UMass Medical School
A Collaborative Global View Starts at Home

The global economy is drastically and rapidly changing the higher education medical research playing field. Travel, commerce, and communications, to name only a few, are joining countries together that once maintained a separatist identity.
     
Medical research knowledge is expanding and changing so rapidly because of international collaboration that medical students might find medical techniques they learned in college outmoded by the time they finish their residency.
     
An avian flu or mad cow disease outbreak not only threatens the host country but threatens the world. This global view of disease is presenting new challenges to institutional leaders of medical research such as the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS).

The University of Massachusetts Medical School has met these challenges by building an infrastructure of collaboration that starts at the global level. With the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine being awarded to UMMS faculty member Dr. NAME Mello, the school’s reputation and relationship with the world research community is now expanded.

On the national level, UMMS is working with organizations such as the National Institute of Health, and partnering with many national corporations. They have become an epicenter of medical research attracting students, faculty, and staff from throughout the United States.

On a state level, their proactive partnership with such state organizations as the Massachusetts Higher Education Consortium has brought them a powerful cooperative purchasing leverage that translates in cost savings and effective management.
     
Locally, UMMS has continually reached out to business and organizations that want to create positive partnerships with the University. This includes partnering with local female- and minority-owned businesses.
     
One of the most important collaborative forums that UMMS has created is internally with its faculty and staff.  UMMS has continually strived to create a cooperative atmosphere of medical research where faculty and staff work together for the common goal of delivering the world solutions to what ails them.
     
Collaboration internally between employees can be one of the greatest challenges that face any organization, but UMMS has met this challenge with creating a culture of medical research that supports the enthusiasm of faculty and staff for the work being done. UMMS does this by delivering the tools the faculty and staff need to pursue their research and allowing the freedom to use them.
     
To find out more about the innovative tools the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester has developed to create a successful culture of medical research, look for the Fall 2008 issue of Higher Education Consortia magazine.