Memorandums

New academic year brings “intellectual reinvigoration, fresh insight, and enthusiasm in the face of new challenges.” September 22, 2004

Dear Colleagues:

I had the privilege recently of personally greeting students, faculty and staff on our North and South Campuses during the first week of fall classes. In my initial September at UB, it was a pleasure to see so many now-familiar faces, as well as new ones, evidencing all the excitement and anticipation of a new beginning on campus. As we greet the start of the 2004-2005 academic year at the University at Buffalo, welcome back to UB! I offer my best wishes for much new discovery, success and achievement in the academic year to come.

The start of an academic year is always a meaningful time for a university community. With its influx of the new, the beginning of the year is a time of intellectual reinvigoration and of fresh insight, of rejuvenation, originality and enthusiasm in the face of new challenges. It is the moment when we remind ourselves of our goals and expectations, as well as our resources and abilities, and set forward new aspirations for future accomplishment. It is the moment when each of us looks ahead, with unlimited imagination, and creativity, to the future.

Beyond the beginning of another academic year, it seems to me that this moment is an especially auspicious one in the long and distinguished life of this university. Consider what we have already accomplished in 2004, and what we will continue to achieve through 2005, and what we envision broadly for our future. From the solid foundations of a very good UB, we will build a truly great University at Buffalo. Through many discussions in 2004 about the future of our university, we have recognized the need to assess our strengths and challenges from a comprehensive, university-wide perspective. In the coming months, we will now come together as an academic community in support of that vision of a great university, focusing our collective intellectual capital upon our university as a whole for its greater good.

The importance of this collaborative effort cannot be overstated in the fast-changing climate of public higher education in which we now live and work. To ensure the continued growth of academic excellence at UB, we must excel in anticipating, in meeting, and in effectively and efficiently solving the substantial challenges that confront our university in the 21st century, just as each and every one of our colleague and competitor institutions must do.

It is therefore imperative for the university's administrative model to evolve into a forward-looking and proactive administrative culture. The academic community must have sufficient data, resources, and the organizational structure in place that will allow the development and implementation of an academic plan for the university; a plan that is comprehensive and that is supported by an underlying campus master strategy.

As any diligent researcher does when preparing to compose a scholarly paper or a research experiment or a vital grant application, as a body of scholars we began last semester to assess our current situation and to assemble the pertinent information and resources that will allow success in the achievement of our goals. University-wide, we will now begin to implement a comprehensive institutional strategic planning process designed to explore UB's strategic strengths as well as our challenges.

Through the dedicated efforts of many diverse members of our faculty and staff, as well as the assistance and insight of key volunteers, the groundwork for this planning process has been accomplished over the last several months. Throughout the spring semester and over the summer, assessment and strategic planning sessions continued across the university, both within the schools and colleges as well as in three focused task force groups, including, first, the Government, University, and Industry Task Force, charged with creating a comprehensive, coordinated and integrated plan that will allow UB to maximize its relationships with state, federal and international governments, and with private and public industry.

The charge of the Bioinformatics Business Planning Task Force—the creation of a comprehensive plan for the New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences at the University at Buffalo—followed from the significant expansion and restructuring of the center in April 2004. Third, the Community Engagement Task Force, currently at work, is charged with the creation of a comprehensive and integrated plan that will allow the university as a whole to strengthen relations with the communities it serves.

On July 14th, Provost Tripathi and I led a group of deans, faculty and administrative leaders in an intensive day-long institutional planning retreat, the first of what I intend will be many university-wide conversations about our academic strengths, institutional goals, and how UB can best establish an administrative culture of comprehensive long-term planning. This was a highly productive session, with three key outcomes.

First, to continue an intensive focus on the development and implementation of an organized strategic planning process for UB, I have constituted an Executive Committee to serve as an advisory council for the University President and Executive Vice Presidents. In addition to the President and Provost, the Executive Committee is comprised of Vice President Dennis R. Black, Dean Uday P. Sukhatme, Dean Richard N. Buchanan, Professor Tamara P. Thornton, and Professor Peter A. Nickerson, ex officio, and is charged with providing oversight, coordination, and recommendations for UB's strategic initiatives.

I have constituted two primary planning committees who will oversee the two primary functional divisions of the campus, academic planning and academic support planning. These planning committees will in turn report to and advise the Executive Committee. Their charges are as follows:

  1. The Academic Planning Committee is led by the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs. It is charged with overseeing the coordination and integration of overall university programmatic planning, including the development of the university's core strategic academic strengths, and the development of the SUNY Mission II Review.

  2. The Academic Support Planning Committee is led by the Executive Vice President for Finance and Operations. It is charged with overseeing the identification, prioritization, development and implementation of business and operational initiatives, the development of an all-funds campus budget process (to be developed jointly with the Academic Planning Committee), and the development of a long-term facility and planning process and plan.

Third, with this structure in place, it is my objective that by the end of 2004 the university will have in place a draft academic plan for university community review and discussion, a plan that clearly articulates UB's strategic academic strengths, and that informs related draft plans for our academic support strategies, which are to be prepared within six months of that time. I also want to state clearly the following: what drives this entire process is academic excellence. All that we do as a university must be understood in terms of this overarching principle.

The success of the university strategic planning process and the resulting draft academic plan will rely upon the participation, dedication, and intellectual investment of the academic community. To that end, I am directing the creation of a new university community website dedicated to these institutional planning efforts. It will be online by September 24th, the end of this week. The strategic planning website will include an overview of institutional assessment efforts, the findings and recommendations of the university task forces to date, and the final and complete membership listings of all related committees.

The university's strategic planning website is intended to serve as a university community resource and public forum for our planning efforts, and will be designed to share information as well as to elicit feedback, discussion and community discourse. I encourage you to visit the website often, and to employ it to share your perspectives and ideas for the future of our university.

This semester, I will discuss our institutional assessment and strategic planning efforts in greater detail as I continue to visit departments and schools across the university, and to meet with diverse groups of internal and external constituencies. To further facilitate discussion across our two main campuses, I have set up an office in the Biomedical Education Building on the South Campus, where I will hold scheduled meetings.

As I look around the University at Buffalo this September and feel the momentum in the air, it's very clear that we are off to an excellent beginning to the academic year. The opportunity before us now is far grander than looking ahead through December 2004, and then beyond to May 2005, however. It is to set a course of excellence for this university that will guide its development throughout the next decades, to define a strategic template that will serve to focus UB's direction for years to come.

UB is an institution of tremendous intellectual achievement and leadership, and thus of great and continuing promise. Through the institutional planning efforts in process, and thanks to our collective commitment to these efforts, the academic community has already begun to set a strategic course for the long-term development of a truly great public research university, and to fully claim that identity as our own. Colleagues, the future of the University at Buffalo, and, by extension, that of public higher education, lies before us to determine. Therefore let us seize the day.

Thank you for your outstanding work, and for your commitment to UB. I look forward to meeting the challenges ahead with you, to our future discussions, and to experiencing in the months to come your new and unique contributions both to the academy at large and to our own vibrant university community.

Sincerely, signature
John B. Simpson
President