Charting university's future: Headrick will take planning dialogue to campus community

Dear Colleagues:

Because the 1996/97 state budget remains unresolved, I want to reach you before we disperse for the summer in order to briefly describe the situation as I currently see it.

These are admittedly difficult times and I am aware that uncertainties can take a collective toll. It is all the more important, then, that all of us remain committed to defining and seeing through to completion a university-wide planning process that preserves the integrity of our academic responsibilities both in the short term and into the foreseeable future.

We are entering the second phase of that process now, following upon an ambitious and recently completed self-study by each faculty and school of its programs and resources, of its initial mapping of future directions. The deans are now in open discussion, reporting their current inventories and exchanging their views about where we go from here. As we move forward, I intend to sustain a cooperative and open process.

When this phase is complete and some initial sense of possibility and direction is evident, I will take the planning dialogue to the campus community at large beginning in the early fall. From this, change will inevitably come: decisions about focused investments in programs with future promise, about consolidations and reorganizations in targeted areas to accomplish both reductions where needed and building collaborative strengths where intellectually promising. These are the long-term academic issues before us.

We are also addressing the short-term budget pressures that are so much on everyone's mind. The President, Senior Vice President, and I will discuss with the SUNY administration a series of proposals and related fiscal strategies on behalf of UB even before the state determines its own budget. We will press our case firmly and offer specific measures for increased local control of our revenues.

In all of this, we particularly value the centrality of faculty colleagues, are sensitive to your concerns, and solicit your engagement in charting the future of the university in a time that has become increasingly complicated for higher education.

I wish you a productive summer and look forward to meeting with many of you in the fall.

Best wishes,

Tom Headrick

Provost

Faculty, staff and students invited to join Team UB, help in fight against juvenile diabetes

Dear Member of the University Community:

On Sunday, June 2, thousands of Western New Yorkers will undertake a challenge too large to ignore. They will be walking in the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation 10K Walk at Delaware Park in an effort to raise research funds to find a cure for this disease that affects 14 million people.

The Walk has grown into an outstanding event in which the Western New York community generously gives of its time and money. Overwhelming corporate support of this event has created its success.

For the first time ever, the University at Buffalo is participating by entering a team of walkers-Team UB. We're looking for faculty, staff and students to join together to walk as representatives of the university. We encourage you to also invite your family and friends to join you as members of our team.

To organize this effort, we need help from every department on campus. Here's what to do: