UF College of Dentistry — Dismissal & Appeals

Written by Zachary Gaynor, attorney · The Florida Bar, admitted 2016 · court admissions. Reviewed 19 September 2026.

The College does not publish its dismissal procedure

If you are a UF dental student trying to find out how long you have to appeal, you will not find it. As of 19 September 2026 the College of Dentistry’s Student Handbook page and the handbook PDF both return a 404, and nothing on the DMD program pages or in the UF catalog sets out the academic standing rules, the promotion committee, the grounds for dismissal, or an appeal window. The advanced and graduate education pages publish an email policy, a social media policy, a leave policy, a consensual relationships policy, a non-discrimination policy and the thesis requirements — and no academic standing or dismissal procedure at all.

That matters more than it sounds. Your decision letter may be the only document that states your deadline, and a deadline you cannot verify against a published rule is a deadline you should treat as running now. Ask the College, in writing, for the handbook version in force on the date it acted, and keep the reply.

What the College does publish — and it is mostly about you, not about procedure

The published professionalism policy covers conduct in the classroom (attendance, dress code, “communicating in a civil, respectful and courteous manner”), in all clinical settings, across college-related activities including externships and office hours, and on social media, where the policy warns that a post may violate the Honor Code or HIPAA.

It does not name a committee. Authority sits with “the College faculty and administrators,” and the College “reserves the right to dismiss a student.” No appeal route and no deadline appear anywhere in it.

The same policy sets out a fitness-for-duty process. The College may restrict in-person attendance and lab and clinic access, require drug or alcohol testing, require evaluation by a College-approved medical provider, and refer a student to the Professional Resource Network. Read the sentence that follows carefully, because it is the one students misunderstand: participation in PRN “does not guarantee continued enrollment (or re-enrollment) and may not necessarily prevent adverse academic action, including dismissal, or disciplinary action.” Agreeing to the program does not buy your seat.

Two published routes that do carry deadlines

Where the College is silent, the University is not. Two UF regulations apply to dental students and both are public.

• UF Regulation 4.012, Student Grievance Procedure — for a decision a student believes is “illegal, unjust, or creates unnecessary hardship.” It covers academic problems but generally excludes grade disputes, except where illegal discrimination is alleged or a grade penalty was imposed without proper authority. Step one is informal discussion; step two is a written grievance to the next-level supervisor, who may appoint a fact-finding panel of no more than three; step three is a written appeal to the appropriate Vice President or the Dean of the Graduate School. The supervisor responds “within ten (10) business days from the date the written grievance was received if practicable,” and the appeal must be filed within five (5) business days of receipt of that response. Five business days is the shortest clock in your matter and almost nobody sees it coming.
• UF Regulation 4.040, Student Honor Code and Student Conduct Code — for honor and conduct charges rather than academic progress. Health science violations go to the Health Science Conduct Committee. Where suspension or expulsion is possible, the student chooses between the University Officials Board and a Conduct Committee. The standard is “preponderance of the information.” Appeals are due within ten (10) Class Days from the date of the decision letter and are limited to three grounds: a procedural rights violation that affected the outcome, new material information unavailable at the hearing, or a sanction that is inappropriate.

Which route you are on is not your choice — it follows the label the College puts on the action. That label is worth contesting early, because the two routes carry different rights and different clocks.

The fitness-for-duty demand is the sharp edge, and the law here is not generous

Students assume a compelled evaluation or a monitoring agreement is an overreach they can refuse. In the Eleventh Circuit, usually it is not.

In Williams v. Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia (11th Cir. 2026), the court upheld a required fitness-for-duty evaluation and a simulation test for a returning resident, holding the requirement fell within the ADA’s allowance for job-related assessments under 42 U.S.C. § 12112(d)(4)(B) because it was framed around the ability to perform essential clinical functions safely, and adding that courts do not second-guess academic safety determinations absent a substantial departure from accepted norms. In J.A.M. v. Nova Southeastern University, 646 F. App’x 921 (11th Cir. 2016), a medical school was entitled to require a student with alcohol problems to abstain as a condition of continued enrollment. And in Nehme v. Florida International University Board of Trustees, 121 F.4th 1379 (11th Cir. 2024), a dismissed medical student was held not to be a “qualified individual” at all, which ended the ADA claim before the merits.

The opening is narrower and more specific than “this is discrimination.” These conditions are vulnerable where they are imposed pretextually, without individualized assessment of this student, or in a way that departs from how the program treats everyone else returning from an absence. That is a record question, and the record is built in the first few weeks — not in a lawsuit afterwards.

What the law gives you at a Florida public dental school

UF is a public university, so a dismissal is state action reviewable under the Fourteenth Amendment. How much process is owed turns on the academic-versus-disciplinary line.

For an academic dismissal, Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz, 435 U.S. 78 (1978), requires no formal hearing — only that the decision was “careful and deliberate.” The Eleventh Circuit adopted that in Haberle v. University of Alabama in Birmingham, 803 F.2d 1536 (11th Cir. 1986), and restated it this year in Williams: “Academic dismissals require far less process.” For a disciplinary dismissal, notice and a hearing are required — Nash v. Auburn University, 812 F.2d 655 (11th Cir. 1987), and Doe v. Valencia College, 903 F.3d 1220 (11th Cir. 2018).

