Strengths/Opportunities - University of Houston



UH Division of Health Sciences and Health Professions Task Force

Dr. Richard Scamell, Chair

Summary of June 1997 Report

Opportunities arising from a health sciences division and stronger Texas Medical Center affiliations:

1. Establishing a health sciences division as a way to reorganize our health professional colleges and health related degree programs would allow UH to offer students, faculty, and staff studying and working at the Texas Medical Center (TMC) high quality education and services that are not available at the TMC. TMC institutions may also provide clinical training opportunities and coursework related to patient care that may benefit University of Houston students.

2. The replacement of existing entrepreneurial relationships between University of Houston faculty and the TMC with alliances that are more institutional in nature should lead to increased collaboration between TMC institutions and faculty across the UH campus who are involved in health sciences and health care related research.

3. Through better coordination of research interests between UH faculty and TMC institutions, the potential exists for an increased number of joint research initiatives where UH faculty participate on grants as co-principal investigators instead of consultants.

Questions regarding the development of a health sciences division:

1. Can the University of Houston deliver the kind of academic and research programs that will allow it to capitalize on the projected growth in the health sciences and health professions?

2. Can an infrastructure be organized to develop and then coordinate relationships between University of Houston health-related faculty and programs with the needs and ongoing activities in the Texas Medical Center?

3. What costs are required to initiate and support a health sciences division? And what funding streams exist or can be established to provide startup and operational costs so that it is not a financial drain on the remainder of the university?

Issues related to our role at the Texas Medical Center:

1. How do we secure needed support from the Texas Medical Center? Authority is diffuse among various TMC institutions, requiring discussion and agreement among several entities.

2. How do we organize ourselves to best serve the needs of the university and complement the TMC institutions? The organizational structure of the division could follow a typical medical school health sciences model. However, this is a model adopted by several Medical Center institutions and could render UH a “second class citizen” at the TMC. Alternately, we could adopt a model that accounts for the distinct programmatic offerings of the University of Houston.

Internal organizational issues related to the new division:

1. Would the reporting lines of deans change into a dual report, both to the chief academic officer and the division head?

2. If some parts of a college (i.e., departments, individual faculty) were to be located at the TMC, to whom would they report (division head and/or college dean)?

3. Should the division include centers and institutes as a way to relate areas that are not part of a specific programmatic thrust (e.g., pharmacy, optometry)?

4. How would individual faculty with pre-existing involvement in the TMC be “folded” into the division? It is possible that individual faculty would initially resist a division’s replacement of their entrepreneurial relationships with relationships that are more institutional in nature. For UH to be successful in the Medical Center there must be a culture shift that embraces and exploits these entrepreneurial efforts for the benefit of both the individual and the institution.

Funding issues:

1. Funding a health sciences division would require both operational support and physical facilities.

2. The primary source of operational funding must be new base revenue obtained through increased base/formula funding, institutional support, and special item support.

3. At least five approaches, which are likely to be most effective in combination with one another, should be considered as possible sources of start up funds for a building and administrative structure: HEAF, philanthropy, bonding authority, special item support, and university endowment funds.

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