The University of Missouri-Kansas City has launched a national search for a new dean for the university’s acclaimed School of Medicine. The new dean will replace Mary Anne Jackson, M.D., who has announced her pending retirement from the deanship.
The new dean will lead one of the nation’s top urban-serving medical schools as it drives transformative change to improve and innovate medical education and health care in the region.
The UMKC School of Medicine has been an innovator in medical education since its opening in 1971, when it launched its unique and innovative six-year dual BA./M.D. degree program admitting students directly from high school. The school also offers a traditional four-year program for students who have completed an undergraduate degree.
The school has two campuses: one in Kansas City, Missouri, in the heart of the UMKC Health Sciences District; and one in St. Joseph, Missouri, where students receive a rich clinical education at a premier rural health system.
The next dean will be charged with shaping a broad strategy for the UMKC Health Sciences District. The district, formed in 2017, set its goal to become a premier academic health district, engaging in cutting-edge biomedical research and entrepreneurship, delivering state-of-the-science health care and educating the next generation of health-care professionals. Central to that strategy will be leveraging the potential of the forthcoming UMKC Healthcare Innovation and Delivery building, designed to serve as a catalyst for developing the Health Sciences District into a major regional academic medical center that can generate billions of dollars in jobs and economic impact for the Kansas City region.
Expanding the school’s research mission will be another important responsibility for the new dean. With more than 20 core faculty and 40 endowed professors and endowed chairs, the school’s research strengths include vision science, neuroscience, prenatal addiction, trauma/shock, maternal fetal medicine, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, surgical safety and implementation science. The school has received more than $23 million in NIH-sponsored research in the most recent year.
Co-chairs of the search committee are Charlie Shields, President and CEO of University Health, one of the school’s clinical partners; and Kevin Truman, dean of the UMKC School of Science and Engineering. The full committee includes representatives from other clinical partners, faculty from the School of Medicine and other health professions schools in the UMKC Health Sciences District, School of Medicine alumni and UMKC medical students.
The national health-care leadership firm Isaacson, Miller is conducting the search. For more information, contact managing associate Nicholas Strand, 617-933-1913, nstrand@imsearch.com; or search coordinator Lileana “Lily” Sethares, 617-933-1889, lsethares@imsearch.com.