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President welcomes SACS reaffirmation review

Previous articles in this The Catalyst series have described the purpose, process and content of the current accreditation reaffirmation  being prepared for the Commission on Colleges, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). There are multiple steps involved in reaffirming MUSC accreditation for the next 10 years. On Sept. 8 MUSC’s responses to 79 standards were mailed to the SACS-appointed Off-site Review Team and posted on a MUSC Web page. The mailing represented the completion of the first phase. As an introduction to our response, the following letter of welcome  from MUSC President Greenberg to the Off-site Review Team represents an impressive summary of progress since our last SACS reaffirmation in 1996 as well as articulating the challenges MUSC faces.

To: SACS Accreditation Reaffirmation Team
From: Raymond S. Greenberg, M.D., Ph.D., MUSC President
In January 2000, I was privileged to become the eighth President of MUSC following five years as provost and vice president for academic affairs. My tenure at MUSC coincides with the last reaffirmation by SACS. The past 11 years has been a period of substantial progress and growth in spiteof many challenges facing academic health centers.
 
Seven years ago, MUSC was completing a period of unprecedented growth, but also was recovering from one of the most challenging financial periods precipitated by the Federal Balanced Budget Act of 1997. That legislation had severely reduced payments to hospitals, and safety net hospitals like ours were some of the most adversely affected.  Faculty departures were increasing, several major lawsuits, and federal audits were underway. 
 
Through an unprecedented team effort we have managed not only to aggressively meet these challenges, but to define and implement new initiatives to assure continual positive university momentum in a volatile environment that includes state/federal budgetary challenges, rapidly advancing technologies in health care and education, continually growing consumer expectations, constant regulatory changes, and even potential threats of hurricanes, tornados, floods, and earthquakes posed by the geographical location of our campus.
 
Today MUSC enjoys positive financial margins in all major segments; a stable leadership team; and a very low faculty departure rate while continuing to attract and retain a talented, productive, and diverse teaching, research, and service community.
 
Seven new endowed chairs have been recruited in the past two years and several more endowed chairs will be added soon; research funding support has doubled; private philanthropy has tripled; deferred maintenance is down; digital clinical information systems have been implemented; and an innovative strategic planning process tied to the budget has been established. Physical campus improvements have included more than 185,000 square feet of new laboratory space (with three additional research buildings under development); a state-of-the-art facility for the College of Health Professions (one of four renovated historic properties), a Student Educational Center (study/class/lab) created in prime central campus location; over 1,200 new parking spaces with additional 1,500 space garage pending construction; near completion of  a major addition to the Hollings Cancer Center; and a recent ground breaking for a new College of Dental Medicine/clinical facility.
 
We are particularly proud of two additional and very special initiatives identified and carried forward that were almost inconceivable several years ago. These are collaborative working relationships with Clemson University (e.g., joint bioengineering program) and the University of South Carolina (USC) (e.g., joint pharmacy school), and a close to completed Phase I hospital expansion.
 
Through the bioengineering alliance, Clemson has placed multiple faculty and graduate students on the MUSC campus, and plans are underway to build a joint facility in Charleston that will include engineering faculty and students from USC, Clemson, and MUSC. We are fortunate to have recruited into an endowed chair the former Senior Science Advisor to the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, to spearhead this effort.
 
The South Carolina College of Pharmacy (SCCP) has been created by integrating existing separate colleges of pharmacy at USC and MUSC. The new school will continue to have educational and research activities on both campuses, while also adding an Upstate presence. The national accrediting body for pharmacy schools has given its initial approval and the first entering class has enrolled. Two endowed chairs have joined the pharmacy faculty to help establish the Drug Discovery and Development initiative that will be a central part of the new college. For the sake of the 2007 SACS Reaffirmation process, the MUSC campus of SCCP is considered a part of the MUSC enterprise.
 
We also have partnered with our sister teaching hospitals in Columbia, Greenville and Spartanburg through a newly created non-profit entity, Health Sciences South Carolina, to improve medical research, education, patient care and economic development. The Duke Endowment just made its largest health grant ever, a $21 million award over three years, to this collaborative enterprise, and statewide programs are being developed through the state matching endowed chair program. By partnering with our colleagues around the state, we are leveraging the resources of all of our institutions. This teamwork will help propel the state of South Carolina into a leadership position in the health sciences, giving renewed meaning to the MUSC motto:  Auget Largiendo, “she enriches by giving.”
 
One of our most immediate and significant challenges has been to restore fiscal health to the University’s medical center. This was achieved through an innovative combination of organizational restructuring and operational improvements. These actions positioned the University to undertake a progressive replacement of its aging and largely outdated hospital facilities. Phase I of the new hospital, to be completed by mid-2007, is a 650,000 square foot, 160 bed state-of-the-art center for the diagnosis and treatment of heart, vascular and digestive diseases. Plans for Phase II are well under way, and we hope to launch construction within five years. This new educational/clinical laboratory opportunity has stimulated the ambitious goals of our medical center to become a national leader in clinical effectiveness and patient safety.
 
Many challenges still lie ahead. We will continue efforts to assure affordability of education while accommodating to reduced state support; construct additional research space; address substandard educational spaces; successfully complete a $300 million Capital Campaign; continue attracting excellent students, faculty and staff; launch successful operations in Phase I hospital expansion while continuing to plan and finance Phase II; and build additional statewide collaborative programs. Ongoing success will be assured by this academic community’s unyielding focus on our institution’s most basic mission which is “to preserve and optimize human life in South Carolina and beyond—in an environment for learning and discovery through education of health care professionals and biomedical scientists, research in the health sciences, and provision of comprehensive health care.”

   

Friday, Sept. 15, 2006
Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Island Papers at 849-1778, ext. 201.