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Drove past the new William Clements University Hospital yesterday created by his $100MM donation to UT Southwestern. 100MM donation could have created a medical school for us or a bio med engineering school. Hell, it could have created enough President scholarships and endowed faculty spots to jump us into the top 30 schools ranking list. Bet our average SAT score would have jumped 50 points with our ability to attract more quality students with scholarship money.

No one mentions this but what a huge screwup by Turner, Cheves and company to not get that money. Somebody's head should have rolled....... What a game-changer it could have been. Instead, just another building on the Parkland campus......................

friar,

I still have hopes that the university will see the value of a medical school in the next 20 years. Now that the facilities and campus footprint are (for the most) complete with the Unbridled campaign, I believe the next step for SMU is to a) become a tier one research university and b) breaking into the Top 30 and being a challenger to Rice as the best university in Texas.

Do you think we have the commitment and resources to have a long range vision of a medical school or at the very least an alliance with an existing medical school?

Wow - friar you just won stupid post of the year. Lets have heads roll of the two guys that have raised about 2 BILLION for SMU?

Starting a med school from scratch in a very crowded med school space is impossible for SMU. An affiliation is the way to go. They have been working on this a long time already - it is not new news.

gostangs wrote:Wow - friar you just won stupid post of the year. Lets have heads roll of the two guys that have raised about 2 BILLION for SMU?

Starting a med school from scratch in a very crowded med school space is impossible for SMU. An affiliation is the way to go. They have been working on this a long time already - it is not new news.

There is still a market for medical schools in TX. There is only ten in all of Texas (included Dell Medical School). Having a medical school will nearly double our research dollars. California has 11, and NY has 12.

I do agree that if we receive a 100 million donation, it should go towards scholarships and expanding Lyle. To start a new medical school we will need about $200-250 million dollars. We should try and have an affiliation with UT Southwestern.

there will be 11 medical schools in Texas

BMC
UT-Galveston
UT-Houston
TAMU
TTU-El Paso Paul Foster
TTU-Lubbock
UT-HSCSA
UT-Southwestern
north Texas state-TCOM

and then UT-Austin Dell and UT-RGV

the TTU El Paso Paul Foster is now independent of the Lubbock medical school

and for TAMU really the Temple campus and the Bryan campus are both 4 year campuses it is just that TAMU has merged them all together and will soon merge 100% of the TAMU-HSC components under the leadership of the College Station campus

so if you counted Temple and Bryan the same way that UT and Texas Tech have theirs set up where each 4 year school is a "medical school" Texas would have 12 medical schools

as it is Texas has or will soon have 12 locations where students can take all 4 years of medical school no matter how you place them or under any different leadership or campus

as for an affiliation with UT-Southwestern I am sure there are things SMU could do and I know there are already things they do, but as for any medical student slots on the like I think that UTA and UTD would not be too happy about that

also as it is currently UT-Southwestern has a need for residency slots and not a need for more students because of the Baylor Hospital and Scott and White merger and Texas A&M coming into dallas and taking those Baylor Hospital residency slots from UT-Southwestern based on the previous affiliation with Scott and White (Temple) and also Baylor wanted to "distance" from UT-Southwestern because of some of the budget/accounting issues and some of the residency issues UT-Southwestern was having recently

so right now UT-Southwestern has more issues than trying to affiliate and add students

a better idea in my opinion would be for SMU, TCU and Baylor to get together possibly with a couple of other schools and open a medical school in Fort Worth

move the Baylor University nursing program over there, perhaps U-Dallas could get their pharmacy program dreams back up and going and place it there and Baylor especially would love a medical school and had talked to BMC after Rice and BMC could not come to an agreement

