University of Memphis: Redefining Itself as a Powerhouse Learning Center

Nestled along Central Avenue in the heart of Memphis, the University of Memphis is embarking on a journey that may very well transform the city in which it is located. With urban and suburban connections, the University of Memphis under the leadership of Dr. Shirley Raines has grabbed the proverbial bull by the horns and begun a campus development boon that will transform the university from a commuter-dominated campus to a traditional learning center, replete with intensive focuses on core areas that will redefine Memphis as more than just the distribution center of the world.

With FedEx headquartered in the city and major cargo flooding the city Memphis has become a part of the central system of transportation over the last twenty-five years in the US. Near the heart of the country and the northern most port, Memphis has positioned itself to import and export millions of tons of cargo annually. For this reason it is no surprise that Memphis' airport is annually the busiest in terms of cargo shipped in the world. But with the university's focus on more than shipments into supply chain infrastructure, biomedicine, and other central disciplines the University of Memphis is repositioning itself as a linchpin for a city suffering with an identity crisis steeped in the historic events that defined it a generation ago.

A stone's throw from the FedEx center and Memphis International Airport is the home of Elvis Presley, Graceland. With over a million visitors a year it is the most visited home in America not called the White House. Elvis Presley Enterprises has embarked on its own development project acquiring properties to turn the corridor near Graceland into a major destination place. About a decade before Elvis' death was the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At the then Lorraine Motel in downtown Memphis, the hotel is now the Civil Rights Museum and a reminder of everything that is vile about Memphis.

Beyond Elvis and Dr. King, Memphis is a city that has lacked vision but with glocalization, its footprint internationally is unquestioned as Asian countries look to it as a model for the new urban planning paradigm called aerotropolis. With this paradigm shift, the University of Memphis appears to have catapulted itself in a new trajectory under Dr. Raines as she has cast a new vision for the university with a new motto 'dreamers, thinkers, doers'.

With its urban setting in a city that is over 60 percent African-American, the challenges facing Dr. Raines are an extension of those faced by the Memphis City School System. But whereas so many in local government have made excuses, Dr. Raines appears from a leadership standpoint to have committed to making the University of Memphis a metropolitan research institution. That commitment has raised the stakes for a university known by alumni as 'Tiger High' for its close academic rigors to the 13^th grade in high school as opposed to the major leap of an institution of higher education.

That struggle is something Dr. Raines has faced valiantly the first few years of her tenure. But with the city making choices that may or may not be in the university's best interest, Dr. Shirley Raines is empowering the Memphis Tiger community to breathe the air of change on the campus nestled along Central and Southern. Unique in that there is no other university with its strengths and weaknesses, the University of Memphis has the chance to shift the balance of what kind of city Memphis can be.

If Dr. Raines has her choice Memphis will become a leader in innovative thinking and philosophy, technology application and execution as well as biomedicine and biosciences. With Memphis becoming a hub for all things biomedical the university will benefit greatly from research and development being done in labs inside its science buildings. Thirty-five centers and institutes call the University of Memphis home. And that number will increase over the next five years as new buildings and programs come on line in alignment with where Dr. Raines is pushing the University of Memphis to.

In the future, the University of Memphis will not look like the university it has been the last twenty years. It will not be our parent's college. It will be an international university that has scholars from Asia, that graduates more African-American PhD's in Philosophy than any other university in the nation, and that integrates technology into business processes in every arena.

And watch, Memphis will not be far behind.