

MUSC also has a mentoring program to help its minority students deal with the challenges of becoming medical professionals and get fully integrated into the university, Deas said.

Additionally, the medical university has a program to help students prepare for the Medical College Admission Test.

Deas and others at the medical university also plan to launch a pilot club for high school students. Called “I Want to Be a Doctor,” the club would feature MUSC students and faculty who meet with high school students to inform them about medical school and the medical profession. Deas hopes to start the pilot project this fall.

Last year, MUSC’s college of medicine admitted 30 under-represented minorities, 11 of them black males. Excluding the nation’s historically black medical schools, the average number of black males in a U.S. medical school’s incoming class is 1.5, Deas said.

Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.

SUBSCRIBE | REPRINTS | CONTACT US

Phone: 843-849-3100    Fax: 843-849-3122