39 + Rainbow

In early 2005, members of a blue-ribbon task force of national education experts – led by Benno C. Schmidt, Jr., PhD vice-chair of Edison Schools and former president of Yale University – were brought to Kansas City by the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation. The foundation’s charge: identify a higher education strategy that would make the Kansas City region more competitive in the global knowledge economy of the 21st century.

The findings of the task force were the subject of a community report entitled Time to Get It Right, which concluded that with careful planning and well-focused investments, the region could become a leading life sciences center much like Seattle and San Diego. The University of Kansas Medical Center, by far the largest life sciences academic research institution in the region, was deemed key to the advancement of the region’s goals.

Among the suggestions in the report was that KU Medical Center substantially increase its already significant life sciences research efforts, which could help take the research being done at Kansas City’s Stowers Institute for Medical Research and other science research facilities to the next level – that is, from the laboratory bench to the patient’s bedside.

As a result, these two institutions, in partnership with other area life sciences and medical research facilities, could make metropolitan Kansas City a major player in the life sciences within a decade.

The task force made specific recommendations to the region that would allow KU Medical Center to be among the top 25 life sciences research medical centers in the nation in the next 10 years.

Dr. Schmidt returned one year later to assess the progress. What follows is a summary of what he found as it relates to KUMC, which is documented in the follow-up report Time to Get Things Done.

Research Funding
The task force had recommended that over the course of five years, KU Medical Center double the funding it received from

the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the primary funder of life sciences research in the United States. Among task force members, the expectation was that any incremental increase during the first year of the plan (fiscal year 2006) would be a bonus because NIH funding was flat nationally. But a static NIH budget did not deter KU Medical Center researchers, who continued to submit groundbreaking research proposals. As a result, NIH awarded KU Medical Center $47.7 million in research grants, up $8.3 million, or nearly 22 percent, over the previous year.

The task force also called for the Kansas legislature to raise KU Medical Center’s operating budget by $10 million by fiscal year 2015. The legislature recognized the value of this investment and in 2006 added $5 million to the Medical Center’s budget to support cancer research and care – thus meeting half the 10-year, state supported funding goal in a single year.

Research Faculty
The task force also recommended that KU Medical Center increase its research staff by 100 faculty members within five years at an average of 20 additional researchers per year. Yet just one year later, the research faculty at the KU Medical Center had been expanded by 50 researchers.

Task force members marveled at the rapid growth of the KU Medical Center faculty over the past several years. For example, between fiscal years 2002 and 2006, the number of researchers at KUMC had expanded by more than 40 percent – from about 360 to 510. This includes a 50 percent increase in basic science researchers and a phenomenal 350 percent rise in clinical researchers.

Research Space
The task force set a five-year goal of adding roughly 200,000 square feet of basic science research space to the KU Medical Center campus. In January 2007, the new 205,000-square-foot Kansas Life Sciences Innovation Center opened its doors at 39th and Rainbow. The Center is home to a broad range of basic science research, including liver disease, reproductive sciences, neuroscience, diabetes and the emerging field of proteomics, which examines the structure of proteins and how they fight disease.

“The Center has enabled us to recruit some of the country’s leading physician-scientists away from places such as Vanderbilt, Duke and Emory,” says Barbara Atkinson, MD, Executive Vice Chancellor of KU Medical Center.

Task force chair Benno Schmidt says he is awed by KU Medical Center’s success in expanding its research capacity so quickly. “A transformation of this magnitude is very rare in the usually sedate world of the academy,” he admitted.

More Giant Steps to Come
Schmidt urges officials at KUMC to maintain the momentum they have achieved over the last year if they want to secure status as a top-flight life sciences research medical center. “Once this occurs, there is little doubt that the Kansas City region will enjoy the tremendous economic benefits of being one of the major life sciences centers in the nation.” +

The Time to Get It Right and Time to Get Things Done reports can be found on the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation Web site: www.gkccf.org.

When officials at the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation commissioned the study of Kansas City’s economic future, they sought to hire the best. Their choice to chair the blue-ribbon task force was Benno Schmidt, Jr., PhD, vice-chairman of Edison Schools, a for-profit corporation that operates public schools in a number of districts across the country. Schmidt has extensive experience in higher education, and he understands the vital synergistic relationship between academic institutions and the economic development of their communities. As president of Yale University from 1986-1992, he built strong ties between his university and New Haven. A few years later, Schmidt played a major role in reviving City University of New York. By the time he was done, CUNY had re-established, via record enrollment and higher academic standards, its reputation for excellence. Schmidt currently chairs the board of the non-profit Council for Aid to Education, a group that helps colleges and universities with accountability and academic planning.