Published February 3, 2020
Dear Colleagues:
It is my great pleasure to welcome you back to campus this semester. I am excited and honored to be greeting you as UB’s new Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs.
Since I joined UB’s Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering as a faculty member in 1983, UB has made tremendous progress. We have created an environment for our faculty to excel in pushing disciplinary and interdisciplinary boundaries, resulting in a strengthening of our reputation as a world class university. Today, UB is truly a premiere public research university with a global profile. We attract excellent, diverse students who strive to reach their full promise through a rich curriculum that inspires. Our physical presence continues to grow and develop, offering our community of scholars state of the art facilities to support their research and scholarship endeavors.
Moving forward, I am excited by President Tripathi’s ambitious vision for UB to be recognized among the nation’s top 25 public research universities. Achieving this vision will require focused effort in recruiting and retaining an excellent and more diverse faculty; significantly increasing external funding and faculty recognition and awards; a commitment to growing the number of top ranked graduate programs; and determination to significantly improve retention of our undergraduate student population.
Achieving our place among the nation’s top 25 public research universities represents more than a numerical goal. In continually striving to improve our university, we will simultaneously provide better outcomes for our students, a richer environment for our faculty, and greater impact on our local, national and global communities.
As Provost, I look forward to working with you to understand the opportunities and challenges faced by each unit on campus, and in particular by our schools and college. Together, we can pursue our most ambitious opportunities and find solutions to our most challenging problems as we continue advancing our place among the nation’s premier public research universities.
Sincerely,
A. Scott Weber Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs