Umab

The University of Maryland at Baltimore released a study yesterday showing that the academic institution in the heart of the city pumped $767 million into the Maryland economy last year and was one of the city's largest employers.The report, commissioned by UMAB, is being released at a time when the institution faces budget cuts while it is seeking millions for new construction and would like to increase its research.UMAB includes the university's schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, social work and law. It does not include the University of Maryland Medical System.

The Maryland Capital chapter of the American Business Women's Association has awarded a $1,500 education grant to Margaret Jarboe of Davidsonville. Jarboe is a student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. RiverWest plans marketing seminar RiverWest Marketing, 647 Ridgely Ave., Annapolis, will hold a free seminar, "Prospecting in Today's Market," from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Thursday. The seminar will provide information on finding the right client. Information: 410-266-3600, or www.riverwestmarketing .com.

It has been nearly 10 years since the death of Dr. T. Albert Farmer shocked the University of Maryland at Baltimore campus. Dr. Farmer, in his short tenure, provided the UM professional schools with badly needed leadership, elevated the campus' stature as a Baltimore institution and ended many of the internal feuds that long divided UMAB into competing camps. Without Dr. Farmer to steady the academic boat, UMAB has been buffeted by turbulence.Most recently, it was the dean of the medical school, Dr. Donald Wilson, versus the temporary president of the campus, Dr. Errol Reese.

The task force studying the future of the state's system of higher education will recommend additional funding for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and the University of Maryland, Baltimore.Those schools were overlooked in the flurry of activity as the task force wound up its work in the days before Christmas with calls for specific funding increases for the University of Maryland, College Park and Towson University.But in the draft of its final report, the task force suggests an additional $7 million for UMAB and $5 million for UMBC.

When regents at the University of Maryland selected a new president for its Baltimore campus, they left no doubt what they wanted to see happen at their professional schools campus. Dr. David J. Ramsay's mission, starting in June, is to boost research and entrepreneurial enterprises while ending internal factionalism at UMAB.Judging from his credentials and his accomplishments, Dr. Ramsay comes to this job prepared for the challenge. For over a decade he has been the No. 2 administrator at the University of California at San Franciso, a campus whose reputation as a top-notch public health-sciences institution has soared during that period.

When it came time to select a permanent president for the University of Maryland at Baltimore, the board of regents this week turned to the West Coast and one of the top public universities for the health sciences, the University of California San Francisco. The regents plucked UCSF's No. 2 man, Dr. David J. Ramsay, as the person they want to heal internal rifts and enlarge the campus's research and its community-outreach efforts.UCSF's enormous success -- it has ranked No. 1, ahead of Johns Hopkins, in medical research dollars for 15 of the past 17 years -- is a worthy stimulus to UM's professional schools campus, especially with UMAB's stress on the health sciences.

Maryland officials hope AIDS researcher Robert C. Gallo's move to the University of Maryland at Baltimore will spur technical innovation and a wave of new products and local jobs making them, but the university office that guides technology transfer has a much smaller budget and a slimmer track record than counterparts at top universities around the nation.Furthermore, most companies that have received licenses to commercialize products developed at major University of Maryland campuses are not based in Maryland, university figures show.

The University of Maryland at Baltimore ended its months-long search for a new president yesterday, naming Dr. David J. Ramsay, currently the No. 2 administrator at the University of California, San Francisco.In addition to his lengthy track record in California -- at a university configured much like UMAB -- Dr. Ramsay brings a reputation for integrity and conciliation. The British-born physiologist will take over the downtown campus June 1."Dr. Ramsay brings to this post an impeccable record of academic and administrative experience," said George V. McGowan, head of the University of Maryland Board of Regents.

The University of Maryland at Baltimore is reaching the final stage in its hunt for a new president, a choice many state officials hope will bring an end to a series of campus leadership troubles.An ugly salary fight between the outgoing president and the dean of the medical school recently became public with the anonymous distribution of confidential letters.The disclosures came nine months after the drawn-out firing of the head of the university-affiliated Maryland Shock Trauma Center and the resignation of President Errol L. Reese, apparently under pressure.

In an editorial Nov. 5, The Sun mistakenly listed the University of Arizona as one of the University of Maryland Dental School's peer institutions. The University of Arizona has no dental school. The reference should have been to the University of Alabama.The Sun regrets the error.Dr. David J. Ramsay, on his inauguration yesterday as president of the University of Maryland at Baltimore, issued an stiff challenge to each of the schools -- medicine, law, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy and social work -- under his leadership: To achieve Top Three ranking nationally within five years among institutions in their class.

