Communities of Excellence: Call for Concepts

Published April 3, 2014 This content is archived.

Dear University Community:

I am pleased to share with you a call for bold, creative ideas that will form the basis of Communities of Excellence, a signature initiative arising out of Realizing UB 2020.

At the heart of UB 2020 is the desire to pursue impactful scholarship and provide unique learning and engagement opportunities.  Our vision is that UB will be known for addressing large-scale problems that challenge our world and region.  These problems are of such scale that progress will only be accomplished through collaborative efforts across our education, research, scholarship, creative activities, clinical services, engagement and economic development expertise.

To accomplish these things, we are establishing Communities of Excellence, which will focus on topics drawn from the Realizing UB 2020 themes – humanity, justice, environment, innovation, and health.  To achieve our goals, we will make multi-million dollar investments to recruit new faculty to work with existing scholars, and provide required resources and infrastructure.  We plan to establish up to eight communities over the next five years.

All tenured and tenure-track faculty are welcome to submit concepts by April 30, 2014. The full application process involves concept papers, preliminary presentations (by invitation), and full proposals (by invitation). See the call for proposals for more detailed guidelines. [no longer available]

Through these Communities of Excellence, our scholars will be recognized as thought leaders in today’s most relevant and important areas of inquiry.                      

I look forward to reviewing the creative ideas from our faculty that will help us achieve this distinction.

 

Charles F. Zukoski                                                                                        Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs