About the University
Founded in 1846 as a private medical college located in downtown Buffalo, the University at Buffalo (UB) joined the public State University of New York in 1962 and has grown to become the largest and most comprehensive university in the SUNY system. Widely regarded as SUNY’s flagship and its primary center for professional education and training, the University at Buffalo also was the first of the two public universities in the state to earn membership in the pre-eminent Association of American Universities, one of only 59 research-intensive universities in the United States to hold that distinction.
Academic excellence is the university’s first priority and chief guiding principle. With a College of Arts and Sciences, 11 professional schools (Architecture and Planning, Dental Medicine, Graduate School of Education, Engineering and Applied Sciences, Law, Management, Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Nursing, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Public Health and Health Professions, and Social Work) plus a graduate division at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, UB has the widest range of academic programs of any public institution in New York or New England.
UB enrolls more than 29,000 students and offers more than 300 academic programs at the baccalaureate, masters, professional and doctoral levels in its 12 decanal units. The university also is home to more than 100 research centers and institutes, and its current annual research expenditures are just shy of $350 million. UB’s libraries hold 4 million volumes in seven major units and an exceptionally wide array of digital information resources.
Located on an international border, the University at Buffalo is truly a global community of scholars, ranking first in the nation among comprehensive public research universities in terms of percentage of enrollment that is international. As one indicator of the university’s prominence in internationalization, UB ranked among the top five U.S. research institutions in its production of Fulbright Scholars for the 2010-11 academic year. Nearly 11 percent of UB students study abroad—five times the national average. UB has exchange programs with more than 75 universities around the world.
The University at Buffalo also prides itself on its unity of academic and athletic excellence. UB fields the only full Division I-A athletics program in the SUNY system. The UB Bulls compete in the Mid-American Conference (MAC) in 19 of their 20 sports, and have won conference or national titles or championships in the past three years in football, men’s basketball, women’s rowing, and men’s and women’s tennis. UB’s student athletes also consistently earn conference-wide and national recognition for their academic achievements, including Academic All-MAC honors and NCAA recognition.