The statement of institutional direction will set a course of decision-making for years to come. The document has four major parts. We first state our key institutional goals:

I.     Create a new and distinctive academic direction that integrates excellent research, teaching and engagement and positions UB as a thought and education leader around the world.

II.     Prepare UB students to become effective leaders in tomorrow’s world.

III.     Strengthen UB’s engagement in the region through focused and mutually beneficial community partnerships and efforts to create significant economic development.

IV.     Become a top tier AAU public research university.

These goals drive all of our more specific decisions. Then, we describe the core values that guide our actions. The core of the narrative follows with the description of 11 strategies designed to accomplish our goals.

The academic strategy comes first articulating the key educational and scholarship priorities for UB. The 10 other strategies cohere around and are designed to support the UB academic strategy (see Figure 1).

The document concludes with a description of the key next steps and final thoughts about what UB might look like in 2020. In laying out our future in this way, and by participating in its development the entire campus will have a shared sense of where we are headed and why and how we will get there. This is the beginning step in realizing the full promise of UB 2020.