Friday, March 05, 2010

MSSU officials scrambling to keep medical school plan alive

The Chart continues to be the only newspaper providing substantial coverage of the shenanigans at Missouri Southern State University, a remarkable accomplishment considering the pressure it is under to sugarcoat the university's problems.

In its latest edition, the newspaper drives the final nails in the coffin of the medical school arrangement with KCUMB, noting President Bruce Speck's comments to the Faculty Senate Monday that the university is shopping around for a similar arrangement with another university:

Missouri Southern administrators are considering a partnership with another university to construct a medical school if the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences decides not to team up for the project, University President Bruce Speck announced in Monday's Faculty Senate meeting.

The decision was made late last week under guidance of the steering committee, a group providing direction for the possible KCUMB partnership. The partnership would call for a $10 million medical school to be built on the northeast corner of Newman and Duquesne Roads.

"They'd like to seek out other schools for the possibility of a medical school on campus here because the community is so in favor of this. They didn't want the idea to die," said Rob Yust, interim vice president of business affairs and one of the members of the steering committee.

When asked if any specific schools are being considered for a partnership, Speck said, "The steering committee kicked around a lot of ideas, and we're pursuing KCUMB the best we can."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Scrambling is right! Dwight Douglas promised the business leaders and the chamber of commerce a medical school in exchange for support of Speck and job.

Now, they scramble... and MSSU is down a quarter of a million they forced the foundation to borrow and hire an architect...

Everything Douglas touches goes terribly sour... what a tragedy...
for Southern.

Anonymous said...

yes and of course they are hiring 3 new staff members for the new health building - it will be clean but cant replace faculty so might not have any teachers