Shared Services Initiative at the University of Missouri

The University of Missouri has begun its Shared Services Initiative. The purpose of Shared Services is two-fold:

1. It reduces duplication of effort in administrative tasks
2. It increases the effectiveness and efficiency of administrative tasks

As an example, the University of Missouri System hosts our learning management system Blackboard on system servers, but we manage the application at UMKC. This avoids duplication of services—in this case, server management—across our system of campuses. A shared services approach also looks for opportunities to re-allocate resources; money that we would have used on campus-hosted Blackboard servers can pay for additional ILE classrooms instead.

One of our biggest opportunities at UMKC to utilize Shared Services is the partnership between academic units and IT staff for academic unit servers. The IT staff takes care of security patches and operating system upgrades on academic unit servers and the academic units’ staff manages the software. This improves the efficiency of server maintenance as well as overall security.

The concept or goal behind Shared Services is to operate more efficiently and to streamline services so that they are improved and/or more cost effective. Shared Services provides the opportunity for us to partner with other campuses to carry out University business, particularly in the area of procurement.

Shared Services also impacts finance, procurement and human resources. More on this come . . .

Read more about the Shared Services Initiative: http://www.umsystem.edu/ums/president/sharedservices/

A New Vision for Research

The Office of the Provost was pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Lynda Bonewald, Lee M. and William Lefkowitz Professor of Oral Biology and Director of UMKC’s Bone Biology Research Program, as Interim Vice Chancellor for Research on October 15, 2009 . In her new position, which is an outcome of the strategic planning process, she oversees UMKC’s Office of Research and the research and economic development initiatives. Dr. Bonewald agreed to introduce herself for this week’s blog post.

Little did I think that I would be the one to fill the position recommended by the Life Sciences Task Force in 2003 when I first read the report. The position was described as “An able scientific leader…. given the authority and the responsibility to build life sciences at UMKC”. That is a tall order, but as Vice Chancellor for Research (Interim), a position created by the UMKC strategic planning process, I am creating objectives with the help of other leaders in our community to move life and health sciences at UMKC forward. These objectives include ‘achieving world-class programs’, obtaining the resources to do so, and ‘to work together with partners within the University and in the greater Kansas City area’.

With regards to my educational background, I received a BS in Biology from the University of Texas in 1973. I graduated from the Medical University of South Carolina in 1984 with a PhD in Immunology/Microbiology. My postdoctoral fellowship at the VA Hospital in Charleston, SC in hematology was under the mentorship of Makio Ogawa, a world-renowned hematologist. I was recruited to the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, Texas as an Assistant Professor in 1986 in the Endocrinology Division directed by Dr. Gregory Mundy, an internationally known Bone Biologist. In 2001, I was recruited to UMKC School of Dentistry Dept. of Oral Biology to establish a Mineralized Tissue Research Program. When I arrived, I was a full professor with two R01s and a program project. In 2005, I became a University of Missouri Curator’s Professor and in 2009, I established and became Director of the UMKC Center of Excellence in the Study of Dental and Musculoskeletal Tissues, a multi- and interdisciplinary center.

UMKC has considerable potential to become a leader in Life and Health Sciences. I am excited about growing and expanding this potential. I know many creative, productive scientists, strong, yet fair administrators, and many truly exceptional and dedicated support staff. Chancellor Morton and Executive Vice Chancellor Hackett provide committed, stable, and experienced leadership to UMKC. To become competitive with regards to funding and other types of awards, it is necessary for our Life and Health Sciences Schools to collaborate and work together. My goal is to create and provide a stimulating, supportive environment so that our dedicated, passionate scientists can be productive and successful by accomplishing their goals of discovery while training the next generation of dedicated scientists.

-Lynda F. Bonewald, PhD, Vice Chancellor for Research Interim, Curator's Professor Lee M and William Lefkowitz Professor Director, Bone Biology Research Program Director, UMKC Center of Excellence in Mineralized Tissues, Univ. of Missouri at Kansas City School of Dentistry, Dept. of Oral Biology

Whiteboard to Boardroom

New educational systems, new medical devices and new forms of drug delivery. Every day faculty, students and staff at UMKC create, build and assess new innovations that have the potential to change the world. It is widely known that universities with large research expenditures, like MIT and Stanford, use robust infrastructures to transfer technologies to the market in the form of licensing agreements and spin out companies. But what can UMKC do to transfer its rich research to the market where it can do public good?

UMKC has a wealth of resources that work to support new business development. The UMKC Innovation Center, through its Small Business and Technology Development Center, specializes in technology commercialization and provides technical assistance to early stage businesses through one-on-one consulting and training and access to early-stage capital. The Bloch School’s Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation gives students the skills needed to start and run early-stage companies. UMKC’s Office of Research Services assists faculty in identifying new innovations. At the system level, the University of Missouri is increasing its resources to support technology transfer by adding additional market research and legal expertise to evaluate new ideas.

