Missouri Southern State University will break ground for the Roy Blunt Health Science Innovation Center later this week, and kick off the Willcoxon Innovation in Health Sciences Summit.
The groundbreaking will at 1 p.m. Thursday, April 11.
Blunt, a retired U.S. Senator, will give a presentation titled, “Stories of Health and Higher Education Innovation” at 2 p.m. at the Taylor Performing Arts Center on campus.
The summit is a two-day event with local healthcare providers focused on the future of healthcare, including such topics as 3D printed devices, immunotherapy, next-generation sequencing, biosensors and trackers, and more.
Dr. Christa Martin will be the keynote speaker at 8:30 a.m. Friday on the future of healthcare. She will speak in the Taylor Performing Arts Center. Registration and check in begin at 7:30 a.m.
Friday morning sessions will include:
• 10 a.m.: Future Delivery of Healthcare with Dr. Catherine Satterwhite, executive director for the Center for Population Health and Equity (CPHE), Kansas City University, and Dr. Robert McNab, vice president of medical education, Freeman Health System. There will be a question-and-answer session afterward.
• 11:20 a.m.: Advances in Technology and Therapy, followed by another question-and-answer session.
• 1:30 p.m.: Envisioning the Future of Healthcare in the Four State Region: Perspectives from Major Health Providers. This will be a moderated panel with representatives of Mercy Hospital Joplin and Freeman.
• 2:30 PM – Closing Remarks and details about the 2025 Willcoxon Innovation in Health Sciences Summit.
The $42 million Health Sciences Innovation Center on the oval of Missouri Southern will be a 70,000-square-foot building named in honor Blunt, who helped secure federal support that incorporated a $2 million state match.
“Throughout his career and even today, Sen. Blunt has always had education and the state of Missouri at the forefront of his priorities,” Van Galen said in a previous statement when the honor was announced earlier this year. “Thousands of Missourians benefitted from his leadership in education, and that commitment and legacy will live on through the creation of this new Health Science Innovation Center.”
The Health Sciences Innovation Center will prepare students to become doctors, nurses, dental hygienists, respiratory therapists, radiologists, dentists and physical therapists, and will include state-of-the-art teaching and training facilities, a simulation hospital, an expanded cadaver lab, anatomy and physiology labs, a radiologic technology lab and research facilities.
Van Galen said the building also will serve as a university welcome center, with a conference center, coffee shop and more.
“It will literally be a new front door for the campus,” he said.
Completion is scheduled for the summer of 2026.
A $1 million gift from Dr. Robert Willcoxon and his wife, Dot Willcoxon, helped fund the center. Part of the gift supports the annual summit as well as the Willcoxon Scholars Program, which will provide money for health care research programs at Southern.
