We are poorer for these losses. But as we mourn, our sadness serves as a poignant reminder of our ultimate mission, through the ways that each of these individuals served that mission.

A university exists to create knowledge; to organize and preserve knowledge; and to transmit knowledge from one generation to the next. Through that process, we keep alive not just the memories, but the gifts, of people such as Walt Bodine, Aaron Markarian and John Mark Eberhart.

We can take some small comfort in knowing that their contributions to the world are embedded in our institutional memory, and that through our efforts, their voices will continue to be heard for many years to come.

Walt Bodine was a Kansas City institution. His broadcasting career has been the soundtrack of our lives as members of this community. Much of his legacy is preserved in the Walt Bodine Collection in the Marr Sound Archives at our Miller Nichols Library. The history of his 30 years as an essential voice at KCUR-FM is told through a multi-media archive.     

Aaron Markarian was an undergraduate vocal student in our Conservatory of Music and Dance. His shocking and tragic death stilled far too soon a beautiful voice and a blossoming talent. Our remembrance of Aaron can be found here.

John Mark Eberhart was an alumnus of our College of Arts and Sciences. He earned a master’s degree in English from the college in 1998, and quickly became a powerful influence in our local literary community. He was a noted local author, editor and literary critic known as an inspiring guide and mentor to local writers. Excerpts and links to remembrances of John are available here. 

My condolences to the families and friends of these remarkable people. Their contributions to our university were significant – and they will not be forgotten.

Chancellor Leo Morton confers with U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II and Gov. Jay Nixon at the launch of Digital Sandbox KC.

This is an exciting time for UMKC, and for Kansas City.

Our community is moving forward with an unusually high degree of consensus. You see it in the way the community is rallying around the Greater Kansas City Chamber’s “Big 5” blueprint, and in the effort to brand Kansas City as “America’s Creative Crossroads.”

The potential for making great forward strides as a community is palpable right now; you can feel it. And UMKC is in the middle of it all.

This has always been an educational institution by, of, and for Kansas City. The university was founded 80 years ago by community leaders in the midst of the Great Depression, who understood that a university plays a vitally important role in the economic development of a community. Those visionary leaders saw higher education as a vehicle to prosperity for all, and today UMKC continues to play that vital role.

I will have a lot to say about our 80 years of tradition, education and service over the course of this year. Right now, I want to focus on how we help this community grow, in knowledge, in our economy, in our health, in our cultural life, and in our very sense of who we are.

I really believe the Big 5 is a key indicator of our role in this community. It’s a list of our top five priorities for the growth of our community, and if our university did not figure prominently in that list, you would have to conclude that we are irrelevant to the community. The fact that we are directly involved in three of the Big 5 goals, and are connected to the other two, proves that we are a foundational asset for this community.

KCPT’s “The Local Show” recently produced a progress report on the Big 5. You can find a preview of the episode here, and view the entire hour-long episode here: Part I  Part II.    

To recap, one of the Big 5 goals is UMKC-based: Creating a Downtown Campus for the Arts. Our medical and science research is deeply involved in the Big 5 goal to Grow Kansas City’s Medical Research, from Discovery to Cure. And several of our programs are central to the goal of making Kansas City America’s Most Entrepreneurial City, such as the Regnier Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Henry W. Bloch School of Management, and the UMKC Innovation Center, which created outstanding programs such as KC SourceLink and Whiteboard to Boardroom, and spearheaded the drive to create our newest entrepreneurial asset, Digital Sandbox KC.

The unprecedented level of cooperation and consensus that made the Digital Sandbox possible is another example of that spirit of unified purpose that is so prominent in this community right now. This community is on the move. Its university is one of the major engines driving that progress.

The Morton family in Birmingham, Ala.: Father Leo C., mother Imogene, children Leo E., Sharon, Anita and Alfred.

Sunday night, Chancellor Leo E. Morton received the 2012 Henry W. Bloch Human Relations Award from the Jewish Community Relations Bureau | American Jewish Committee.

Morton, 67, is the first African-American leader of UMKC. The Human Relations Award was given to Morton to honor his commitment to justice, his service to the community, his civic leadership and vision and his devotion to the city. The chancellor had a front row seat on history growing up in Birmingham, Ala., in the 1950s and ’60s. Here’s a version of his remarks:

I don’t mind telling you that I have struggled with this message. I guess the first reason is that I really had to think about the past and in order to move forward you have to let go of some elements of the past – I have a very short memory about negative stuff and, in this case, it’s some of the negative stuff that you want me to talk about.