Two hard truths follow. Under Page v. Hicks, 773 F. App’x 514 (11th Cir. 2019), a school’s failure to follow its own internal procedures does not by itself make out a federal due process violation in the academic context, and under Williams an imperfect pre-deprivation process is cured by adequate post-deprivation remedies. Substantive review under Regents of the University of Michigan v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214 (1985), reaches only a “substantial departure from accepted academic norms.”

The state-court route is the one people overlook. Florida Statutes § 120.81(1)(g) removes state university student proceedings from the Administrative Procedure Act’s general due process provisions, and Florida Administrative Code Rule 6C-6.0105(1) instead directs each university president to adopt rules ensuring fairness and due process. Florida’s Third District has twice enforced that framework by holding a university to its own code — Matar v. Florida International University, 944 So. 2d 1153 (Fla. 3d DCA 2006), and Colorado v. Florida International University, 967 So. 2d 372 (Fla. 3d DCA 2007). Which brings the page full circle: the College’s own published rules are the measuring stick, and at UF dentistry the academic ones are not published. Get the version that applied to you, in writing, early.

What a dismissal does to a Florida dental license

Florida Statutes § 466.006(2)(b)(1) conditions licensure on graduating from a dental school accredited by the American Dental Association Commission on Dental Accreditation, its successor, or another accrediting entity recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Without the degree there is no examination and no license.

Section 466.006(3) does create a route for graduates of non-accredited schools — at least two consecutive academic years in a full-time CODA-accredited supplemental general dentistry program. It is worth knowing about and it is worth understanding its limit: it is built for someone who finished a degree somewhere unaccredited, not for a student who never finished one. Remaining enrolled is not the same problem as reversing a dismissal afterwards, and it is the cheaper one to solve.

Where the governing documents are

Checked on 19 September 2026:

• UF College of Dentistry professionalism policy and standards, including the fitness-for-duty process — admissions.dental.ufl.edu. Public.
• UF Regulation 4.012, Student Grievance Procedure, and UF Regulation 4.040, Student Honor Code and Student Conduct Code — policy.ufl.edu. Public.
• Advanced and graduate education program policies — dental.ufl.edu. Public, and administrative only.
• College of Dentistry Student Handbook — the handbook page and the PDF both returned 404 on the date above. If the College relies on it in your matter, ask for the dated version it is relying on.

The federal money on the line at UF

University of Florida students and families took on $216.1 million in federal Direct Loans in the 2025–26 award year — $125.9 million of it borrowed unsubsidized by 5,513 graduate and professional students, with $45.7 million more in Grad PLUS loans to 2,285 of them.

Every dollar of it rides on academic standing. A dismissal, a failed Satisfactory Academic Progress evaluation, or a mid-term withdrawal sets off federal rules that decide whether aid continues, whether money already disbursed has to go back, and — under the borrowing caps in effect since July 1, 2026 — whether a student who leaves can still finance a return. For health-professional students the timing rules bite hardest: remediation terms, leaves, and repeated courses all feed the federal pace-of-completion math. The academic fight and the financial aid fight are the same fight, and the windows are short. How those rules work: SAP appeals and academic dismissal.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Aid Data Center, Direct Loan volume by school, award year 2025–26 (cumulative through June 30, 2026). University-wide federal Direct Loan totals.

Related reading

• Professionalism and fitness-for-practice concerns
• Academic dismissal and suspension
• What due process you are owed at a public university
• Section 504 and ADA accommodations at school
• University of Florida — student discipline overview

Other Florida health-professional programs

Every school writes its own standing, appeal and conduct rules, and the filing windows are rarely the same from one campus to the next. These pages set out the procedure elsewhere:

• UF College of Medicine
• UF College of Pharmacy
• UF College of Nursing
• UF College of Veterinary Medicine
• Student defense at every Florida school

Common questions

How long do I have to appeal a dismissal from UF College of Dentistry?

The College publishes no deadline of its own. Under UF Regulation 4.012 the appeal step is five business days from receipt of the supervisor’s response; under UF Regulation 4.040 a conduct appeal is ten Class Days from the decision letter. Whatever your decision letter states controls in the first instance, and where it states nothing, move within days anyway.

Where is the UF dental student handbook?

Not publicly available as of 19 September 2026 — both the handbook page and the PDF return a 404. Request the dated version in force when the College acted, in writing, and keep the response.

Can the College make me take a drug test or see its own doctor?

Its published policy says it may, and Eleventh Circuit authority has upheld program-related, safety-justified evaluations and monitoring agreements. The challenge is not usually to the demand itself but to whether it was individualized, consistent with how others are treated, and supported by something in the record.

Does agreeing to PRN protect my enrollment?

No. The College’s own policy says participation does not guarantee continued enrollment or re-enrollment and may not prevent dismissal or disciplinary action.

Can I still be licensed in Florida if I am dismissed?

Not on the dismissed record alone. Section 466.006(2)(b)(1) requires graduation from a CODA-accredited school. The supplemental-program route in section 466.006(3) is aimed at graduates of non-accredited schools, not at students who never graduated.

Is it worth fighting an academic dismissal at a public school in the Eleventh Circuit?

Federal due process gives less room here than students expect, and courts defer heavily to faculty judgment. The better questions are usually whether the action was really academic or disciplinary in substance, whether the University followed the code it published, and whether the record was ever built properly — all of which are decided early, inside the process.