I know SMU in particular would probably be loath to work with Baylor and TCU and to have it in Fort Worth, but Fort Worth has the makings of a nice medical center if there was a teaching facility to tie it all together and The City of Fort Worth is desperate for a 4 year MD program and north Texas state is failing at putting that together and has probably shelved that idea and with their budget issues and all of the other crap they are running poorly (dallas campus, law school that will suck wind, and the UCD) they can hardly afford to screw up on a medical MD program especially when their DO faculty don't want it and they have already been basically mocked for saying it would only cost 25 million to add an MD program.....that is a north Texas state staple to low ball the cost of something and then once the ball gets rolling (or stuck in the mud usually for them) suddenly the cost skyrocket and they go begging to the state for money

perhaps get St. Marys, Trinity and Incarnate Word in on it as well with a promise that down the road a San Antonio 4 year school would be started as well.....Incarnate Word just recently shelved their plans (in the last few weeks) for a DO program, but they have been very successful of late adding other programs like pharmacy and raising a lot of money to do so

maybe even Southwestern and Austin College as well and St Edwards if any of them were interested

everyone kicks in funds and receives slots based in funds kicked in and split up the research areas as well for "credit" for those dollars as well similar to how the Big 10 CIC splits up who gets credit for research dollars generated.....I have no idea how their methods are, but more than likely it is the primary investigator or the primary investigators for each grant that get most of the credit for their school

and to be clear the CIC does not HAVE money they are merely a mechanism to cooperate and share research and make it easier for researchers to collaborate to get external grants they do not have money of their own that they distribute

Fort Worth has the desire, the location with cheap land, the facilities all grouped together and they have the big money people to help get it funded......it is a matter of can those universities work together and not get bogged down my cities and legislatures from each area trying to tell them to say in "their city"

the truth is Waco and the Waco area probably can't handle a 4 year school for the foreseeable future, UT-Southwestern has most of dallas locked up and TAMU is moving in [deleted] the rest and Fort Worth is hungry and I think universities in San Antonio would play along if there were concrete plans to get a school there in a set period of time as well

Yeah I saw an article this weekend in the DMN about UNT having trouble with their lenders possibly putting a negative rating on them. In today's higher ed climate that is a big screw up.

StallionsModelT wrote:Yeah I saw an article this weekend in the DMN about UNT having trouble with their lenders possibly putting a negative rating on them. In today's higher ed climate that is a big screw up.

they were basically counting some employees in "auxiliary" areas as state employees and paying for their benefits with state funds when those employees were not eligible for them to be paid that way.....started with the library may spread to housing and dining as well and perhaps other areas

they will most likely have to pay that money back and also in the future they will get less formula funding because those employees will no longer be falsely counted as state funding eligible

along with that the bond holders were concerned about a decrease in state funding for the upcoming 2 years, but the reality is the north Texas state system has been given 37 million MORE in state funding VS the previous budget so there was no decrease in state funding.....the Denton branch campus did have a slight decrease, but the bonds are system wide with all components of the system being responsible for 100% of them

the bond holders also had concerns about the instability in leadership with all 3 components of the system, Denton, Fort Worth and the dallas community college all having new presidents coming in and the Fort Worth one is only a temp and the did not like how the last permanent Denton president was fired or the Fort Worth president was fired

there are concerns about slower than anticipated growth as well which is a combination of the Denton campus growing much slower than in the recent past and the inability of the dallas community college campus to grow at all since opening (yet they keep spending more money there) and I would all but guarantee that the law school does not meet enrollment projections and if it does it will be with poor quality students and that puts accreditation and reputation at risk......not a good way to start admitting people with a pulse to meet enrollment needs to be the "low cost law alternative" so the law school will most likely be a drag on them as well

lastly they have spent heavily into reserves already and they have some dorms they want to build and even before the accounting irregularities came to light the BOR was already concerned with the bond rating dropping to AA- from AA and that was before the outlook was changed to negative which is what recently happened

so they were already concerned with a drop to AA- from AA, but the BOR was willing to accept that to get the dorms built and now they have the financial accounting issue and a negative outlook placed on their bonds so the are probably going to AA- no matter what once they start the dorm projects

and at AA- you can't go lower before institutional investors are no longer interested in those bonds because they are mostly all restricted to the highest quality which ends at AA- and so that pretty much puts a halt to construction projects and puts a crimp on the overall budget as they work to pay down those bonds and keep the AA- and to try and keep from slipping below AA- and to eventually get back to AA or better

and the "state funding" issue was not an issue for any other system in Texas as well so it is WELL beyond that issue which in reality was not even an issue because the system is ahead in state funding from the last budget cycle

so yes it is a major screw up and leadership should be fired starting with lee the idiot jackson, but it is north Texas state so onward and......well stagnant and losing ground to everyone else!

