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Realizing UB 2020 discussions
to shape UB’s future
President Satish K. Tripathi, in his state of the university address earlier this month, said UB is poised to “begin the next evolution of UB 2020.” The collaborative model that identified UB’s strengths now can help define our distinctiveness as a university.
By capturing and articulating UB’s unique qualities, Tripathi says the university will set itself apart from its peers and be positioned for even greater leadership and impact. To succeed, he says we need to think as one university.
“We are all UB,” says Tripathi, and he is asking UB’s entire campus community to think collectively about the course the university will take over the next five years.
“For us to build on our momentum and take UB 2020 to the next level, we all need to have a shared vision and purpose,” says Tripathi.
Part of that evolutionary process involves developing a narrative of what makes UB distinctive. Tripathi has asked Provost Charles F. Zukoski to help him lead Realizing UB 2020, a campus conversation that will unfold over the next five months. The input and engagement to be generated during the Realizing UB 2020 process will be essential, as it was throughout the UB 2020 process.
“When I look at UB 2020, I see ambitious goals,” says Zukoski. “Realizing UB 2020 will allow us to articulate how we will achieve those goals. It is not a new strategic planning process, but rather a statement of institutional direction and an implementation exercise for the concepts and ideals that are contained in UB 2020.”
After a period of “crushing budget cuts,” Zukoski says UB emerged with a solid foundation and a strong student, faculty and research base. The university’s strategic strengths sustained their energy and momentum through that challenging past and now UB has the opportunity and the expectation going forward to grow revenue and play an increasingly vital role in the community, says Zukoski.
“It is a stunning achievement that President Tripathi was able to maintain our strengths in the face of $85 million in funding reductions. Yet here we are, with quality faculty, students and programs,” Zukoski says. “He now wants us to take the next step and fulfill the university’s promise through Realizing UB 2020.
“This is our opportunity to grow the size of our faculty and compete with the best universities in the country for research funding and the best students to enroll in our programs.”
Realizing UB 2020, to be completed in April 2013, is fundamentally an extended dialogue Zukoski will facilitate with members of the university community. He says UB’s direction for the future and answers to questions about what the university should become will emerge from this discussion.
“We don’t have a preconceived agenda. My contribution and that of the president is to say, ‘We must get better and we must distinguish UB from its competitors.’ Good things will come from being distinctive. That’s why we’re turning to the university community and asking them to listen carefully and to share their thoughts. Out of that will come a new and interesting way of understanding who we are as a university and the direction we should head to achieve continued success.”
Zukoski says the exercise will capture strategies, including academic direction, student success, research and faculty hiring. Several forums will be scheduled between now and early next year to provide multiple opportunities for broad campus input. The first is from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Nov. 28 in 105 Harriman Hall, South Campus. The second forum immediately follows the Professional Staff Senate’s 3 p.m. general membership meeting on Nov. 29. It will take place from 3:45 to 5 p.m. in the Center for Tomorrow, North Campus.
“We are going to provide as many opportunities as possible for people to participate,” Zukoski says. “And the process will evolve. As soon as we get our initial set of input, we’ll roll out sections of the documents. Those thought pieces will inspire a new round of discussion and a new set of materials reflecting the feedback we have received. The Realizing UB 2020 statement will change in response to the discussion and the entire university will see how it is being shaped.”
The ultimate goal of Realizing UB 2020 is to provide the university with a clear statement of institutional direction that will inform decisions at a high level.
“This is not going to be a matter of determining the value of one discipline over another,” says Zukoski. “This conversation is about where we want to go and how we can become distinctive. Once those answers are in place, we can begin to put the necessary funding behind them.”
But as UB answers its own questions about identity and direction, it must do so in response to an increasingly competitive higher education environment. Zukoski says that changing population demographics have reduced the number of high school graduates in New York State and most of the U.S. UB is competing not only with other universities for this shrinking pool of students, but also with disruptive technologies, like massive open online courses (MOOCs) that are presenting students with more choices for higher learning.
“Online courses represent one of the external forces acting on all traditional seated universities,” says Zukoski. “It is a potential threat to our business model.”
These competitive pressures require UB to provide 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? Zukoski says he and Tripathi hope that Realizing UB 2020 provides the answers.
“Yes, we have tremendous strengths, but we also have to prepare for a hyper-competitive future,” he says. “We have to be able to respond to the question, ‘Why UB?’”
And finding the answer requires speed and agility. Zukoski points out that NY SUNY 2020, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s funding promise, gives the university a five-year window of opportunity. That investment contributed $35 million to assist with the medical school’s move to the downtown campus, along with a tuition program that Zukoski says will provide UB with new revenue for investment over the next five years.
“But we’re already in year two,” he says. “We have to be agile in setting up priorities and setting up our implementation plan. Realizing UB 2020 will allow us to move with that agility. We have a fabulous opportunity, but we have to work quickly or it’s going to disappear.”
Zukoski says the university has a unique opportunity to capture a moment that presents it with new possibilities for the future.
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