The campus response to the first Realizing UB 2020 document has been extraordinary. There have been 2,834 unique visitors to the website, 24,500 page views of which 18,000 were unique page views and 300 written messages recorded on the site. The Campus Advisory Committee and the Faculty Liaison Committee organized 45 feedback sessions attended by over 1,500 faculty, staff and students. Multiple open forums were held with hundreds of people in attendance. The feedback received has been very helpful and ranged from a detailed commentary about the theme concept to the need to emphasize the importance of key infrastructures to the importance of engaging our alumni. You have asked that the presentation of the material be simplified and focused more on the needs of our graduate students. You have offered comments about building a more profound sense of pride within our community.

This new draft responds to your feedback and provides additional material promised in December. After much discussion, we determined that this document should express the strategic direction of the university. These directions are enduring and speak to important long term aspirations that we should strive to achieve. Plans for how these directions will be implemented will be offered in subsequent communications. Approaches to implementation are necessarily responsive to the realities we face at given points in time. The document presented here has evolved from one imagined as a description of strategic approach and implementation to one that describes the roadmap for our future where specifics of implementation will be developed and actualized in the months ahead. Continue to the full message...