The other reason is that in front of this group you really want to say something that will make a difference. In fact, that’s really important to me because one of my prayers – every day – is that God will bless me to be a blessing to others.

So, given that prayer, if I had to give a title for this message, I think you’ll see that it would be – But for the grace of God.

You see, my story is not the story of a man who lifted himself up by his own bootstraps. Looking back at my life I have jokingly said – the only thing that I can take credit for is picking the right parents. Of course you know that God gave them to me and put me in the situations throughout my life that would prepare me to do the work He needed me to do.

To tell my story I think would be helpful if I would tell it in two parts: my world up to 10 years of age, my world after that, and then what I think we can learn from my experiences to help us today.

Many academics theorize that most of your character is formed by 10 years of age and the development is affected by what goes on in the world around you.

What you need to understand about my world at that time was that it was small, segregated, all black and filled with family, community, church and education. Now let me paint the picture.

My earliest memories were at my grandparents’ home on my mother’s side: Eugene Pima Edge from Georgia and Lona Gatherite Mitchell-Edge – 5 Second Ave. South. Their home was about a mile from my parents’ home. In that mile along Center Street were all of my relatives on both sides of the family and my elementary school.

It’s important to know that boys learn from observing men and women, but mostly from observing men. Including my father, the six men in my family along Center Street could be characterized this way:

They were all married – I never saw divorce so it’s not even in my vocabulary.

They all had jobs and worked hard – my father had his own business, the others were teachers, laborers, worked for the Postal Service or in the steel mill.

When they came home they did chores around the house – they all helped each other.

They were all in church on Sunday – most were deacons and served in other capacities.

My great grandfather on my father’s side was pastor of the 32nd St. Baptist Church. He was an undertaker and sold life insurance. My great-grandmother, his wife, may have been a midwife. If she was, they kind of owned you from cradle-to-grave. After he died she worked in the women’s dormitory at Selma University in Selma, Ala.

One of his sons, my grandfather, also named Leo Christopher Morton like my father, died in his 30s of a heart attack so I never met him. Of their three other sons, one was William Earnest Morton – principal of Darden High School in Opelika, Ala. He was a really big deal in those days and today there’s a street named after him in the town. He also happens to be Yvette’s stepfather and the reason I met her. Now that’s another story.

The point is that everything that I know about God, family, hard work and business — I was already learning from observing them before I was 10. Especially from father, Leo Christopher Morton, Jr.

My father had polio in the 1940s and was one of the first adults in Alabama to have polio. In the process, my right-handed father lost the use of his right arm. At the time he already had a wife and three children and my mother never worked outside the house. While he was learning to write with his left hand he went to college where he majored in mathematics, he taught veterans upholstery at night and finished college near the top of his class. He went on to have many other ailments (including cancer) but I never heard him complain – so I certainly can’t.

On the other hand, I learned about service to others from my mother. She was a great cook – I could also tell you that she had a mean left hook if you were messing with her family, but I won’t go there.

We had this small table in the kitchen where we ate every meal but she never ate with us. She was always serving us and asking if we wanted more. She did the same thing for any stranger who stopped by the house. The house was always immaculate and something was always in the oven.

Then there were the Sundays that were filled with church and more church and great family gatherings around great food and conversation.

By the way, the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church (one of the largest in town) was about 2 miles from home – Dr. Martin Luther King spoke there many times and the funeral for three of the four girls who died in the 16th Street Church bombing was held there. My father was chairman of the deacon board when the original church had to be relocated to make room for expansion of the UAB Medical Center and my brother just finished serving as chairman of the deacons.

Now, in case you didn’t get the picture, up to 10 years of age my world was not very big. Not only that — but it was segregated. It was all black. It was supportive. It was filled with character-building experiences and a lot of it was fun.

But, it was now 1955 and it was all about to change.

My introduction to the broader world came partly through brief trips to the inner city but mostly through working with my father in his business, which included doing top-quality upholstery for a clientele that was 95% white. I learned everything that I know about business, leadership and quality from my father and the way he ran that business. Most of our friends never had that kind of exposure to white Birmingham and it was important for us to understand the other world and to realize that it was not an impossible dream to be successful there.

I believe we were prepared to deal with what was coming because we were given a vision for our lives that transcended the moment.

