Message from the Dean
Lifeline – June 2005
The School of Biological Sciences: The Model for an Academic Research Unit.
January 1, 2005, marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of the School of Biological Sciences. There could be no better time than the present to evaluate the successes, and shortcomings, of our School. Created as the School of Basic Life Sciences in January 1985, our School's charge was to provide basic science instruction to support the health professional schools at UMKC, establish graduate educational programs, and build a nationally recognized research operation. The mission of the School grew in 1992, when it was expanded to include the UMKC undergraduate biology program. Since that time, we have grown to a faculty of nearly 40 and a combined undergraduate and graduate student body of 350. Although it is premature to predict the future successes of our undergraduate alumni, our Ph.D. graduates have gone on to post-doctoral positions at some of the best laboratories in the country and then to become productive members of the scientific community. Placement of our graduates in prestigious laboratories fuels a cycle of success that, although not easily measured in administrative terms (dollars and cents), continues to reward our Unit with recognition among our peers.
Our success with graduate education is directly attributable to the quality of the SBS faculty. Through leadership, determination, and adherence to the highest standards of quality in scholarly activities, the School of Biological Sciences has risen from a patchwork collection of faculty having virtually no extramural resources to a multimillion-dollar research-intensive School in a short period. Despite setbacks over the course of the last four years associated with administrative decisions and policies that resulted in the loss of approximately 25 percent of our tenure-track faculty and nearly 50 percent of our extramural funding, the School has survived and has demonstrated tremendous resilience. Our faculty members continue to successfully compete for individual investigator grants from the NIH, the NSF and other federal and national funding agencies at a level higher than our peers. A research space audit conducted last year by the Office of Graduate Faculties and the Office of Research Services credited SBS with attracting $186 in extramural support per sq. ft. of research space, and even more impressive was the $241,964 in extramural research support generated per full-time SBS faculty member, a figure almost twice as high as other academic units on our campus. Not only is research productivity rebounding, teaching efforts and graduate enrollments are at an all-time high.
I am thrilled and relieved that we have survived our greatest challenge to date. However, new challenges lie ahead for our School. As Dean, I am determined that our attention be focused on measures for success as prescribed during the foundation of the School. We will ensure careful investment and management of resources, pursue funding opportunities to provide competitive salaries and start-up packages for outstanding faculty recruits, acquire and maintain state-of-the-art equipment, recruit and admit quality graduate student candidates, continue our commitment to our undergraduate education, and develop our research strengths, such as that in biomolecular structure and function, into programs with national recognition. As an integral component of fundamental Life Sciences research efforts on our campus and in the Kansas City area, our School will serve as a barometer by which UMKC's success in this area should be measured.
Lawrence A. Dreyfus
Dean
