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This June, in
Grutter v. Bollinger, one of two race-related cases involving the University of
Michigan that came before the United States Supreme Court, the justices made
their first ruling in 25 years on the use of affirmative action in higher
education admissions. Although narrowly divided, the court ruled that
universities can consider race in admission decisions.
Specifically, the court recognized the legitimacy of
the University of Michigan's efforts to "enroll a 'critical mass' of minority
students . . . defined by reference to educational benefits that diversity is
designed to produce." It also said that "the Law School's educational judgment
that such diversity is essential to its educational mission is one to which we
defer." The court's decision nullified the 1996 Hopwood v. Texas ruling by the
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that had prohibited considering race in
admission, recruitment and scholarship decisions at public institutions in
Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
Support for diversity from our nation's highest court is good
news for academic health institutions that want to educate and employ a health
care work force whose diversity reflects that of our increasingly diverse
society. A diverse health care work force is necessary for us to address the
health needs of an increasingly diverse society. Achieving that goal begins
with a multicultural learning environment, which exposes students to beliefs
from many of the cultures they will later encounter in clinical practice. A
diverse learning environment also opens graduate students up to more varied
research opportunities by enabling them to think beyond traditional study
subjects-white males-to include women and people from other ethnicities and
cultures. Finally, a diverse learning environment makes students more
culturally aware and sensitive. Together, these outcomes enable academic health
science centers to have a positive influence on patient
care.
Academic
health centers across the country have made slow progress in increasing the
diversity of their student populations over the past few decades. While the
number of underrepresented minorities in the United States has doubled since
1974 from 12 percent to 24 percent, the number of underrepresented minorities
who have enrolled in medical school has gone from 9 percent to just 11 percent
during that same period.
This lack of progress is not due to a decrease or flattening in
the number of underrepresented minorities with college degrees. For example, in
the nine-year period from 1991-2000, there was a 100 percent increase in the
number of Hispanic college graduates and a 65 percent increase in the number of
African-American college graduates. In other words, medicine and academic
health centers are losing their market share with regard to underrepresented
minorities applying to medical school.
For UTMB, the effort to address its own lack of
underrepresented minorities in its medical school began in the 1970s, when Dr.
William Levin, then president of the university, asked a group of minority
physician alumni and community leaders to help him understand why UTMB's School
of Medicine had only two minority students out of a class of 160. The group
pointed out that the environment at UTMB was neither inviting nor supportive
for minority students. Their suggestions resulted in changes that not only
dramatically increased diversity among UTMB's medical students but also
positively affected other areas of the university.
Today, according to the most recent
Black Issues in Higher Education's annual Top 100 Degree Producers issue,
UTMB's School of Medicine ranked first out of 126 medical schools ranked in the
nation in graduating Hispanic physicians and seventh in graduating
African-American physicians. Results like this at UTMB, and surely at many
other academic health centers across the county, were not achieved by lowering
admissions standards. Instead, programs were instituted to increase access to
higher education for underrepresented minority students and other economically
and educationally disadvantaged students. At UTMB, these programs include
targeted recruitment and scholarship programs, a prematriculation program that
gives students a preview of the curriculum they can expect in their first year
of medical school, a medical school familiarization program, and an early
medical school acceptance program. Together such programs help academic health
centers educate a student body that reflects the diversity of patients students
will later serve.
In the Grutter v. Bollinger decision, the court also recognized
that in order to have a diverse organization (such as the U.S. Armed Services),
you need diversity at the top. This underscored UTMB's own need to have a more
diverse faculty and leadership team. While UTMB has been successful in
increasing diversity in the classroom, we still have a long way to go in the
leadership areas of the institution. For example, underrepresented minorities
account for only 10 percent of UTMB's supervisory staff and 11 percent of
faculty.
Academic
health centers need to ask the tough questions about why faculty and leadership
are not more diverse. If, at UTMB, we have been able to enhance diversity among
our students, why haven't we been able to do this at the faculty and
administrative leadership levels? A Diversity Council has been formed at UTMB
to address this issue. Its charge is to identify underlying obstacles to
diversity among faculty and staff, and to develop strategies for achieving
diversity at every level and in every area of the institution. This is one of
many ways academic health institutions can help address the
problem.
Here in
Texas, a state with one of the most diverse populations in the country,
diversity throughout our institutions-our classrooms and our boardrooms-must be
a priority. With its latest ruling on race in education, our nation's highest
court has underscored the importance of a culturally diverse environment in
institutions of higher learning. It is a goal that UTMB, the oldest medical
school in Texas and the state's first academic health center, has embraced, and
I encourage the other academic health institutions throughout Texas to double
their efforts in making a truly diverse environment in academic medicine a
reality.
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