You see, all of the adults in my world seemed to understand that our future would be different from theirs and we just had to get the education we needed to give us a chance. It seems every discussion started with – what are you going to be when you grow up? How are you doing in school?

You just understood that there were high expectations from everyone, and in a close community, you just didn’t want to disappoint anyone or embarrass the family. I don’t recall my parents ever saying, you have to go to college. But we just knew the expectation was there.

However, to ultimately be successful, we had to get through some difficult times. The whole civil rights movement was about to heat up and we would be in the middle of it.

Two weeks after my 10th birthday in 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was mutilated and lynched in Money, Miss.

A few months later, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat – in the black section of the bus – to a white man and the Montgomery boycott was started and quickly spread to Birmingham, about 90 miles to the north.

That year the Supreme Court prohibited segregation in recreational facilities. So the city’s response was to shut down the public facilities in the black community. No more swimming at the Memorial Park – about a mile from our home and directly across the street from the famous Birmingham City Jail.

1955 was also the year that the Supreme Court upheld its 1954 decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education and mandated that school desegregation proceed with “all deliberate speed.” Apparently, something must’ve been unclear about the mandate. Today, we expect our political leaders to turn around a massive and ailing economy in less than four years. But when I graduated from high school in 1963, eight years after the mandate, the schools were still segregated.

At that time I was a half-year ahead in school so I graduated from high school on a Sunday in January 1963 and entered engineering school at Tuskegee Institute the next day.

It seems that after I left town the Civil Rights movement became hotter!

By April 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. was in jail about a mile from our home, where he wrote the Letter from Birmingham Jail.

While I was participating in demonstrations at Tuskegee, my brother was in demonstrations in Birmingham, where Eugene “Bull” Connor used dogs and fire hoses on demonstrators. Alfred got the soles of his shoes knocked off by the force from the water hoses.

In June 1963, George Wallace stood in the door of the school at the University of Alabama to try to prevent its desegregation.

The next day, NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers was assassinated outside his home in Jackson, Miss.

Two months later the March on Washington took place and Martin Luther King delivered his still-famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

And less than a month later, 11-year-old Denise McNair died along with three other girls in the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham. Her mother had been one of my teachers in elementary school and her father is still our photographer and took most of the family portraits you’ve seen tonight (see photo with this blog entry).

Denise was also a friend of Condoleezza Rice, whose father was a Presbyterian minister in a small church about six blocks from our home. Rev. Rice was also my high school guidance counselor and we spent many hours discussing why he thought I should be in the ministry.

If all of that was not enough, President Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963.

With initiatives like the civil rights act established in 1964 during Pres. Lyndon Johnson’s administration, the country would start to show progress that led to a number of firsts for African-Americans. However, the violence continued and the demonstrations also continued including the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965.

Now, capping all of this turbulence was an important period in my life. Yvette and I really met each other on a Friday in February 1968. We were engaged the next day and married two months later (but that’s another story). Two days before our wedding we were in Sears Roebuck in Auburn, Alabama shopping with her mother when I heard an announcement over the public address system that Dr. Martin Luther King had been murdered. We, of course went ahead with our plans but the campus at Tuskegee was in turmoil as Yvette and I drove through on our way to a one-night honeymoon in Montgomery, Alabama.

The University had thought I was involved because I was one of the leaders of an earlier protest in the engineering school. So they expelled me – but I had a really good excuse. I was away from campus getting married. So they reinstated me and I graduated and in June we moved to Indianapolis, where I would start my professional career as an engineer with General Motors.

The night we arrived in Indianapolis was the same night that Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.

So, were there any really scary times for me personally in all this? The answer is yes – and it may be helpful if I share a couple of the scariest for me.

The first was during that scary year of 1963 when so many things were happening. I was home for the summer and had been out on deliveries and for some reason had the truck at home. It was late at night and my father called me and asked me to pick him up. The shop was about 2 miles away and about halfway there I crossed Sixth Avenue and some police turned in behind me. My heart started racing because that meant nothing but trouble. They pulled me over – one policeman came to my door and pulled me out by the collar. He pushed my chest and face into the side of the truck as hard as he could. He patted me down and pushed me in the back of the patrol car where the other cop poked me in the ribs with his night stick. This was right after the Medgar Evers assassination and I thought I would be next.

Fortunately, some people came out of their homes and the policeman knew we were not alone. They gave me a speeding ticket along with some choice words and let me go.