Higher ed planners must keep in mind UMAB's great valueAs state officials and members of the General Assembly work to strengthen Maryland's public higher education system, they must be careful to preserve and maintain the University of Maryland, Baltimore's ability to pursue its growth, which is spawning an economic rebirth of Baltimore's west side.On any given day, 25,000 students, teachers and staff members are drawn to classes and work at UMAB's 33-acre urban complex that is the only exclusively graduate campus in this state's higher education system.

A struggle between a campus police officer and a theft suspect at the University of Maryland, Baltimore ended yesterday when the suspect was shot in the leg, school officials said.University spokesman Chris Hart said veteran Officer Artice Johnson, 40, saw a man breaking the window of a car parked in the 500 block of W. Lombard St. about 6: 22 p.m. The man fled, Johnson gave chase and caught him a short distance away on Paca Street near Cider Alley.The two men struggled, Hart said, and Johnson's gun discharged, wounding the man. Johnson was not hurt.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore will receive $399,900 in federal money to revitalize the West Baltimore neighborhood surrounding its campus.The grant is part of a $7 million nationwide community outreach initiative spearheaded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Eighteen colleges and universities received awards."This initiative will benefit cities, their residents and colleges by reversing decades of neighborhood decline," said HUD Secretary Andrew M. Cuomo. He announced the grants on Wednesday at a national conference on college and university community revitalization in East St. Louis, Ill."

IT'S NO EASY JOB running the University of Maryland, Baltimore. When David J. Ramsay took the job of president nearly four years ago, fresh from the University of California at San Francisco, he'd been preceded by eight men in the previous decade.A Prince George's County state delegate had called UMAB "a collection of fiefdoms, populated with strong personalities."The British-born Ramsay vowed to halt the infighting and move the schools of dentistry, law, medicine, nursing, pharmacy and social work into the top ranks of their fields.

THE UNIVERSITY of Maryland, Baltimore recently released details of a $38 million plan to double the size of its Law Library building at Baltimore and Paca streets. It was the latest expansion announcement at the downtown campus."The need for the building is critical and is caused by the dramatic changes in legal education over the past generation," law school Dean Donald G. Gifford explained in accepting a $2.5 million commitment toward the project from the France-Merrick Foundations. He said to day's law students and interns need more flexible clinic space.

For more than a year now, doctors at the University of Maryland at Baltimore have been working to help the Marshall Islands devise a health care system better than the wreck left behind after 40 years of U.S. trusteeship over the islands."

A Baltimore Sun reporter, in a recent article, candidly observed that the benefits from merging University of Maryland at Baltimore (home of the downtown professional campuses) and University of Maryland Baltimore County ''are a little hard to pin down.'' To say the least. Indeed, the arguments against the merger are even more compelling.Because The Sun accuses me of personally obstructing the ''merger,'' the public deserves a more thorough examination of this issue than The Sun's parochial higher education editorials, where public relations blather substitutes for sound statewide educational policy.

David J. Ramsay issued a challenge yesterday during his inaugural address as president of the University of Maryland at Baltimore: each of its schools should become among the top three public such institutions in the nation within the next five years.Calling the research center the state's "jewel in the crown," Dr. Ramsay said he had asked UMAB's deans to develop plans to make good on his pledge. Before the address, aides to Dr. Ramsay said he intended to design standards against which to measure the schools' success.

A New York-based venture capital group said yesterday that it will launch a new company to develop and commercialize a vaccine for prostate cancer based on the work of a University of Maryland School of Medicine researcher.Paramount Capital LLP, a venture capital and merchant banking firm active in biotechnology start-ups, said the new company, Androgenics Technologies, Inc., will focus on furthering research and development on five promising chemical compounds discovered by Angela Brodie of the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

The Johns Hopkins University, with donations of $94.7 million, led six Baltimore-area nonprofit organizations in a national ranking of the top 400 philanthropies receiving private support last year.The University of Maryland at Baltimore made the list for the first time with private gifts totaling $18.8 million, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy.Judith Blackburn, assistant vice president for external affairs at UMAB, said that represented no spectacular gift but "a few big ones and a lot of smaller ones.