You are invited to participate in this ongoing university dialogue. Your written comments will be welcomed by the Provost, Thomas Headrick, 562 Capen Hall.

At the University Convocation, the Provost made the following proposals:

1. "The university-faculty and administration-should build on its strengths and not protect a small number of programs not likely to achieve sustained vitality and success."

2. "Departments should not have organizational prerogatives that prevent other parts of the university from calling upon their faculty members' talents and services when needed, or that self-limit their access to faculty talents from other departments from which they could benefit."

3. "We have to find inventive ways to build exceptional graduate programs and support pathbreaking research where our conventional departments and disciplinary structures have not been wholly successful, and do so with the quality faculty we have, rather than with a host of new additions."

4. "We cannot forsake quality undergraduate education for nationally acclaimed graduate education and research, nor worthy service for both. As a university we must do all well. An individual faculty member, however, should be able to expect rewards for high quality achievements that contribute to any of the major university missions."

5. "If our organizational structures and priorities, if our allocations of authority and incentives, inhibit this drive for excellence, then we ought to alter them. To repeat my predisposition, pursuing our fundamental goals of providing educational quality, nurturing intellectual discovery and creativity, and serving the public is sacrosanct. Maintaining UB's current organizational structure is not."

The conversations this fall have been lively. It is impossible to summarize the many conflicting views represented. Some sense of the nature of the discussion may be derived from the following comments and suggestions made by various faculty to the Provost in the course of the meetings:

- The Provost's Office should be concerned not only with the budget, but also with academic quality control and with fostering scholarship.

- It is difficult to further interdisciplinary research and teaching in an environment of social isolation. We must find ways to bring faculty together, perhaps with a faculty club.

- Academic principles should shape any restructuring or reorganization. Not much is gained by artificially bringing together faculty with no deep intellectual affinity. Hybrid departments are often mediocre.

- UB's educational strength is in its offerings to upper-division undergraduates and graduate students. In the recent past, however, we have often admitted more freshmen than we can comfortably handle.

- Lower-division instruction is generally less expensive than upper-division or graduate instruction. How do we save money by bringing in fewer freshmen and more transfer students?

- On the graduate level, we have spread ourselves too thinly, trying to maintain a profile similar to that of a much larger university. We must focus our efforts in fewer directions. Let us build a few genuinely excellent programs we can be proud of, even at the cost of abandoning other programs.

- We must disengage the doctoral programs from the departments. The most innovative and exciting research and instruction is interdisciplinary.

- We should be training students for jobs that do not exist. Specifically, we are training too many Ph.D.s. We are using tax money to subsidize education which has little social utility.

- We should measure demand for Ph.D. programs at input rather than at output. For example, if students want to pursue advanced work in the humanities, why should we not make that possible, even if there are few jobs that use the education?

- We should provide more support for faculty so that they can work more efficiently. For example, we might institute a secretarial pool.

- We should concentrate our hiring resources and bring in high-profile individuals who could act as catalysts for significant research and scholarship.

- Taxing the research grants will reduce research productivity. The departments that bring in a lot of outside funding are subsidizing the less productive parts of the university.

- We cannot continue to support expensive research programs when an increasing proportion of our funding comes from undergraduate tuition. More and more of our resources will have to go into undergraduate education.

- If we appear to be emphasizing undergraduate education, for example by asking faculty to advise undergraduate students, the best research faculty will leave.

- There is excessive duplication of instruction. We are offering many different versions of the same courses, taught from slightly different disciplinary perspectives. We can no longer afford this luxury.

- The people of the State of New York have not only economic needs but also cultural needs. The university has an obligation wider than merely contributing to the growth of the economy.

- We are not providing an adequate educational experience to our undergraduates. Advising is not working well. There is too little cultural life on campus.

- We must develop a reward structure reflective of university goals. More than just research should be rewarded.

- We must make effective use of educational technology. The university of the future will look radically different from anything we are now familiar with.

- You cannot get a group of faculty to discuss democratically how to triage among themselves.

- If we can get control of our tuition, and if we use that flexibility in entrepreneurial ways, we may not have to take cuts as deep as many fear.

- The university must change in fundamental ways. But that will only happen if someone is willing to declare a crisis.

Once more, you are invited to participate in this ongoing university dialogue. Your written comments will be welcomed by the Provost, Thomas Headrick, 562 Capen Hall.