The other one that I’ll mention occurred when I returned to Birmingham in 1970 to help with dad’s business. I was working for Rust Engineering. One day I was returning from lunch and stopped to speak with Johnny, one of the few African-Americans employed there, when I looked around to see a guy who had opened his trunk and was less than 50 feet away pointing a rifle at me. We stared at each other for what seemed to be an eternity before he put it down.

All of these experiences only strengthened me.

Now, I’m a little concerned that I may have painted a picture that almost makes it look like George Wallace did us a favor or had a great youth development plan for African-Americans. Well, make no mistake, our successes are an unintended consequence of the system that was designed to put us down and keep us down.

But even today I have to admit that I’m not without scars that I occasionally struggle with.

I’ll give you one example. I was meeting with Carl Schramm at the Kauffman Foundation when he said, “Leo, I like you, you don’t have a sense of entitlement.” When I left his office I thought about it and realized that he’s right. Oddly, it’s one of the scars that I struggle with – it’s a part of that old programming that actually worked.

You see, no matter how much people tell me that they value me, those other voices from the past — declaring that we were all worthless — just keep sneaking back.

Well, I have something that I want to leave with you that I believe could help us today.

When Alfred and I were small, our father told us that he thought we could be engineers. We don’t know where he got that from. We just know that he never saw a black engineer. If you worked in a corporation in Birmingham in the late 40s and early 50s, blacks were probably the janitor. However, our neighborhood reinforced this notion that our father had planted. For example, in the barbershop the barber would ask, “Are you Leo Morton’s boys? Well, what are you going to be when you grow up?” Engineers, we’d say. “Well, you must be good in math and science.” You see, the vision of being an engineer gave purpose to our study. We knew we had to be good in those subjects to be engineers.

Today, Alfred and I are both engineers.

The question for all of us is: Who is planting visions in the heads of our youth today? The vision comes not only from the words but from what they see around them. If you live in Johnson County – no problem – you see success everywhere and you eventually get the picture. You need to get a good education.

If you live in certain communities in our urban core, what you may see is that you are more likely to be dead or in jail by the time you’re 25. If you buy that vision for your future, what purpose would you see in going to school?

That’s where I believe we can help – if we work together. The good thing is that, if you agree, we don’t have to start any new programs but simply support and expand programs we already have in place. Programs like Prep KC and others that work with corporate volunteers to give our students a different view of what their future can be like.

This is a humanitarian community that I’m proud to be part of.

You care, Kansas City. You care deeply and you roll up your sleeves to get important things done.

When you see something that you believe can be successful and benefit this community – there’s no one like you. You do not have an equal.

Thank you.

Not for the cherry trees, and certainly not for the politics, though. I like having an opportunity to put our university on the national stage and demonstrate our leadership in vital areas of higher education. One such opportunity came Oct. 1, when I participated in a panel discussion sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce.

The topic was “The Innovative and Entrepreneurial University: Higher Education, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Focus.” I was asked to discuss the process of forging economic development partnerships among higher education, local business and the non-profit sector.

Talk about getting your pitch to hit; that’s a fat, hanging slider right in the middle of UMKC’s strike zone.

You tend to get invitations like that when your university is ranked No. 1 in the world for innovation management research, your M.B.A. entrepreneurship emphasis area was named the national model program, and you’ve just won a highly competitive grant competition to create a Proof of Concept Center for IT startups.

In my presentation, I focused on one of our most outstanding economic development programs, KCSourceLink, because it is exactly the kind of community-wide partnership that national leaders are trying to promote. KCSourceLink brings together more than 180 organizations that support entrepreneurs in the Kansas City region: incubators, colleges and universities, business development centers, chambers of commerce and more. It’s a central hub where budding entrepreneurs can find information, resources and support.

KCSourceLink is blazing an entrepreneurial trail of collaboration that already is paying great dividends for UMKC and the Kansas City region. From KCSourceLink came the idea for the Whiteboard to Boardroom program, which set up a bistate cooperative among multiple universities to build a bridge that allows laboratory research discoveries to cross over into profitable, job-creating businesses. The innovative Whiteboard to Boardroom success, in turn, led to UMKC’s Digital Sandbox concept, a proof-of-concept center for technology businesses that will be housed in Kansas City’s Union Station.

