Historic faculty hiring presents unprecedented opportunity for UB

UB is embarking on its largest faculty-hiring initiative in recent history, with plans to hire upward of 200 full-time faculty over the next two years.

The initiative, “Advancing Top 25: Faculty Hiring,” is considered transformative for UB, with university leaders calling it an unprecedented opportunity to move the university forward by growing its faculty base.

“This is a very exciting time to be at the University at Buffalo,” says President Satish K. Tripathi.  

“We now have the opportunity to enhance the depth and breadth of our academic and research programs. We are excited to recruit and hire faculty to add to our highly engaged and collaborative community of scholars. With these new faculty hires, UB will further broaden our impact locally, nationally and globally.”  

“We’re recruiting emerging and established scholars who will deliver groundbreaking research and provide students with extraordinary educational experiences,” says Provost A. Scott Weber. “In doing so, we are advancing President Tripathi’s vision of being recognized among the Top 25 public research universities in the nation.”

The university’s Top 25 Ambition, announced by Tripathi in 2019, has guided the university to significant achievements, such as UB’s designation last year as New York State’s flagship university and achieving historic levels of sponsored research funding, including recently securing a $20 million federal grant to create the AI Institute for Exceptional Education. This is one of the most prestigious and competitive research grants UB has received in its history. In addition, UB faculty have increasingly received the most select scholarly honors in their fields, and the university is nearing completion of the most ambitious fundraising campaign in its history.

UB is poised to build on those achievements by hiring additional talented faculty and supporting their success at the university. Faculty hiring on this scale hasn’t happened at UB since the 1960s, when the university joined the SUNY system, Weber notes.

Of the 200 tenure-track faculty to be hired at UB over a two-year period, about half will be new faculty added to the ranks in four key interdisciplinary areas addressing issues of global importance: democracy and society, human health, sustainability, and transformational technology.

While all are areas of strength for the university, these broader themes signal to peer institutions and potential candidates that UB is growing its faculty in critical fields. Additionally, UB is committed to doubling the number of faculty from historically underrepresented backgrounds between 2020 and 2025, Weber says.

A member of the prestigious Association of American Universities (AAU) and the largest, most comprehensive public research university in SUNY, the university is able to attract faculty candidates because of the breadth of its research, service and academic mission. 

UB offers exciting opportunities for new faculty through its Top 25 ambition; its commitment to academic freedom and diversity, equity and inclusion; its culture of collaborative, cross-disciplinary research; and its deep engagement in the region’s well-being.

The Buffalo area, with its strong sense of community, cultural and recreational offerings, and affordability, offers candidates an excellent environment in which to live, work and raise a family.

“This is a historic opportunity for the university to build on our strengths and enhance our impact,” Weber says. “I’ve never been more excited about the possibilities of our contributions – to Western New York to New York State and to the rest of the world.”