The Indiana University School of Dentistry in Indianapolis is seeing 61 percent female enrollment in its incoming class of dental students, WRTV reported Aug. 2.
The next class of students for Indiana's only dental school will include 66 women and 42 men, the highest number of women enrolled in the school's 142-year history.
The school was founded in 1879 and reportedly had its first female graduate in the late 1890s. The first woman of color to graduate was Dr. Nancy Hockett in 1900. The school added its first female dean in 2019 when it hired Carol Anne Murdoch-Kinch, DDS, PhD, who is also an alumna of the school.
Current data from the American Dental Association shows 52.6 percent of predoctoral dental students were female from 2020-21. The percentage of female dental school graduates was 51.4 percent in 2020, up from 13.6 percent in 1980.