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Capaldi reports increases in research funding, SAT scores, annual giving
By DONNA LONGENECKER
Reporter Assistant Editor
"Terrific, stupendous, marvelous"—that's how Provost Elizabeth D. Capaldi described UB's performance for the previous year in a report on the academic state of the university that she delivered during the Faculty Senate's monthly meeting on Tuesday.
Using nine indicators of performance developed by TheCenter at the University of Florida http://thecenter.ufl.edu/ as measures that reflect the quality of a research university, Capaldi reviewed UB's performance for the 2001-02 academic year. With annual giving up, SAT scores of entering freshman increasing and research funding on the rise, UB's prowess as a research institution continues to expand, she said.
Research expenditures and federal funding continue to increase, with total research expenditures up by $20 million over the past year—from $167 million in 2000-01 to $187 million in 2001-02. Federal funding increased by $11 million—from $85 million to $96 million.
While not every unit at the university competes for research funds, it is a measure of quality, Capaldi said, because UB must compete nationally for those funds.
She also reported that while the university's endowment took a hit because of the stock market's volatility, annual giving increased. "That shows we are generating more money from alumni dollars," she said, adding that a good indicator of UB's quality is the fact that its donors want to contribute to its continued success.
Another indication of continued improvement on the academic front—a rise in SAT scores of incoming freshman—points to increasing efforts to attract top students, "which is good not only from a national standpoint, but also the state level; the state is very interested in us improving the quality of our freshman class," Capaldi said.
Another indicator of overall performance at the university is the number of faculty awards received during an academic year, and UB was down slightly during the past year, Capaldi reported. "Those are always small numbers, but in the awards they (TheCenter) look at, we could do better, she said. She explained that National Science Foundation Young Investigator and Merit awards, as well as Guggenheim awards, are examples of the kinds of recognition UB should be seeking for its faculty. "We can and should do very well in those areas. I don't know if we're just not nominating people or participating where we can," she noted.
Capaldi pointed out that UB has a national reputation in spite of being half the size of institutions like the universities of Florida and Michigan.
To keep pace with plans to increase enrollment at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, UB is stepping up its efforts to recruit and increase the size of its faculty—all of which will put the university in a better position to compete for top students, she said.
"We have a goal and all of the units have a goal of increasing the number of faculty at UB," she said, noting that 94 new tenure/tenure track faculty were hired this year. "It shows that we're going in the right direction."
Capaldi also reviewed a random sampling of the numerous faculty awards and grants received during the past year, highlighting a variety of achievements across disciplines and schools.
"I think that when you have at one university a Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry, a Nobel laureate, a top five (in the country) supercomputing center and all of this funding for bioinformatics, I think it gives you some idea of the breadth that we have here," she said.
"When Sept. 11 happened, they called our civil engineering department because of the earthquake center (Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research) and their expertise—at every school we have people who are at the very, very top of their discipline."
On the bioinformatics front, Capaldi noted that UB is positioning itself to be a national—not just a state—center of excellence in the drug-discovery field. "We're going to use that as a tool in recruiting," she said.