As a diverse academic community, UB’s stated mission is to bring the benefits of our research, scholarship, creative activity and educational excellence to global and local communities in ways that impact and positively change the world. We view the three traditional pillars of the public higher education mission — research, education and service — as interdependent endeavors that continually enrich and inform each other. Groundbreaking research, transformative educational experiences and deeply engaged service to all communities define the University at Buffalo’s mission as a premier research-intensive public university.

Building on our existing strong foundation of academic excellence, UB’s vision is to expand our reach and the strength of our worldwide impact with the consequence that we will be recognized as a member of the highest tier of the nation’s leading public research universities. Guided by this vision over the past several years, we created a strategic framework, UB 2020.

The UB 2020 plan originated from a deliberate engagement of university leadership and faculty in a careful assessment of the specific strengths of UB’s various academic programs. The strategic analysis that emerged from this process was simple: UB has a distinguished, talented and productive faculty. Yet, the faculty is not yet large enough to provide the depth and diversity of expertise to generate the quantity and quality of impact that is the hallmark of the great public research university we hope to become.

What is needed to achieve our vision and what became the impetus for the UB 2020 program was a plan to grow the faculty to a more productive size and to focus new faculty hiring in areas where UB could leverage strategic faculty strengths to become thought leaders in key fields. In addition, success requires UB to invest in the staff, infrastructure and facilities to build the support environments that enable faculty to be highly productive and ensure student success.

At this moment in our history, UB has the opportunity to reimagine the central ambitions of our UB 2020 program. This document describes the specific pathways UB will follow to realize the aspirations of UB 2020 using and shifting base resources as needed, investing the funds provided by SUNY and New York State through the NYSUNY 2020 program and creating capacities to leverage our current investment with research and private funds with special attention to the financial and intellectual contributions of alumni, friends and partners.