Digital Sandbox won a prestigious $1 million federal grant last week – quickly doubled by the addition of a state economic development grant and donations from a consortium of Kansas City area businesses. KCSourceLink leaders hope to create a fivefold return on that investment within two years. They have a track record that says they can make that happen.

UMKC is leading the way to the next generation of science and technology-driven economic development, and I never get tired of telling people about it, whether I’m in Washington, D.C. or a local community center in Kansas City.

Now, if I can only get one of those biolabs to engineer a cherry tree that will bloom year-round along the banks of Brush Creek….

Convocation is the introduction to campus and academic life for our new students. We like to think of it as a “bookend” to graduation, which is why we treat it with a lot of the same ceremonial pomp.

Graduation is bittersweet, because it is our last opportunity as educators to impart a lesson to our students as undergraduates. Convocation is the first such opportunity with each new class, and that to me is what is so exciting, as I stand at the podium and look out at hundreds and hundreds of young people thirsting for learning and personal growth.  

The lesson of Convocation is one of the true hallmarks of what sets UMKC apart. It is the balance of support and self-reliance that is the foundation of our approach to student success.

As a diverse urban campus, we enroll students from a wide range of educational and socioeconomic backgrounds. No two people in any class start out from exactly the same place. I have found that virtually everyone needs some kind of support of one form or another – academic, emotional, financial. We feel an institutional obligation to provide such support as part of our mission.

At the same time, as a leading research university, we must set high standards and insist that students meet those standards in order to earn degrees. We are educating our community’s future engineers, future nurses, future teachers and future leaders. We owe it to them, and to the community, to be sure that they can handle the responsibilities that will be placed on them as a consequence of the college degrees they hold.

Our support systems are designed for hard-working students committed to learning; they won’t allow anyone to leisurely coast to graduation. Dr. Miguel A. Carranza, the founding Director of our new Latina/Latino Studies Program, summed up our approach well in his Convocation address:

“You must succeed by achievement,” Prof. Carranza said. “You will be required to study long and hard to make good grades, and the first two semesters are crucial, but you can do it here at UMKC. There is an incredible support network for students here, but you have to use it.”

Dr. Gail Hackett, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, listed her “secrets of success” that are really anything but secret: go to class, and commit to three hours of independent study time for each hour spent in class. She promised to challenge the students academically, but added emphatically, “Don’t be afraid to seek help when you need it!” 

At UMKC, we won’t do anything for you. But we will go to the ends of the earth with you. Understanding that crucial difference is Lesson One on the path to graduation.

The kind of growth that matters most to me, though, is growth in impact. You measure that in terms of the number of lives you affect in a positive way.

That’s the kind of growth I see resulting from the new Downtown Campus for the Arts that we’ve been talking about.

We just received three important feasibility and impact studies that provide an in-depth analysis of the proposal. They are full of facts and figures about space needs, cost estimates and projected economic outputs. The numbers are important and valuable, but let’s take a moment to look past the numbers.

Here’s what I see when I look at it that way: I see a downtown bustling with activity and energy from an infusion of bright, eager young learners living and working there. I see businesses thriving, creating entrepreneurial and employment opportunities for our neighbors in this community. I see a major boost to our city’s growing reputation as a creative force to be reckoned with, nationally and globally.

I see growth on our Volker Campus, too. I see our enrollment growing as science and technology programs, given breathing room, expand to provide even more career opportunities for young people, and even more scientific discoveries improving the quality of life for our community, and our planet.

I see a promise fulfilled, the promise of a great university and a great city as partners, working together to grow and prosper in a positive, sustainable way.

This is the kind of growth we seek – not statistics for their own sake, but real impact that improves lives and strengthens a community. That is our goal.

I experienced that feeling recently when I had the opportunity to welcome guests to our campus for the 2012 Greater Kansas City Hispanic Scholarship Fund Awards. It was a celebration of potential, as about 230 bright, eager young people were awarded scholarships to pursue their dreams of higher education. More than 40 of those young people will attend UMKC, and I can’t wait for our university to experience the benefits of having these terrific young people join our learning community.

For me, it’s all about ”potential energy” – as an engineer by trade, it’s a topic with which I am rather familiar.

Potential energy refers to energy that is stored within an object by virtue of its position, waiting to be tapped. When we provide scholarship assistance to bright young people full of energy, who otherwise could not afford higher education, we are putting them in position to release that energy in our midst, for the benefit of our campus, our community and the world.

