By BRENT MARTIN

St. Joseph Post

University of Missouri curators toured the UMKC School of Medicine St. Joseph campus Wednesday afternoon and held their public meeting at the St. Joseph Country Club today.

Officials with the university also pledged their support for a dental school on the Missouri Western State University campus despite legislators failing to approve a $7 million appropriations for it.

University of Missouri President, Mun Choi, tells reporters during a news conference there is a reason the Board of Curators held its meeting in St. Joseph.

“St. Joseph is a very important community in Missouri,” Choi tells reporters. “And we want to do whatever is possible for the University of Missouri system to support the economic, educational, and health care needs of this region.”

The University of Missouri Boar of Curators toured the UMKC School of Medicine, St Joseph campus Wednesday afternoon. The School of Medicine began within the walls of the Mosaic Life Care campus. This fall, it will move into a new building, right across the street from Mosaic. The Board of Curators held its meeting at the St. Joseph Country Club.

An effort to create a UMKC Dental School was dealt a blow this past legislative session. An appropriation of $7 million was contained in the massive, $513 million capital improvement package that seemed headed for approval. That is until the Missouri House Budget Committee chair, Rep. Dirk Deaton of Noel, skipped over the bill, refusing to let it come before the full chamber for a vote. The moved shocked even majority Republicans, who weren’t tipped off to his intentions. It also sparked anger in the Missouri Senate and set a sour tone to the end of the session the legislature couldn’t shake.

Choi says the dental school is a logical expansion of the UMKC footprint in St. Joseph.

“It’s exciting that we’ve had our first graduates of the four-year medical school at this campus in St. Joseph,” Choi says. “The goal is to expand that to 20 students per year and, in addition, to bring the dental program as well as dental hygiene program (to St. Joseph).”

Board of Curators chair Todd Graves, a native of Tarkio, says there’s a reason the board leaves Columbia to hold meetings in other parts of the state.

“We’re not the university of people who live in Columbia, Missouri,” Graves says. “We’re the University of Missouri and we’re bringing many, many programs and opportunities all across the state and no one – as a native of this area I appreciate it – no one’s benefited more than northwest Missouri. But certainly, other areas have benefited a great deal as well.”

UMKC proposes establishing the dental school on the Missouri Western campus. Students in the program would serve their first two years on the Kansas City campus before moving to the St. Joseph campus.

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