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Faculty selected for leadership program
Richard M. Gronostajski and Robert Knopf
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“As the Faculty in Leadership Program enters its third year, it is already becoming a University at Buffalo tradition launching many successful careers in higher education administration.”
Senior faculty members Richard M. Gronostajski and Robert Knopf have been selected for the 2008-09 Faculty in Leadership class, a program designed to supplement their experiences as researchers and scholars with administrative duties that acquaint them with important issues in higher education.
Gronostajski, professor in the Department of Biochemistry, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, and Knopf, professor and chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance, College of Arts and Sciences, will be paired with a senior member of the administration in the Office of the Provost and will take part in projects and university-level discussions introducing them to important and timely issues in higher education administration.
Satish Tripathi, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, says the Faculty in Leadership Program provides a unique opportunity for faculty members to learn about university administration and determine whether an administrative career is compatible with their professional goals and skills without a complete shift in their professional commitments.
“As the Faculty in Leadership Program enters its third year, it is already becoming a University at Buffalo tradition launching many successful careers in higher education administration,” Tripathi says.
Gronostajski, who joined the UB faculty in 2001, says he wanted to participate in the Faculty in Leadership Program to understand more fully the issues involved in running a major university and to find out if there are better ways to use the scarce resources available to the university to promote the research and teaching efforts of the faculty.
“We have to do things better than we've done them in the past if we want to succeed in the future,” he says.
He says he hopes that his “internship” project will focus on projects related to the development of UB’s downtown medical campus.
“Having come to UB from both the Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University, I have seen directly how increased cooperation between two research institutions in the same city can greatly benefit both institutions,” he says. “If we can do to some extent in Buffalo what was done in Cleveland, then we can create a world-class research and teaching campus downtown.”
Knopf, who joined the UB faculty in 2004, explained that serving as chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance for the past four years peaked his interest in getting to know how UB “works on a larger level. ”
“I feel I understand how my department works, and I have a sense of some of the issues within my college, but I want to engage with the issues and initiatives that will impact on the future of the university as a whole,” he says.
While the topic of his project has not yet been finalized, he says he is interested in developing workshops for new chairs or getting involved with UB's undergraduate academies.
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