G-2404-21059

The College of Dental Medicine is the dental school of the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) and is in the city of Charleston, South Carolina. It is the only dental school in South Carolina and, with a grant from CareQuest Institute for Oral Health, has successfully established partnerships with five Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to support faculty champions for oral health professions and increase the number of students matriculating to dental school.

In its first year of grant funding, to address the lack of diversity among providers and promote provider retention in SC, MUSC deployed the initial phase of a multi-year effort to engage HBCU faculty at five in-state institutions to improve the efficacy of their support for students’ preparing to apply to dental school. Through the grant year, MUSC’s project team identified six champions across its partner schools (Allen University, Clinton College, Claflin University, South Carolina State University, and Voorhees University) and convened them for education, training, and feedback collection relative to promoting and fostering interest in dentistry. These have resulted in improved confidence among advisors to support their students for the dental admissions process. Additionally, MUSC began formally identifying providers in rural and local areas and opportunities within its dental school to increase student exposure to both the clinical space and dental school environment. Since beginning this project, one of the partner institutions established a pre-dental club and another has re-ignited the dental section of its current pre-health and science club, both early signs of interest from students and potential for further integration into each partner schools’ advising supports.

MUSC’s current proposal builds upon this groundwork through the development of a pre-dental training to support existing and future pre-dental advising faculty at its current partner institutions as well as an evaluation of the initial phase of the project, with the goal of building evidence around partnership strategies with HBCUs and Minority-Serving Institutions to diversify and sustain the oral health workforce. The project team will evaluate impact with respect to the implementation of skills gained for pre-dental advisors among the same cohort of advisors engaged in year one to assess short-term impacts of this model. Data will be collected through semi-structured interviews and surveys to codify institutional strategies for implementation with and beyond these partners moving forward. More specifically, MUSC will also develop a pre-dental elective/equivalent course for pre-dental and pre-health advising faculty, which they will inform, with the goal of leveraging the materials as an ADEA-aligned standard for other dental schools.

This proposal budget is equivalent to approximately 1% of the organization’s overall budget and includes funding allocations to support honoraria for the six participating faculty advisors, some MUSC project personnel, and expenses related to travel and in-person convenings. Overall, most funding will be used to maintain the engagement and thought partnership of the participating faculty advisors.