In addition, UMKC is working within the community to establish Kansas City as a major center for innovation and for building economic growth through the development of entrepreneurial ventures. UMKC’s KCSourceLink connects a network of more than 140 nonprofit organizations across the region including incubators, angel groups and technical assistance providers that support business growth.

Whiteboard to Boardroom (W2B) is a new program that will align and coordinate current internal and external efforts to build businesses from university research. The program joins a partnership of UMKC resources with KU, William Jewell College, Johnson County Community College and local business support groups to explore and develop a technology commercialization process that will maximize the ability of institutions like UMKC to create spin-out companies. The program will start this fall and is expected to generate two to five new companies per year when fully operational. If you would like help starting a business, call the UMKC Innovation Center at 816-235-6063.

-Written by Maria Meyers, Director, UMKC Innovation Center and Network Builder, KCSourceLink

UMKC’s New Web Site: A Collaboration and a Work in Progress

On Wednesday, July 1, 2009 the UMKC homepage and main audience pages will transform into a vibrant new look and feel. You may have noticed that some departments’ and schools’ web sites have a new layout already. Eventually all of the UMKC sites will have facelifts and updated content. The changes are part of a campus wide effort to improve our image among prospective students, parents, donors and the public and to make the website more useful for UMKC students, faculty, and staff. This week’s launch is the first phase of an ongoing project --every 90 days new layers of the site will be launched.

The new UMKC web site is a result of an across campus collaboration. Representatives from every academic unit, University Communications, Student Affairs, Public Relations, and Information Services have been working since last fall on this critical project. Input has been sought from Dean’s Council, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Advisory Council, Faculty Senate, Student Government Association, and Staff Council. In March, all students, faculty, and staff were asked about the design of the new UMKC homepage in a campus wide survey (see the results). Best practices were researched as were other urban serving universities’ web site design and content. The web site is not only our first impression to future students, future faculty, and future funders; it is a tool we all utilize on daily basis.

See the progress—sites that have already been redesigned:
-Admissions
-Financial Aid and Scholarships
-Human Resources
-Institute for Urban Education
-School of Education

For more information visit: http://www.umkc.edu/website/default.asp

Nursing School Putting Stimulus Dollars to Work in the Classroom

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon recently visited the UMKC Hospital Hill Campus and the School of Nursing to announce the “Caring for Missourians” initiative, which will invest $40 million during fiscal year 2010 to help Missouri’s public colleges and universities increase their capacity to train students to work in critical-need health care positions.

By some estimates, we are facing a shortage of nearly 150,000 nurses in this country right now and, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, that shortage could reach as high as 500,000 by the year 2025. Missouri's hospitals alone are currently facing a shortage of more than 7 percent, or more than 1,500, of the registered nurses they need to serve their patients.

The UMKC School of Nursing will receive $1.7 million of the Caring for Missourians funds, which will be used in several different areas. We have already begun working to initiate and recruit for our new accelerated BSN program. This program allows students who already have a bachelor’s degree in another discipline to earn their BSN in 18 months. We anticipate accepting students this fall to begin nursing course work Spring Semester 2010.

Earlier this year, the School of Nursing received funding to launch our Rural Nursing Initiative, a program designed to increase the numbers of baccalaureate prepared registered nurses serving populations in rural areas where the nursing shortage is particularly severe. We’ve integrated the Rural Nursing Initiative into our RN-BSN distance education program and are currently enrolling students for the 2009 fall semester.

As we, along with nursing schools across the country, continue to expand our efforts to graduate more nurses, we will need more educators, so we will also be committing some of the Caring for Missourians funds to enhance and expand our nurse educator program. Students can receive the MSN degree with the nurse educator focus or a doctoral degree with additional course work in education. All these programs, MSN Nurse Educator, PhD in Nursing and the Doctorate of Nursing Practice are on-line programs and will prepare nurse educators to employ cutting-edge teaching strategies in didactic, on-line and clinical settings.

All of these programs depend on the School of Nursing’s state-of-the-art distance learning or simulation technology, so we will dedicate a portion of the funds we receive to enhancing and maintaining the school’s clinical simulation center and enhancing our on-line courses and our computer networking capabilities.

This one-time infusion of funding from the Caring for Missourians initiative offers the School of Nursing an immediate and much-welcomed opportunity to implement new programs and further strengthen our current ones. But the nationwide shortage of health care professionals is a long-term problem that will continue to require state funding. We at the School of Nursing, along with our colleagues at the UMKC Hospital Hill Campus, support Governor Nixon’s commitment to find ways to continue state funding in 2011 and beyond.

-Lora Lacey-Haun, RN, PhD, Dean, UMKC School of Nursing

*In picture: Governor Jay Nixon (left), Lora Lacey-Haun, Dean, UMKC School of Nursing (center-right), and Leo E. Morton, UMKC Chancellor (right)