University of Missouri-Kansas City

The UMKC Department of Architecture, Urban Planning and Design hosted its annual Bud Persons Scholarship Competition in March of 2009. Students presented designs for a museum addition to the UMKC Fine Arts Building, and area professionals judged the designs. The jury included Kathy Kelly, a principal at Helix Architect...ure + Design; Rachael Blackburn Cozad, director and CEO of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; Scott Francis, a member of the UMKC Board of Trustees, AUPD Board of Directors and the Francis Family Foundation; Bob Simmons, assistant vice chancellor for UMKC Campus Facilities; and Richard Findley, an architect and university instructor.

The late Bud Persons served as a senior architect at Helix and taught architecture courses at UMKC. To honor Persons' contributions to architecture, Helix created the scholarship.Read More

The Herman and Dorothy Johnson Residence Hall – UMKC’s newest residence hall and the first UMKC building named after minorities – was officially dedicated to Herman and Dorothy Johnson on Oct. 3. The Johnsons were two well-respected supporters of UMKC and started the first UMKC scholarship for African American students... in 1987.

The $17 million, four-story building houses more than 330 students and was constructed to be LEED Certified. In honor of the Johnson’s dedication to community service, the hall strongly encourages residents to participate in community service projects.

Herman and Dorothy Johnson were actively involved at UMKC, as well as in the Kansas City community. A recipient of the Chancellor’s Medal, Herman belonged to the following: Board of Trustees (also as an Emeritus Trustee), Flarsheim Society Charter, School of Medicine Board and the Bloch School of Business and Public Administration’s Dean’s Advisory Board.
Dorothy Johnson was a part-time professor in the UMKC Department of Psychiatry and the First Advisory Council Chair of the Women’s Foundation. The Johnsons helped create the Local Investment Commission (LINC) and served on numerous civic groups.

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7,068 miles to fulfill a dream. Based solely on the recommendation of her neighbor, Jieyi Xu traveled from Shanghai to Kansas City to become a student in UMKCs Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (IEI) program.

Jieyi Xu believes that for students interested in entrepreneurial or innovative thinking, the IEI pr...ogram is the place to learn and excel. Xu is an IEI entrepreneurship-emphasis undergraduate student at the Henry W. Bloch School of Business and Public Administration.

The goal of the program is to inspire future entrepreneurs while becoming the worlds leading research and education institute for entrepreneurship and innovation. Michael Song, Ph.D., executive director, IEI, created the program in January 2006 and is among the top 1 percent of all researchers in the field of technology and innovation. Song also is the Charles N. Kimball, MRI/Missouri Endowed Chair in Management of Technology and Professor of Marketing.

The program has seven full-time tenured and/or tenure-track faculty and seven adjunct faculty, who provide real-world knowledge, research and teaching experience in areas including strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship and product development. The world-class research accomplishments of Song and the IEI faculty provide a unique feature of the program through the integration of research into the classroom and programs.

The UMKC IEI program is interdisciplinary, encouraging enrollment from students campus-wide and across all program levels. More than 800 UMKC students have taken at least one entrepreneurship class since the program was created. Currently, IEI has 195 students engaged in entrepreneurship degree-seeking programs, with an additional 334 students taking classes while enrolled in other academic units on campus.

One of IEIs premier programs is the Regnier Family Foundations Venture Creation Challenge (VCC), which encourages students to create new venture concepts taking their ideas from the whiteboard to the boardroom and presenting the ideas to local investors, entrepreneurs and venture professionals.

In the past three years, 21 ventures have been created by IEI students or through IEI programs. For a list of 2009 winners and their ventures, see Venture Creation Challenge.

Jieyi Xu recently shared her experience as an IEI student. She acknowledges that the decision to enter into the program was the right one for her for a number of reasons the willingness of the leaders to see you succeed, the ability to develop your personal leadership style, and the skill of working as part of a team.Read More

Surpassing more than 2,300 schools surveyed by The Princeton Review, The UMKC Bloch Schools Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (IEI) was recognized as having one of the top 25 graduate entrepreneurship programs in the country. This marks the first time Bloch has been ranked in the top tier of entrepreneuria...l colleges and business schools. The announcement was made by UMKC Chancellor Morton at a special event today.

The seventh annual ranking reveals the nations top 25 graduate and top 25 undergraduate programs for entrepreneurship. Blochs ranking can be seen at www.entrepreneur.com/topcolleges, along with information on overall trends found with social and sustainable entrepreneurship, experiential learning, and entrepreneurship as a means of reaching out both internationally and locally.Read More