News
Conversation begins
UB holds first two Realizing UB 2020 sessions
Members of the UB community offer their thoughts during the first Realizing UB 2020 open forum in Harriman Hall. Photo: DOUGLAS LEVERE
The campuswide conversation has begun to develop strategies to achieve the UB 2020 goal of moving UB into the next tier of public research universities, with Provost Charles F. Zukoski this week moderating the first two of what will be numerous open forums over the next few months.
With UB at a pivotal point in its history, the campus community has the opportunity to contribute significantly to the discussion by offering input to what Zukoski describes as a clean slate of possibilities.
“There is nothing hidden that I’m going to reveal,” the provost told those who attended the forum held on Nov. 29 in the Center for Tomorrow, North Campus. Zukoski also moderated a similar session on Nov. 28 in Harriman Hall on the South Campus.
“We haven’t come up with anything yet. We are having this conversation so we can get your ideas. But it is only at the end of the process that we will have determined our priorities and will have articulated the direction we should go as a university.”
The forums were the first steps of a process that Zukoski says will produce a document—a statement of institutional direction—that will guide UB’s strategic efforts and set priorities for the university’s investment over the next five to 10 years.
The initiative, Realizing UB 2020, was launched by President Satish K. Tripathi during his State of the University Address earlier this month.
Zukoski said Realizing UB 2020 is taking place during a “generational opportunity.”
“We had a similar opportunity decades ago when UB went from a private to a public institution,” he said. “And today, with the commitment of NY SUNY 2020, we again have that once-in-a-generation opportunity.”
The NYSUNY 2020 legislation passed in 2011 instituted a rational tuition plan for SUNY that allows all campuses to raise tuition for New York residents up to $300 annually for five years. It also allows the four university centers—including UB—to raise tuition 10 percent for out-of-state students and to charge all students an annual $75 Academic Excellence and Success Fee.
It also prevents the state from cutting funding to SUNY by an amount equal to the revenue generated by tuition increases.
After his initial presentation in the Center for Tomorrow, Zukoski spent 45 minutes answering questions from some of the 150 people in attendance. A few attendees agreed the university has a generational opportunity, but expressed concern that the process intended to generate new ideas involves longtime, high-level administrators.
“I spend time thinking about that and trying to capture the thoughts of the people who will be here in the next generation,” said Zukoski. “We need the input of people who haven’t been here for a long time to take us in new directions, so talk to your junior colleagues, get them involved and tell them to respond. We need a lot of conversation.”
Some participants wondered about the university’s younger faculty members and how their contributions could be solicited. Zukoski said that while not currently part of the process, a committee made up of younger faculty was an idea worth pursuing.
Students also are meant to be part of this process, Zukoski added, and he is looking for opportunities to engage them as much as possible.
The statement of institutional direction is scheduled to be published on May 15, 2013. The first of several draft strategy statements will be completed by Dec. 15 and posted on the Realizing UB 2020 website. Zukoski called that “thought piece” a “straw structure” that will inspire a new round of discussion and a new set of materials to be completed by Feb. 20. More draft strategies are due Feb. 22 and March 1, each followed by a few weeks of discussion before their revisions are completed.
“Then all of these will be brought together and discussed,” Zukoski said. “We’ll sort through all of the information and contributions, and publish our final statement of institutional direction on May 15.”
The timetable is accelerated because the window of opportunity is narrow, the provost explained.
“NYSUNY 2020 gives us until 2016. We have to go through that window before it closes,” he said. “We want to be ready to respond with clear answers to questions like, why should a student enroll here? How will our approach to teaching and learning evolve? Why should someone join our faculty? Why give philanthropically to the university?”
Moving quickly means the process must be streamlined and designed as an internal conversation, a reality that elicited questions about how the university’s community partners would contribute.
“We have to develop the mechanisms first before we can effectively engage with the external community,” Zukoski said. “The analogy I draw is to say, “We want to go to the moon. And our external partners can then advise us on which rocket to use. But right now there is tremendous pressure to act. We don’t have much time to decide how we will strategically invest the money provided to us by NYSUNY 2020. That’s why, at least for the moment, I want this to be a conversation that we have with ourselves.”
Benchmarking and reviewing similar strategic development initiatives from other institutions were suggested by some attendees as a possible facilitator to the discussion.
“Other strategic plans that I have reviewed lack specifics,” Zukoski said. “That is why we are taking this down to the level of implementation. We will have the conversation about setting our priorities so we can determine then how to strategically distribute our resources. That’s the difference between what we’re doing here and what many other universities do.”
Reader Comments