That’s the reason we offer matching funds from our financial aid budget for these Hispanic Development Fund Scholars; and it’s why “Embracing Diversity” is one of six fundamental goals in UMKC’s strategic plan.

Chancellor Morton at the Hispanic Scholarship Fund Awards with UMKC alumnus Daniel Silva of Guadalupe Centers, an active member of Young Latino Professionals.

Make no mistake: embracing diversity is neither a chore, nor a handout. Diversity is an asset and a strength. Studying on a diverse campus enhances the educational experience for all, preparing students to live and work in a globalizing economy and culture. When a young person is denied an opportunity to reach his or her full potential, it is a tragedy, and not just for that person. We all lose the opportunity to benefit from the intelligence and creativity and effort that person would otherwise contribute. Potential energy is wasted. Everyone loses.

I am committed to minimizing such losses, and I invite you to join me in that effort.

I’m glad. That’s a sign of how much people care about this university, whether they’re alumni, students, staff or people who live in the greater Kansas City community and realize how much what happens here impacts their lives and their future.

This is not a process we enter into lightly, one we intend to rush, or one that will be resolved without a lot of input from stakeholders over the next several months.

Here’s how I see it:

The most important reason to explore a name change at any time is to enhance an entity’s ability to execute its vision, mission and strategy. Ours revolves around our unique status as “Kansas City’s university” – the only urban research university within the region, and a critical component of the city’s long-term economic development and quality of life strategies. This is made clear in both the Time to Get It Right report, and the Greater Kansas City Chamber’s “Big 5” goals for the metropolitan area.

We are Kansas City’s university, and we can strengthen our enrollment, our community partnerships and our philanthropic support by creating a broader and deeper understanding of that critical role. About 75 percent of our enrollment is from the Kansas City area, and 75 percent of our graduates stay in KC to live and work. We are the primary educator for Kansas City’s professional workforce.

In a recent speech on our campus, University of Missouri System president Tim Wolfe said: “Kansas City has high expectations for UMKC. This university is a key component of this community’s goals. … Enrollment growth at UMKC is a critical need. To meet the demands of the future we envision, we need UMKC to deliver more: more well-trained, well-educated professionals; more research discoveries; and more future leaders.”

When a great city and a great university share a name, it can generate powerful benefits and synergies for both. That potential demands some careful and serious consideration.

We were part of a panel discussion at the Greater Kansas City Chamber ACE awards on April 10, an event dedicated to honoring people who break down barriers and go the extra mile to promote diversity. Our Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Mel Tyler was one of the very deserving winners this year.

Diversity is one of the core values of UMKC — and it’s a critical value for anyone who wants to succeed in our increasingly complex, multicultural world today. As I said at the event today the more culturally diverse we are, the more apt we are to be equipped for change. I think Doris hit the nail on the head when she said that diversity isn’t just something you can see on the outside. Sometimes those differences come about because of life experiences – for example, a student or an employee might be a veteran or a single parent.

Campuses should be places that celebrate our human differences. Educators have to be attuned to the needs of people with a wide range of experiences so they can create programs that help students succeed and feel welcome, no matter their background. Students must come with open minds, ready to meet and learn from people with vastly different backgrounds who have lots to share.

As Bernadette noted, sometimes, embracing your discomfort can be a good thing. I couldn’t agree more.

Cello virtuoso Yo-Yo Ma instructs UMKC student Win Shei in Master Class at the Kauffmann Center

On a recent tour of Lincoln Center and the Juilliard School of Music in New York, I saw a vision of what our proposed Downtown Campus for the Arts could be.

It was appealing, exciting, motivating. I saw first-hand the kind of synergy that occurs when arts performance and arts education share a physical location as well as intellectual and artistic ideals. The space was alive with a pulsating energy you literally could feel. The excitement that derives from this level of immersion was palpable.

Now more than ever, it is clear why the Greater Kansas City Area Chamber of Commerce put our proposed Downtown Campus for the Arts on their list of the “Big Five Ideas” that can transform Kansas City for decades to come.

While we await the results of several feasibility studies that will show us what we must do to achieve this heady goal, I am more energized about what a Downtown Arts Campus could mean.

Oh, and did I mention how proud I was of our UMKC students and faculty? This trip came about as a the result of an invitation to the Conservatory of Music and Dance to perform at a hot new-music venue in New York, Le Poisson Rouge. Their stellar performance capped a weekend that showcased exciting possibility.