The Wayne State University School of Medicine, under new leadership and with a renewed emphasis on a holistic admissions process, is well on the way to increasing the number of medical students from underrepresented minorities in medicine.
Jack D. Sobel, M.D., dean of the School of Medicine, announce Jan. 27, that as of Dec. 18, the school has acceptances from 31 African-American, 18 Hispanic and three Native American students for the entering class of 2016-17. Because the admissions process is still underway, he noted, those numbers could increase. Each year, the school accepts on average 290 new medical students.
"Thanks to new leadership, a completely new holistic admissions process, an active community outreach, campaigning and recruitment, we are on our way to correcting this problem, and, I hope, reclaiming our position as the nation's leader in educating physicians from underrepresented minorities in medicine," Dean Sobel said.
From the late 1960s through the 1980s, the WSU School of Medicine led the nation in the number of underrepresented medical students, particularly in numbers of African-American students. Representatives of medical schools from across the nation came to Detroit to learn how WSU accomplished this achievement.
The Association of American Medical Colleges defines underrepresented minorities in medicine as African-American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian and socio-economically disadvantaged.
In just one of those segments - African-American - the School of Medicine accepted on average 35 students in each entering class. However, those numbers dwindled to the point that the 2015 incoming class contained only five African-American (one through regular admissions and four through the school's Post Baccalaureate Program) and two Hispanic students, the lowest number of students in underrepresented populations in medicine in the school's modern history.
In placing the school on "accreditation with warning" status last October, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education cited a lack of diversity in the student body. The national accrediting body gave the school of medicine two years to address the issue.
Dean Sobel, however, recognized the issue before the LCME report, and at the start of 2015 formed the Wayne State University School of Medicine Diversity and Inclusion Task Force to address the lack of diversity. The task force, chaired by Herbert Smitherman Jr., M.D., M.P.H., assistant dean of Community and Urban Health, and Jane Thomas, Ph.D., a member of the School of Medicine's Board of Visitors, presented its report and recommendations to the dean in May 2015. The recommendations included creating the position of vice dean of Diversity and Inclusion, as well as funding to establish the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. WSU President M. Roy Wilson and the Board of Governors provided a budget to establish that office. Dr. Smitherman serves as interim vice dean of Diversity and Inclusion while the search for a permanent vice dean is conducted.
Dr. Smitherman and employees in the Office of Admissions and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion hit the ground running, investigating best practices of sister medical schools, community outreach, developing recruitment materials and presentations and implementing a new holistic admissions interview process that considers more than grade-point averages and Medical College Admission Test scores of applicants.
The average grade-point average of the 165 students already accepted for next year's class is 3.78, an increase over the school of medicine's traditional average of between 3.70 and 3.74 for incoming first-year students. The average MCAT percentile of those already accepted stands at 84 percent, which is within the school's traditional average of 79 percent to 88 percent for new medical students.