Ingram's October 2022

aren’t all necessarily found in technical texts. None of the concerns from those at major research universities exempt the David Spittals of the world from chal lenges of their own at small, private

Even at the smaller state universities, the sense of urgency is palpable, as with Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph. “Over the past two years, MWSU has shifted our academic programs in or

research excellence.” Last year, he said, the university an nounced MizzouForward, a $1.5 billion ini tiative to supercharge MU’s research capacity over 10 years. It is designed, Choi said, “to change our entire research culture by bring ing the right people together with the right tools to make ground-breaking discoveries faster than ever before.” To achieve that goal, Mizzou will hire up to 150 new world-class researchers over the next five years and task them with driving new discoveries and preparing students for careers in fields that don’t even exist today. “There’s real urgency to these investments because we believe we can make a difference right now,” Choi said. Agrawal is pleased to point out mul- tiple efforts to transform UMKC. Among them are programs like Career Escalators, which has engaged some 75 companies and civic leaders to create instructional opportu nities that accelerate internships, networking and employment preparation in high-demand fields like health care, engineering, business, education and law. Others include physical improvements like the $100 million expansion and upgrade of the Health Sciences complex on Hospital Hill, and organizational changes, such as this summer’s restructuring outdated department silos to better align classroom instruction with skills needed after graduation. Likening departments to Lego blocks that need to be rearranged, Agrawal asked, “Are these the correct configurations for the 21st century? They were put together and

Going Up | Chancellor Mauli Agrawal was on hand to meet students at the rollout of UMKC’s Career Escalators program, aimed at connecting employers with a work force that brings immediate, relevant skills to the job site.

liberal-arts colleges. Spittal, president of MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, says the greatest challenges for uni versities everywhere can be distilled into a single word: “uncertainty.” “The challenges of pre-COVID have ac celerated and are magnified by new and complex economic, employment and regulatory issues,” Spittal says. “Rising wages and the competition for qualified or specialized personnel is increas-ingly challenging. The current inflationary en vironment is in conflict with desire to moderate or preserve affordability when cost of personnel, goods and ser-vices con tinue to escalate at record levels.” While his own enterprise has been com- paratively stable in recent years, “the unprecedented and complex challenges im pact all institutions large, smaller, public and independent. MANU, then is “building an aggressive and innovative strategy to reposi tion and redesign programs, operations and financial structure focused on 2030,” he says, and the highest priority “is to be ‘student cen tric’ and understand and respond to the needs of a new generation and work force.” So how are universities responding to those thorny issues?

der to focus specifically on technology based, professional degree programs which have both high student-demand and meet the work-force needs of our region,” said President Elizabeth Ken nedy. “We have collaborated with busi ness, industry, health care, and govern mental entities to create a steady supply of highly skilled and well-educated graduates in nursing, business, engineering technology, law enforcement, and education.” MU’s Choi points to advances like NextGen Precision Health. “Though operational

for less than a year, it’s al ready changing lives,”

The University of Missouri’s NextGen Precision Health Institute

he said. “For exam ple, two NextGen faculty members recently pub lished research that could lead to new treat ments for Type 1 diabe tes. NextGen is also part of a larger surge of investments in

66

I n g r a m ’ s

October 2022