Good stuff rodrod.

This is an interesting discussion as I financed Washington University's construction of its Children's Hospital in 1983, St.Louis College of Pharmacy's campus expansion in 1986, was the original banker for Republic Health Corporation (headquartered in Dallas) start up and expansion during the early 1980's, and a line banker to both HCI and HCA corporations. Having a medical school doesn't mean squat as to increasing a university's ranking, unless it is a major research institution. A good example is St. Louis University vs. Washington University in St. Louis. St.Louis U's. med school had little in the way of research grants, but is a teaching institution/ hospital since the 1800's. St.Louis U. is ranked in US News at about 118th in the nation. Wash U. on the other hand has an enormous amount of research grants, which ranks the med school center/hospital complex in the top six in the nation. In the past 10 years or so, Wash U. has an arm called Cortex which has used eminent domain, granted by the city and state, to acquire property to the east of its complex to build a research industrial park. It's a combination incubator lab/ mature corporation lab research area. The company's that reside there are two people start ups to DuPont. Wash U. funds many of these project start ups and as a result has stock and patent/ copyright ownership to the company's output. This is what attracts the minds, money, and as a result, a high ranking for Wash U. Its hospital, as a place to go for care is the sh_ts but its research is top notch.

gostangs wrote:Wow - friar you just won stupid post of the year. Lets have heads roll of the two guys that have raised about 2 BILLION for SMU?

Starting a med school from scratch in a very crowded med school space is impossible for SMU. An affiliation is the way to go. They have been working on this a long time already - it is not new news.

Re-read my post. It was a monumental screw-up to miss on this opportunity to get this type of gift - a game changer of some sort for us. Someone in our fund raising apparatus didn't do their job and should have been held accountable.

friarwolf wrote:

gostangs wrote:Wow - friar you just won stupid post of the year. Lets have heads roll of the two guys that have raised about 2 BILLION for SMU?

Starting a med school from scratch in a very crowded med school space is impossible for SMU. An affiliation is the way to go. They have been working on this a long time already - it is not new news.

Re-read my post. It was a monumental screw-up to miss on this opportunity to get this type of gift - a game changer of some sort for us. Someone in our fund raising apparatus didn't do their job and should have been held accountable.

fire someone because someone donated money elsewhere? Or would you find a public flogging acceptable?

Whatever, I give up.............

Why I think that SMU should have a medical school, I don't think that they would want to build one in Fort Worth. UTSW area would be the way to go. Currently UTSW is trying the MD Anderson model with all their building, and frankly they may be thinking in the future of creating a ACO (obamacare). Also UTSW has some major projects in the future that would be nice if SMU could start doing research with. 1) UTSW is nearing completion of their cyclotron facility and the concrete is being poured this week for the Vault. 2) UTSW is either a: building a proton beam therapy close to campus or b: building a proton beam therapy outpatient facility in arlington. Already SMU is doing some interesting research with radioactive substances, but a closer working connection with the new facilities at UTSW would bring more money and recognition to SMU.

NewAgeMustange wrote:Why I think that SMU should have a medical school, I don't think that they would want to build one in Fort Worth. UTSW area would be the way to go. Currently UTSW is trying the MD Anderson model with all their building, and frankly they may be thinking in the future of creating a ACO (obamacare). Also UTSW has some major projects in the future that would be nice if SMU could start doing research with. 1) UTSW is nearing completion of their cyclotron facility and the concrete is being poured this week for the Vault. 2) UTSW is either a: building a proton beam therapy close to campus or b: building a proton beam therapy outpatient facility in arlington. Already SMU is doing some interesting research with radioactive substances, but a closer working connection with the new facilities at UTSW would bring more money and recognition to SMU.

UTSW launched an ACO Jan. 1.

If we're talking about raising $200-250M for a med school, I'd prefer we invest that money into making our already reputable law and business schools elite, not to mention increasing financial aid opportunities for highly qualified students to improve the quality of the student body. Also expedite increasing enrollment (believe this is already in the works) and get the engineering school on the rise as well.

It's tough to get a new school started from the ground up, especially a medical school. I'd prefer we get what we already have to be top-notch before considering a medical school venture, unless some filthy rich donor really wants to bankroll it.