Headrick briefed senators on his agenda for the current academic year, as well as what he sees as the changing role of the provost's office.

He said that the appointment of Michael Bernardino as vice president for health affairs and Kerry Grant as dean of arts and sciences will move issues that had been handled in the provost's office "more closely to where the faculty and the action occurs within the institution."

Moreover, with the new SUNY budget allocation system-RAM-retaining on the campuses revenues generated there, it "makes sense," he said, to likewise keep revenues generated by the individual schools at the school level, rather than funneling them into the central UB coffer. This will provide incentives for the schools to expand enrollments, generate new revenues and add programs, he said.

He said his office will be "investing and supporting innovative programs that the schools and deans normally won't or don't support" for a variety of reasons, including because they are outside of a school's purview or involve several schools.

Headrick cited as examples the College of Arts and Sciences, the proposed merger of the School of Library Studies and Department of Communication and the Environment and Society Institute.

He proposed the creation of a special "innovations fund" of between $12 million and $24 million to pay for such programs. While he acknowledged that the deans are not happy at the prospect of giving up revenues to such a fund, UB must work to develop a strategy to create such a fund and develop mechanisms for maintaining it, he said.

Headrick noted that his "key" agenda item for the coming year is the submission of a mission review statement as requested by SUNY central administration. The basic message of the statement, which likely will be submitted in October, will be that "UB is a comprehensive, public, research, flagship university; a strong university that is competitive with other good public universities and is woefully underfunded. We have established an exceptional record of strengths and accomplishments, given our lack of adequate support, he said."

Headrick also said that he is working with a group of provosts, graduate deans and research officers from the four university centers, Cornell, the free-standing health sciences centers and the College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry to develop and promote a SUNY research initiative. The five-year plan, which is to be submitted to SUNY trustees this fall, addresses special needs, such as increased graduate stipends, greater support for matching funds for external grants and matching funds for research startups and equipment.

In other business at Tuesday's meeting, the Senate approved a resolution advanced by its Affirmative Action Committee recommending that UB create a mentoring and retention initiative for junior faculty.