Methods to increase underrepresented minority student enrollment and retention at the University of Louisville school of dentistry.

The 2000 U.S. census reported that the population is 12.3 percent African American and 12.5 percent Hispanic; however, less than 4 percent of dentists are African American and 2 percent are Hispanic. To address this disparity, increasing the diversity of dental students is mandatory. The purpose of this article is to describe how the University of Louisville School of Dentistry (ULSD) has approached enrolling and retaining underrepresented minority students. ULSD has increased its pool of underrepresented minority applicants through three major methods: partnerships and collaborations, mentoring, and restructuring administration. Data from ULSD's admissions, institutional research, and planning along with annual enrollment surveys from the American Dental Education Association were used to determine the percentage of African American and Hispanic students entering (1993-2006) and graduating (1997-2010). From 1993 to 2010, African American enrollment increased from 3 to 9.6 percent of the entering class, and the graduation rate of African American students increased from 1.7 to 8.5 percent. Hispanic student enrollment also increased (1.6 percent in 1993 to 2.4 percent in 2006), but Hispanic student graduation rates decreased (3.5 percent in 1996 to 0 percent in 2010).