Medical mentors

Medical school's grueling schedule didn't stop Michael A. Smith from volunteering to mentor other young black men who were considering becoming doctors.

Smith, one of 137 medical students from the Medical University of South Carolina who learned Thursday where they would complete their residencies, said the mentoring program, called A Gentleman & A Scholar, held meetings on Saturday mornings.

Sometimes, the mentors had to attend after working, and not sleeping, the previous night.

Smith, who is from the tiny South Carolina town of Denmark, was one of nine black men at MUSC's "Match Day," an annual event where medical students who are on track to graduate in May learn where they will work for at least the next four or five years.

Nine black men graduating from medical school may not sound like a lot, but it's a record for the school. Last year, only one black man graduated from the university.

Smith, who also has a doctorate in microbiology, and who learned he had landed a residency in surgery at MUSC, said, "If we had mentors, they were 50 or above. We wanted to be mentors closer to their age."

Brandon Williams, a medical student from Aiken who will be a resident in anesthesiology at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, also volunteered in the mentor program for high school and college-age black men who want to become doctors.

"A lot of these guys are smart enough to do it," he said. "They just need someone to show them they can do it."

Deborah Deas, a doctor and MUSC's senior associate dean for diversity, said the medical school several years ago made a commitment to increase diversity, especially the number of black men.

For the past four years, she said, the school has enrolled 10 black men in each incoming class.

The group of nine that will graduate in May marks the first class of the four to graduate, she said. The 10th student in that group had to take some time off and will graduate next year, she said.

Except for historically black medical schools, such as the one at Howard University, medical schools nationally enroll, on average, 1.5 black men in each incoming class, she said.

The medical school's overall minority enrollment now is 18 percent, Deas said. That's up from 11 percent in 2001.

Dean Jerry Reves made boosting minority enrollment a priority, Deas said, and in 2008 the school won an institutional diversity leadership award from the American Association of Medical Colleges.

Some of the black men in the 2010 class founded the mentor program, Deas said, and six of the nine graduates this year participated in it. All the high school students who participated and have graduated have enrolled in college, she said, and two of the college students have graduated.

One of them has been accepted into a school of podiatry; the other is in the process of completing his application for the 2011 incoming medical school class.

Andres Ayuso, who landed a residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and who also was a mentor, said he didn't see a lot of black male doctors when he was young.

"I have a son," he said, "and I want something different for him."

Reach Diane Knich at dknich@postandcourier.com or 937-5491.