Counterpoint:

Many of the benefits of expanded cooperation that might result from a merger could also be realized without a merger. As noted in the FMRC Report, many of the potential barriers to collaboration can be eliminated by establishing an “Office of Cooperation,” if the merger does not go through.

Research and Graduate Programs

Close and fruitful research collaborations between Rice and Baylor have been going on for almost 50 years.  A landmark example involves the joint development of the first implantable “artificial heart” (LVAD) in the 1960’s.  This pioneering work led to the establishment of the Rice Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, the precursor of our current Bioengineering department.

Rice researchers have also established numerous close collaborations with the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and other institutions from the Texas Medical Center.  The most recent example involves the development of an innovative graduate biomedical training program between Rice and M.D. Anderson that introduces Ph.D. students to the world of clinical medicine. Funding for this program comes from a large grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

If Rice’s goal is to further expand such collaborations, the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) also provides a model for institutionalizing highly coupled and very successful cross-disciplinary research and educational programs in the highly competitive environment of life science and biomedical research.

    HST brings together the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, Boston area teaching hospitals, and an assortment of research centers in a unique collaboration that integrates science, medicine, and engineering to solve problems in human health. Over 400 graduate students of science, medicine, engineering, and management take their training side by side at HST.  And HST's more than 60 full-time faculty members and 200 affiliates guide these students into vibrant careers as medical pioneers.

   The HST model addresses all the arguments about potential benefits  brought forward to support the merger (see text on the left).

    And, we should not forget that MIT received $210M in new NIH awards in 2008, matching BCM’s $211M of  new awards, while maintaining academic excellence and top 10 status in a broad spectrum of disciplines that span science, engineering, and social sciences.

Undergraduate Experience:

While it may be true that the merger could result in the creation and strengthening of programs such as neuroscience, global health or health policy that  attract significant numbers of Rice undergraduates, the same goal can be achieved through inter-institutional collaborations (see the HST example).

The argument about potential benefits to non-biomedical Rice programs is even more tenuous.  The FMRC Report points out that “...  realizing the potential for non-science, small-science, and large-science collaborations will be expensive. Non-biomedical related aspects of Rice must not be starved in order to support programs directly related to BCM. In addition to maintaining the pre-merger inflation-adjusted budget for these programs, funds must remain available for growth, innovation, and achievement in non-biomedical programs at Rice...”

However, the Rice philanthropy resource is finite. Whatever is allocated to biomedical-related studies will, perforce, be taken away from something else that Rice does.

Point:

From the Rice-BCM site - Question 3

The two institutions have complementary rather than competing strengths, which, if merged, would improve both organizations and result in one institution that is stronger, more competitive, more diverse and better able to deliver on its mission. Since there is almost no overlap between the Rice faculty and the BCM faculty, the stage is set for productive collaborations, such as in genomics, neuroscience, health policy, global health, bioinformatics and computational biology, medical humanities, and human performance.

A merger would increase the diversity and depth of course offerings by giving Rice undergraduate and graduate students access to both basic medical research and clinical faculty members. Many new undergraduate and graduate offerings would be available, along with potential multidisciplinary study or certificate programs outside of science and engineering, such as health care business administration and architectural design of health care facilities. The merger also would make more of the Rice curriculum available to Baylor students and more hands-on research opportunities available to Rice students.