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MUSC Excellence at the College of Medicine/UMA
Quality of faculty, ideas help to boost funding
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by Jerry Reves, M.D.
Dean, College of Medicine and Vice President, Medical Affairs
As a university, MUSC has achieved a landmark in research funding. The
university reached the $100 million National Institutes of Health (NIH)
mark with $101 million and a total research award amount of $202
million during fiscal year 2008. This, better than any other way,
demonstrates that we are a true “research university” that is
able to compete nationally with the best, larger and more diverse
universities.
The College of Medicine faculty received the bulk of the MUSC NIH
awards—$89 million in NIH ($110 million in total federal). Our MUSC
Excellence pillar goal for quality is to improve steadily in NIH
awards. One of the goals is to be among the upper quartiles in NIH
funding among peer (free-standing academic health center medical
schools) institutions and we ultimately want to be in the upper
quartile among all university schools of medicine. We can and will get
there by improving steadily each year as we have done. We have been
able to continue to improve our NIH awards despite the flat NIH budget,
and this speaks volumes about the quality of our faculty and their
ideas and work. The NIH award is our quality goal, because it is the
best measure we have of the competitiveness of our faculty since all of
these awards must be better than 85 percent of other applications as
judged by peer scientists.
Despite the many financial hurdles that keep getting in our way, we
have continued to improve in the research arena, and this has permitted
us to continue to invest in the people and buildings and other
infrastructure that allow this academic pursuit of excellence. In the
end, the reason I am so gratified to see these successes in research is
that it means in our college and university. It is not just the
students who continue to learn, but the faculty, too, who are on the
frontiers generating new knowledge. This makes for an exciting
environment where everyone is learning.
Friday, Oct. 31, 2008
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