Florida Dental Schools — Dismissals & Appeals

Written by Zachary Gaynor, attorney · The Florida Bar, admitted 2016 · court admissions. Reviewed September 3, 2026.

How many dental schools are there in Florida?

Four, all accredited by the Commission on Dental Accreditation: the University of Florida College of Dentistry (Gainesville, public), Nova Southeastern University College of Dental Medicine (Davie), LECOM School of Dental Medicine (Bradenton), and Larkin University School of Dental Medicine (Miami), which holds Initial Accreditation with its first CODA visit in 2026.

Most directories still list three. Larkin is the newest and the one most likely to generate progression disputes with no settled published policy behind them.

What is published, and what is not

• Nova Southeastern publishes a Dental Medicine Predoctoral Handbook openly. It is the most accessible of the four.
• LECOM governs its dental school through the same academic catalog structure as its medical college, with legal counsel sitting on the dental Student Promotion and Graduation Committee “as necessary” — a provision that does not appear for the College of Medicine. No separate public dental handbook was located.
• University of Florida links a UFCD Student Handbook from its public teaching-resources page, but the target sits on the UF Health intranet and refuses anonymous access. No public URL located.
• Larkin University has program pages but no dental student handbook posted; CODA’s own record for the school carries an empty website field.

Two of Florida’s four dental schools therefore do not publish the document that governs whether a student stays or goes. If yours is one of them, request the current handbook in writing at the first sign of a problem and record the date you asked and the date you received it — the gap between those two dates is sometimes itself the point.

What usually ends a dental student’s program

• Clinical competency examinations and requirement counts. Dental progression is unusually quantified — procedures completed, competencies passed, production requirements met — and disputes turn on whether the count was applied as published.
• Preclinical laboratory practicals, where re-take limits are strict and a second failure often ends the year.
• Patient-management and professionalism findings, which carry licensure implications well beyond the program.
• INBDE performance and its use as a progression or graduation condition.
• Infection-control and patient-safety allegations, which move fast and are frequently accompanied by immediate removal from clinic before any hearing.

Because dental students treat patients, an allegation touching patient safety is usually handled as an immediate risk decision first and an academic or conduct question second. The order matters: the removal often happens before any process, and the process then reviews a decision already made.

Related reading

• Health professions programs
• Professionalism and fitness-to-practice findings
• Academic dismissal and suspension
• LECOM — committee structure and appeal deadlines
• All Florida schools

Other Florida health-professional programs

Every school writes its own dismissal, appeal and conduct rules, and the filing deadlines are rarely the same from one campus to the next. These pages set out the procedure at other Florida health-professional programs:

• Florida Pharmacy Schools — Dismissals & Appeals
• Florida Physician Assistant Programs — Dismissals & Appeals
• Florida State University College of Medicine — Dismissal & Appeals
• Global Medical & Technical Training Institute
• Medical Institute of Palm Beach
• Miami Dade College Medical Campus

Common questions

My dental school will not give me the handbook. What can I do?

Ask in writing, to a named person, and keep the request. At a public institution the document is very likely a public record. At a private one the handbook is the contract the school is relying on, and a school that will not produce the rule it says you broke is in a weak position on that point.

I was removed from clinic before any hearing. Is that permitted?

Usually yes, as an interim measure, where the school has published a route for it. What matters is whether the interim step was authorized, how quickly a review followed, and whether the interim measure quietly became the outcome.

Does a dismissal affect dental licensure?

It can, depending on how the record characterizes it. That is why the wording of a dismissal letter and any transcript notation is worth negotiating at the time rather than after.