Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon is calling for an investigation into the way leaders at UMKC’s Henry W. Bloch School of Management promoted the school.
Nixon sent a letter to Don Downing, chairman of the Missouri Board of Curators, asking for the investigation after reading a story in the Kansas City Star. The newspaper reported that a Bloch School professor Michael Song worked closely with the authors of a published 2011 study which vaulted the Bloch School ahead of MIT, Stanford, and Harvard as first in the world in innovation management research. The authors of the study, PianPian Yang and Lei Tao, were visiting scholars at UMKC when they wrote the paper. They were on the campus at the behest of Teng-Kee Tan, who was Dean of the Bloch School, according to the Star, but that wasn’t disclosed in the publication.
The curators released a statement that they are evaluating all the facts. UMKC put out another statement welcoming the scrutiny, saying that the Star willfully ignored evidence establishing the legitimacy of the rankings involved, and agreeing with the governor that issues “fundamental to UMKC’s integrity" are at stake.
