Published August 25, 2025
Dear University Community,
Welcome to the start of UB’s fall semester! I hope that you enjoyed your summer, and that the 2025-2026 academic year finds you achieving every aspiration you have set for yourself.
I would like to extend a special greeting to the newest members of our scholarly community—including the largest first-year class in UB’s history! If you count yourself among this group of some 5,000 strong, we are delighted you will be pursuing your scholarly interests at UB. While you might feel a bit overwhelmed as you familiarize yourself with campus this week, I am confident that you will quickly acclimate to the rhythms of university life and, in the process, find UB to be an exceptionally welcoming and supportive academic home.
One of the ways we achieve this distinction is by providing our community with the resources to excel. For example, in recent years we have hired more advisors and success coaches to guide our students in their scholarly endeavors, and expanded counseling services to meet our students’ evolving needs. We are offering additional course sections and new degree programs, including seven majors in our just-launched Department of AI and Society. Moreover, in our effort to ensure that everyone at UB thrives, personally and professionally, we are engaged in one of the most significant periods of campus modernization and development in the history of our university.
Central to all of this work, of course, are our dedicated faculty and staff. UB is such a vibrant, dynamic community because of our people. We are proud to be the academic home to scholars and professionals from across the state, country and world. Our international students—many of whom I had the pleasure of meeting during last week’s welcome events—hail from nearly 100 countries around the globe. Collectively, we represent an incredibly broad swath of cultures and perspectives, and we are stronger for it. Our richness of backgrounds and lived experiences makes our intellectual discourse all the more engaging, our collaborations all the more productive and our friendships all the more meaningful.
If you are new to UB, you will discover this for yourself in no time. And to everyone across our great university, please accept my best wishes for a successful, rewarding semester and year.
Sincerely,
Satish K. Tripathi
President