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Simpson has many plans, but no regrets
President John B. Simpson is particularly proud that UB has forged a stronger relationship with the broader Western New York community. Photo: DOUGLAS LEVERE
As John B. Simpson prepares to retire from UB after seven years as the university’s 14th president, he has lots of plans. And no regrets.
“I’ve had a wonderful time here. I’ve engaged a large number of very good and very committed people in the university, and in the Western New York community more broadly, in the future of this university,” Simpson said. “And I think what we’ve done has been remarkable. I don’t regret that the state hasn’t yet made the changes in its policies to allow this university to achieve that potential I see because I know it’s coming. And while I would have preferred the timing to be better, at the end of the day that’s not something we control.”
A relaxed Simpson—dressed casually in jeans and a blue-and-white-checked shirt—recently sat down with the UB Reporter to talk about a variety of topics: from UB’s accomplishments during his presidency to the future of public higher education to his retirement plans. Although he originally had planned to retire on Jan. 15, he has decided to stay on as president for a limited period of time while the search for his successor moves toward a conclusion.
Every university president leaves his or her indelible mark on the institution. For Steve Sample, it was building’s UB national stature as demonstrated by the university’s selection to the Association of American Universities. For Bill Greiner, it was the enhancement of campus life, including the return to Division I athletics. For Simpson, it’s UB 2020, the university’s strategic plan for realizing its full potential and rising among the ranks of America’s public research universities.
UB 2020, Simpson agrees, is his legacy, as well as the stronger ties the university has forged with the broader community.
“I think the legacy is the university’s aspirations operationalized through a strategic plan, through UB 2020, through gaining the community’s support through the things we’ve started over the last seven years,” he said. “I think the conversation about UB—what it is, what its potential is, what it can do, whether in Western New York or in Albany or indeed the entire state of New York—has changed and it’s not going back to where it was. I like to think that’s a positive legacy.”
Simpson cited a number of areas where UB has grown and excelled during his presidency—but “credit belongs to the university community, much more than any one individual,” he insisted. Among them are undergraduate education, the research enterprise, the high-quality faculty who have been hired, UB’s increasingly important role in the local health care community, and of course UB 2020, with its capital and academic, as well as academic-support dimensions.
But, Simpson added, the one accomplishment that he is particularly proud of is the strong relationship UB has built with the local community. “Now, the university and the community understand one another; the community understands and supports the university as it didn’t before. And I like to think the aspirations the university has for itself—and thus the aspirations Buffalo has for itself—are a lot higher than they were,” he said.
When Simpson came to UB in 2003, he told the Reporter that his vision for the university was to help it become “without question the very best public research university in the Northeast” and one of the best in the nation.
Now, seven years later, he believes that while UB is the best in the Northeast, it has not been able to assume its place among the truly great public research universities nationally.
“I don’t think we’ve been able to do that—not because of our own failures, but because New York has not allowed us to,” he said.
Simpson said that New York, among the major states, has the worst policy restrictions on its public universities. Policy reforms in the Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act (PHEEIA), pushed by UB and SUNY during the last state legislative session, include changes to key areas of public higher education governance: tuition, public-private partnerships and procurement. Simpson has said that enacting these “common-sense reforms” would put UB on the same footing as almost every other institution—both public and private—in the country and would give UB, as well as other SUNY institutions, the financial flexibility to play a major role in the state’s economic resurgence and support UB 2020 as a basis for economic transformation in Western New York.
Simpson is optimistic that PHEEIA—and UB 2020—will move forward.
New York, he said, will enact PHEEIA or similar legislation “because it’s one of the few alternatives it has for Western New York.”
“That means this plan we have that we call UB 2020 will happen,” he said.
“I think the new president will put his or her mark on it—his or her interpretation of what needs to be done—but the fundamental notion of this university stepping up and getting better and better and better is, at the end of the day, so important and so valuable, not just to us but to the community, that UB 2020 will happen. And the Legislature will end up helping us do this,” he said.
The success of UB 2020, Simpson said, also is tied to the fact that “it’s not only embraced by the university community—it’s not just an academic plan—it is the region’s plan.”
“I think that there’s a whole community here now that’s supportive of it. There’s tremendous momentum and that will guarantee that it will go forward.”
Public higher education, Simpson noted, is “in real trouble”—not only in New York, but nationally as well.
“Until we manage to combine the notion of public higher education and support it with a 21st-century vision of a university as an entrepreneurial enterprise—a business, really—then we’re going to continue to have difficulties.”
UB 2020 can be the model for the 21st-century university, Simpson says. His advice for UB’s next president? Stick with the plan.
“You do have a university community, and with the broader community’s support, committed to thinking about what this university can be as a long-term strategy,” he said in urging his successor to stay the course. “Don’t let that go. You have a sense of mission and direction, and very specific directions within a plan that have been carefully considered and will get this university where it needs to go.”
As retirement looms, Simpson has begun compiling a list of things he wants to do: attack the stack of books by his bed that has grown over the past 20 years; carpentry (“I love building things out of wood,” he said, whether it’s a major sailboat project, finishing and replacing woodwork in his home or building a piece of furniture); finish a theoretical review article he started 12 years ago, about the time he moved to Santa Cruz, where he served as provost and executive vice chancellor before coming to UB (“I had two pages done; I still have two pages done,” he said.)
Simpson stressed that he’s not interested in taking on the presidency at another university. “I want to do things I want to do—and there are lots of them—before I’m too old to do them. I’ve got four grandkids who I don’t know as well as I should; I want to be part of their lives,” he said.
“I’m perfectly happy to close this door and move on. And do so without regrets.”
Simpson offered some final words to the UB community: “Thanks, and keep going.”
“Thanks to the people of the university and the people of Western New York. It really has been a pleasure and privilege to be here and to work with you over the last seven years,” he said. “We (he and his wife, Katherine) leave with nothing but good, positive memories and feelings about Buffalo and about the university, and, I think realistically, about the future.”
“Keep your aspirations, keep your ambitions, keep your goals,” he urged members of the UB community. “New York will change; it’ll have to. And you will get the chance to realize it.”
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