The Convocation was held in honor of SUNY honorary degree recipient Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, and in recognition of faculty appointed to SUNY distinguished ranks in 1994-95 and the 1995 SUNY Chancellor's Award recipients. Chancellor Thomas A. Bartlett, was scheduled to assist in the presentation of awards, but was unable to attend the ceremony.

"I will have very much failed if what I say today goes unchallenged," Headrick noted at the beginning of his address in the Center for the Arts Mainstage Theater.

If UB is to meet its obligations to students in the future, it is going to have to take a look at its programs, priorities and its attitude toward the way it educates students, according to Headrick. "The 'public' in 'public research university' has been put on a strict diet," he said.

While the range and diversity of programs are important to the university, UB can no longer afford academic programs that cannot hold their own. The university needs to deal directly and honestly with programs that are unlikely to have what Headrick called "critical mass."

While he does not foresee the wholesale abolition of departments, Headrick said, university faculty have probably tolerated departmental weakness more than was necessary, and "taking from the strong to shore up the weak cannot be sensible strategy."

"UB's organizational structure is not sacrosanct," he said.

The university needs to make the most of the talent and ingenuity UB's faculty possess, Headrick said. "Self-directed, academically free faculty are the strength upon which universities are built."

And the university needs to encourage a more cross-disciplinary method of education. "We bow more often than we should to departmental obstacles to teaching outside disciplines....Too often departmental priorities trump institutional needs," Headrick said.

"UB-with its three faculties and 28 departments in the arts and sciences, five schools, seven professional schools-is spread too thinly to do everything well," he said. "In several areas that critical mass is missing."

Programs that lack the critical mass to be effective may need to be reorganized into centers and institutes, Headrick said. In addition, UB will need to look at offering a broader, less narrowly specialized doctoral education. Likewise, graduate programs may need to be consolidated within the system by concentrating specializations with other SUNY Center campuses.

"UB has an opportunity to develop graduate programs that blend study combinations that broaden the opportunities for students while taking advantage of UB's unique strengths," Headrick said.

UB faculty and administration need to build on the university's strengths and not cater to the small number of programs that do not share those strengths. Departments must no longer have the prerogative to prevent collaboration across departmental lines. UB needs to find inventive ways to build its graduate programs. And "if our organizational structures inhibit our drive for success, we must override them," Headrick concluded.

In addition to Headrick's address, nine members of UB's faculty were honored as the 1995 recipients of Chancellor's Awards for Excellence in Teaching: Richard R. Almon, associate professor, biological sciences; Stephen J. Free, associate professor, biological sciences; Stacy C. Hubbard, assistant professor, English; Michael S. Hudecki, research associate professor, biological sciences; James N. Jensen, assistant professor, civil engineering; William A. Miller, professor, oral diagnostic services; Johannes M. Nitsche, assistant professor, chemical engineering; Judith H. Tamburlin, assistant professor, clinical laboratory science; and Margarita Vargas, assistant professor, modern languages and literatures.

Recipients of the Chancellor's Awards for Excellence in Librarianship also were honored. They are Gayle J. Hardy-Davis, subject specialist, library sciences and communications, Lockwood Memorial Library; and Cynthia Hepfer, head, Serials and Bindery Department, Health Sciences Library.

Also, recipients of the Chancellor's Awards for Excellence in Professional Service were honored. They are Rita Green Lipsitz, assistant to the chair, Department of English; and Judith K. Miller, director of State Purchasing Campus Services.