It seems that UH’s leadership has been successful in whetting the appetites of students and concocting a great recipe for excellence and more profound research at our institution ‘- a concept known as flagship status.
So far, UH is on the right course to achieve this vision. However, this mixture might be lacking one key ingredient crucial to making the University’s dreams come true.
There are three main elements that comprise a mark of success when it comes to flagship status, as established by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board: research expenditures, the number of doctorates awarded by a university, and the number of disciplines in which these doctorates are awarded.
UH has surpassed the necessary mark in two of these areas.
The THECB requires 100-plus doctorates awarded across 15-plus disciplines. UH has greatly exceeded these requirements, awarding 260 doctorates in 50-plus disciplines on average each year, according to the University’s official Web site.
Let’s do the math. What are we missing here? Money.
The THECB also requires $150 million-plus in annual research expenditures, and UH only generates half of this. Here is where the Texas Medical Center comes in to sweeten the pot, so to speak.
Of the $75 million reported by UH, $61 million of this money is deemed to be health-related. The Texas Medical Center employs more than 72,000 people, and accounts for $14 billion worth of regional or Houston/Metropolitan economic impact annually.
The center has had ties to UH for many years. This relationship has become more defined and explicit recently, however, as the Texas Medical Center made a declaration Oct. 9 on its Web site that UH had become an ‘official member of (its) institution.’
Of course, many would readily see the apparent mutual benefits to both organizations, since UH has been producing respected pharmacy scholars for a long time.
However, there is a non-traditional element in this new engagement between the two institutions.
The presence of other academic organizations’ relationships with the Texas Medical Center are more readily noticeable throughout the center’s campus, such as the Baylor and UT medical facilities, as well as the Prairie View A&M College of Nursing.
UH, however, has no medicine or nursing colleges. Furthermore, pharmacy degrees are not counted toward the doctoral standards set by the THECB.
Unwilling to pass up an opportunity, although it may not be as apparent in the traditional sense, it seems that the Texas Medical Center and our University have been wise in forming new collaborations of great mutual benefit and synergy.
For example, innovative opportunities exist for partnerships between programs in the fields of medical technology and biomedical engineering to improve facilities management and quality control, to name a few.
While UH can offer innovative research opportunities and excellence in these and other areas to benefit the Texas Medical Center, the center can provide opportunities for scholastic internships, as well as development and career placement for UH scholars, through flagship research.
This collaboration, through which each organization taps the core competencies of the other, will generate revenue for UH in the process.
This will certainly help to deliver the sweet taste of victory that many at UH are anxiously awaiting: ‘Flagship status, Mission Accomplished.’
Ruben Slater is a communication graduate student and may be reached at [email protected]
