UMKC nominates local volunteer for CASE award

By: Elyssa Brogdon

Posted: 6/2/08

Mary Kay McPhee, a local volunteer, has spent more than 30 years contributing to the well being of UMKC, and now administration is taking the time to thank her.

Chancellor Guy Bailey, along with community volunteer Adele Hall, nominated McPhee for the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Distinguished Friend of Education Award.

"It has been an overwhelming experience for me," McPhee said. "[T]o understand the depth and the breath of what we are talking about has been a real learning experience for me. If you realize that all the major institutions were able to make nominations, then it's amazing that a person from River City got it. I'm still struggling to understand the significance of the award."

Joining Bailey and Hall in support of McPhee's nomination were Baker University President Patricia Long and Metropolitan Community College (MCC) Chancellor Jacqueline Snyder.

"That was in an effort to show breadth of where you had a public university, a private university and a community college," McPhee said.

The Distinguished Friend of Education Award pays tribute to a volunteer who makes significant advances at an educational institution where he or she is not an alumnus.

McPhee didn't graduate from UMKC, Baker or MCC; she graduated from the University of Kansas. But Kansas City is where she decided to reside and volunteer.

"Because I live in Kansas City and I know the value of education in this community and what it means, and I truly in my heart believe every community needs to have within its arms a singular rate research academic institution," McPhee said. "And that is UMKC. And that is why since it's inception I have been there supporting it. I know what it means to our community. In all kinds of ways it is the heart of what we are about. The progress of this area is drawn tightly to success of our academic institutions."

McPhee has helped set up funding for several scholarships, served on UMKC boards and committees and donated to the School of Medicine and the Henry W. Bloch School of Business and Public Administration. Volunteering is something natural for McPhee, who has been a volunteer almost her entire life.

"I grew up in the Depression where everybody worked, and everybody worked for the whole," McPhee said. "Following that was World War II where everybody worked, and everybody worked for a cause. … I think it speaks to the responsibility of us as citizens. We are able to keep the populous healthy and to give them an education, give them the tools they need to make their lives meaningful and productive."

Coming from a "background of physicians" and getting her degree in education, McPhee focused most of her volunteer work in education and health. She was a Parent Teacher Association president, room mother and national president of the National Federation of State High Schools Association's TARGET program, a wellness program in charge of all non-academic programs for public high schools. All through her volunteer work, she has strived for success for those around her, though not necessarily with money or fame.

"In 1903 W.E.B DuBois wrote these words which I believe have relevance today," McPhee said in a speech at a CASE ceremony. "'The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be the center of public society. It is above all to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life. An adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.' Valid then and valid now."

According to McPhee, it is that fact that "makes us a healthy, education community."

ebrogdon@unews.com