Shifting the Focus for the New Year

The Office of the Provost’s mission is to work in concert with the academic units to provide a vibrant intellectual community for UMKC’s faculty and students. We hope to expand our efforts in 2010 and have created a communications plan for Academic Affairs outlining specific goals.

We would like to better utilize the blog to facilitate an ongoing dialogue between the provost office and the faculty, with more posts coming directly from the Provost, Vice Provosts, and other academic leaders. The posts will be more concise and hopefully communicate more information that faculty need and want to know.

We want to have greater variety and volume of communication coming from our office, and in order to do so we depend on your feedback and ideas. If you have suggestions, please let us know.

You can provide suggestions by clicking on the comment box below, using the suggestion box to the right, or emailing us at provostblog@umkc.edu.

The Debate on Students Earning an Undergraduate Education in Three Years

Here are two articles for your review about the debate on students earning an undergraduate education in three years. In the Strategic Plan for 2010-2020 our first goal is to "place student success at the center," which means "offering superior services to students through a model that allows a one-stop approach (real and virtual) to meet students’ needs." The following articles bring to question if there are new ways of doing this.

The Three-Year Solution, by Lamar Alexander

What is College for Anyway?, by Debra Rosenberg

The articles were originally published in the October 26th, 2009, Newsweek.

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

Every 9 and a Half Minutes, Someone in the U.S. is Infected with HIV

December 1st is World AIDS Day - a day that was established by the World Health Organization in 1988 - that was 21 years ago! Last evening I was talking with my husband about how much progress has been made in the treatment of HIV and AIDS in this country. We are both 'front line' health care providers who have seen HIV disease transform from one of certain death with much pain and suffering to a disease that is manageable for many years. Our patients can now live long, healthy and productive lives - thanks to the availabilty of excellent antiretroviral treatment. However, not everyone has the luxury of seeing their patients with HIV do so well. In developing countries and in areas with limited resources, many people are still dying and suffering from this disease.

We may have made a lot of strides in HIV treatment, but we are losing the battle when it comes to HIV prevention. Today there are 33 million people in the world living with HIV, over a million are Americans. Did you know that every 9 and a half minutes someone in the U.S. is infected with HIV? There is a lot of work to be done if we are to end the HIV epedemic. Many barriers and challenges to HIV prevention persist - ignorance, stigma, and discrimination - just to name a few. I ask you on this World AIDS Day to be a part of the solution - talk to your friends, families and colleagues. Pass on the message that the time has come to intensify our efforts to stop the HIV epedemic. Let everyone know that, in this country, every 9.5 minutes, someone is infected with HIV.

-Written by Maithe Enriquez, PhD, RN, ANP is Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing, Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at UMKC and Nurse Practitioner at Truman Medical Center in Kansas City.

Technology Services for the Classroom

UMKC has a new technical resource for faculty to improve communication, the flow of information, and ways to interact in the classroom. With eInstruction you can incorporate this software into your classroom to gain immediate feedback from students.

College of Arts and Sciences Moves to the A&S E-Zine to Get Out the News

The first issue of the UMKC CAS electronic newsletter was distributed in late October 2009 to all A&S faculty and staff. This new adventure into e-communications was born of both desire and necessity. The desire was to put a new look on the way we share information about the College. The necessity came from a backlog of information that had accumulated over the summer that could not be readily put on the A&S web site. The “Late Summer 2009 Issue” can be found at: http://cas.umkc.edu/News/CAS-News-Late-Summer-2009.pdf

Since this is a new enterprise in a rapidly changing environment, we expect that the look of our e-zine will continue to evolve for a while. We hope we can provide both timely and broad coverage of past and coming activities, of achievements and successes, and tell about the entire College family: staff, faculty, students, alumni as well as benefactors and friends of the College. While it may be necessary at times to focus more on one than another of these “family members,” over time we plan to showcase them all. And we want to do it by being a guide and not an essayist. That is, we plan to have little text and many links to fuller discussions and more details that should be found on department and other Web sites. We intend to have some photos and other graphics that help tell the stories we choose to cover. But our goal is to highlight topics in ways that catch the interest of readers of the E-Zine and point them to where they can find the rest of the story. We do not have the space to tell all that needs to be told about the many outstanding stories found in the College.

While we expect to publish in one-month intervals, special issues are always possible and the academic year calendar may cause us to vary our publication schedule at times. Those who have ideas or items for stories are asked to submit them by way of their chair, director or supervisor to Dale Neuman at Neumand@umkc.edu so that the items can first be posted to the unit’s Web site and we need only then provide a brief notice and the link in the A&S e-zine. We look forward to comments and suggestions.

-Written by Dale Neuman, Editor of the A&S Newsletter, Special Projects Associate, College of Arts and Sciences. He is also Director of the Harry S Truman Center for Governmental Affairs and Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science.

Celebrating Excellence

If you have not already heard UMKC has new faculty and staff awards. In order to honor you for all of your ongoing efforts in teaching, service, mentoring and research, UMKC has both new and long standing awards that highlight the diversity of work taking place every day at UMKC. We encourage you to take the time to nominate those that deserve to be recognized, and we greatly look forward to celebrating those achievements in the New Year.

Please visit the Faculty and Staff Awards Web site, learn about the new awards, and nominate those that have provided outstanding contributions to our campus community and community at large.