Wichita State’s Innovation Campus recently turned 10 years old.
And school president Rick Muma wrote a book to commemorate that milestone, titled: “Student Centered, Innovation Drive: A guide to transforming higher education.”
Muma has spent nearly 30 years at WSU and was there as the Innovation Campus began to take shape.
He was named president of WSU in 2020, becoming the school’s 15th president since its founding as Fairmount College in 1895.
Muma talked with the Range about what parents and students want from higher education today, lessons he learned about communication as the Innovation Campus was built, and whether the biomedical campus would have happened without the success of the Innovation Campus.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tom Shine: If the Innovation Campus was never built, would the biomedical campus in downtown Wichita exist?
Rick Muma: I think it would have been a harder sell to the Legislature. I do believe that they saw proof of concept in what we've done on the Innovation Campus and made that an easier conversation to have.
We believed that developing the biomedical campus downtown was going to be basically the same thing that was going to happen from our experience of the Innovation Campus, and it's already happening. I mean, the structure is just now being framed out, but we already have several entities that have agreed to be on that campus down there and in the health care arena. But also all the development for housing and hotels and those sorts of things.
One of the founding tenets of the Innovation Campus is that it would be an economic driver. Why is that component important for universities?
If you look at most mission statements across the country, it's not very common to use those words in the mission statement. And I think again, it's getting back to not only our students and the parents who send them here, but the people who fund higher education, even though that funding has been decreased over several years. Our legislators expect us to connect with the local economy to help grow our community and our state, and so we have to pay attention to that.
As the Innovation Campus took shape, there was pushback from certain parts of campus … Is all of that part of a normal fallout from change?
I think you're going to, anytime you pivot like we did as an institution, you're going to see some of that. You know, if you read the book, you'll note that (President) John Bardo was one of these guys that just never stopped thinking about what was possible. And so, trying to move that vision forward without making sure that he talked to the right people and got the right sort of input, sometimes was lacking.
This institution, before 2015, 2014, we weren't thinking about moving Airbus or Deloitte or some of these other businesses on campus. That was just a foreign subject to many people … That requires a lot of insightful thinking, bringing folks together to have conversations about, and I think President Bardo thought he was doing that. But I don't know if it was enough, and probably not always at the right time.
You wrote that President Bardo’s communication style left many people feeling excluded from decisions being made about the university's future. How has that influenced your leadership style as president?
I learned a long time ago … I'm a physician assistant and I started my career taking care of patients, is understanding that you go into the level wherever the individual is. In the case of patients, you want to make sure that you're communicating clearly about whatever their issues are. So, I've used that to a lot of degree in terms of how I interact with faculty and staff members and students and making sure that I'm not way up here when they're down here at the very entry level of a conversation. And I think that's really important, and it's a skill that takes a lot of time. You can't always rush through something or move something in the same kind of direction in terms of timeline that you want if everybody else is just not there yet.
How should President Bardo be remembered?
Definitely as a visionary; someone who really cared deeply for the community in Wichita. (He) had always had his sights on the university and really thought that it could be more than what it had been. And he had good intentions, and I mean the legacy really is his. The whole notion around bringing in businesses and connecting those businesses to our university with students.
You don't see what you see here, particularly Innovation Campus, in other universities. … So, I think that is really his biggest legacy.
The subtitle of the book is “A Guide to Transforming Higher Education.” In what ways does higher education need to transform itself?
What parents and students of today are expecting is: How can they find a job when they graduate? And so without losing some of the basic kinds of things that we all believe in value in higher education, how do you also make sure that people get what they want?
And gone are the days where public education was funded like it was when you and I went to school. Students are paying for most of the cost now, and so they expect something different.
Is the primary goal of Wichita State to serve as a talent pipeline for local industry, or should it provide a broader experience for students?
I think that's what the worry is, particularly among traditionalists in higher education, that we're going to lose that general education, that critical thinking, that civic-minded student. But we haven't given up on that. That's still part of their educational process. What we're doing now is making sure … the moment students show up on campus, that they understand what the career options are available to them. That's the connection we're trying to make.
So, we've gone Innovation Campus, biomedical campus … what's the next step, either for you or for another president? What's the next project to sort of aim at for the university to continue that sort of growth?
Well, the obvious thing beyond the biomedical campus is the next dental school. Kansas doesn't have a dental school. It has severe shortages of oral health providers … nearly 20 counties that have no dental provider at all, and then 77 other counties have huge shortages.
We need to be able to make sure we have services available for people … to get good oral health. But it plays into health much more broadly, around heart health and brain health, and it's probably the main contributor why the health rankings here in Kansas are what they are today because we haven't prioritized oral health. And I think if we do do that, I think you'll see that change dramatically because it has such a broad impact in terms of health in general.
What grade would you give the Innovation Campus, and why?
I'd give it … probably a B+. That's a hard question to answer. I don't want to give it an A, because then, you know, everything's perfect, right? And everything isn't perfect. It's a work in progress, but definitely a very, very, very good start in what I think will be a very long-lasting economic development project driver.
It's just set up for long-term success, and hopefully the next president, or maybe me – depends on how long I'm here – can give it an A.
