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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.
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