Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science is a private historically black graduate school in Willowbrook, California. It was founded in 1966 in response to inadequate medical access within the Watts region of Los Angeles, California. The university is named in honor of Charles R. Drew. History Charles R. Drew Postgraduate Medical School was incorporated in the State of California as a private, nonprofit educational institution in 1966 in response to the McCone Commission's recommendations to improve access to healthcare in South Los Angeles following the Watts Riots in 1965. In 1973, Governor Ronald Reagan signed Senate Bill 1026 authored by State Senator Mervyn Dymally to allocate funding and support for the institution from the General Fund to the University of California. In January 1970, the offices of the Charles R. Drew Postgraduate Medical School and the Watts-Willowbrook Regional Medical program formally opened at 12012 Compton Avenue, and would serve as the central center for CDU's operations until the W.M. Cobb Building's construction in 1984. Three schools and colleges are housed on CDU's 11-acre campus: the College of Science and Health, the College of Medicine and the Mervyn M. Dymally School of Nursing (MMDSON). In May 1978, a proposed agreement between the Charles R. Drew Postgraduate Medical School and the UCLA School of Medicine to jointly establish an undergraduate medical program at Drew was approved. Medical students complete their first two years of medical school at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, then finish their last two years of clinical work at Charles R. Drew University, including rotations at the Martin Luther King Jr Outpatient Center as well as local community clinics near the Charles R. Drew University campus. The Mervyn M. Dymally School of Nursing opened in 2010. The school was the first comprehensive nursing program to open in Southern California in decades, and the first ever of its kind in South Los Angeles. In 2010, the university introduced the Community Faculty Track, a unique model for community-academic partnerships in which community leaders are integrated into the university's research goals and the education of medical professionals. In 2018, the school partnered with Ross University School of Medicine, a for-profit medical school in Barbados, to educate doctors for South Los Angeles, since Charles R. Drew University typically receives more than 3,000 medical school applications, but only has space for 28 medical students each year. In September 2020,