In President Tripathi’s State of the University address Nov. 2, 2012, he spoke about the university being at the cusp of a great opportunity. We have a period of time over the next 4 years to realize the full measure of the UB 2020 promise. With the help of our elected officials, business and community leaders and all of you, we will be able to invest $100M in a way that will move us to the next tier of public research universities in this country. We must find the right path to take the fullest advantage of this moment. To be successful, we must be agile.  Excellence requires harvesting the best ideas. Given the short time frame to capture our opportunity, we need to act in concert and with focus.

Over the next few months, we will probe together the question of what this institution should become and how we will set ourselves apart from other institutions. Attached are materials that describe our current situation and our intent to develop a narrative of UB’s future. Above all, this process will sharpen our understandings of UB’s unique nature and the ways we can create distinctiveness that will make us a better university.

We have created this page as a central repository for information describing this process. I look forward to talking with as many of you as I can and sharing all of the information this process has to offer with all of you. Please make yourself heard in this effort. Thank you for all that you do for UB.

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