KCUMB, MSSU meet about medical school

Missouri Southern President Bruce Speck said local organizers are moving ahead with a fundraising campaign to build a medical school on the Joplin school’s campus despite the news that the board of trustees of the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences has not signed off on the project.

Acting KCUMB President Dr. Danny Weaver met with Speck on Wednesday to gather facts and information on the project so he could inform his board of trustees about the details and get their blessing to continue.

Weaver, the president of the board of trustees, took over the helm at KCUMB after the board fired its former CEO of 14 years, Karen Pletz, and two other administrators.

Speck said he had been working with Pletz on the project to build an osteopathic medical school on the campus of Missouri Southern and was not aware of what she had told her board.

“I worked with our board on this,” Speck said. “I kept them informed about it, our board has been kept informed every step of the way. I never said to Karen Pletz, by the way, is your board apprised of this, that’s their business so however they were taking care of this was there business. There was an article that came out about this in their alumni magazine about this so there was clearly information being shared at some level but I don’t know what the mechanisms were.

“We continued to proceed with the assumption that both institutions were fully behind it and I think that the institution (KCUMB) is philosophically in accord with what we’re doing. It’s just that you’ve got a situation where the board on their end was not apprised of things and there may be some things that they can find out and part of that was today.”

Weaver spoke with reporters after his meeting with Speck on Thursday and said he was in Joplin to gather the specifics about the project and take them back to the KCUMB board of trustees.

“Understand this that the previous board of trustees was only aware of this project somewhere around the end of summer,” Weaver said. “It was going to be brought up and discussed at our October meeting but unfortunately other circumstances dictated otherwise. That process hasn’t been addressed and that’s why I’m here. We meet again in April, but we’ll be meeting by telephone before that.”

Weaver said he believes the board of KCUMB would like to proceed with this project, but it needs more information before giving the final go-ahead to proceed.

“I was directed by the board to come down and discuss that with them but our position still remains the same that we are continuing to move forward with the project down here,” Weaver said. “It’s a huge project, we’ve never ever made the decision to come down and assist in opening a new medical school. The initial plan was to try to open in 2012 but that’s probably a little bit aggressive so it’s really still between 2012 and 2013. It depends on how the accreditation issues go and how the board takes to the project.”

Speck said Missouri Southern officials and a steering committee of local residents is pushing forward with the fundraising campaign.

Speck said he got the impression from his meeting with Weaver that the likelihood that KCUMB’s board will say no to the project is remote.

“I think we have a very thorough and frank conversation today and that conversation leads me to believe we’re headed in the right direction,” Speck said. “Now, certainly the board there could say no, I understand that but I don’t think that’s very likely. I don’t go out to Downstream very often and when I do, I don’t gamble, but If I was going out there I would want to make sure I had really great odds because that’s the kind of guy I am and I think we’ve got really good odds on this.”

Speck said Missouri Southern has borrowed $250,000 from its foundation to pay for architectural fees and other expenses leading up to the construction and no taxpayer money is involved in the project.

“We have been very careful to make sure that everything we’ve done with this project has been taken out of private money and not public,” Speck said. “We don’t want anybody to be able to come up here and say, oh when you went to Kansas City and you met with them, you went on the University’s dime. We’ve been very careful to break all of those out and those kinds of expenses, they’re fairly minor so far but as we move ahead there will be expenses. There will fees for the architect and there will be things you need money for so that’s why we borrowed the money.”