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UB fared well in Middle States site visit, Greiner tells UB Council
By SUE WUETCHER
Reporter Editor
UB fared very well in its recent site visit by a team of evaluators from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, President William R. Greiner told members of the UB Council on Tuesday.
"We did not get one negative comment or report from them in the exit interview," Greiner said, calling the visit "basically a love fest."
The evaluators were on campus Sept. 29 through Oct. 1 to meet with UB administrators, faculty, students and alumni to gather information and gain perspectives as to how well UB was meeting the institutional goals the university had outlined in the self-study report it submitted to Middle States in August.
The Middle States Commission on Higher Education is the unit of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools that accredits degree-granting colleges and universities in the Middle States region. Accreditation is crucial, UB administrators say, because it provides an affirmation that institutions are meeting basic academic standards.
UB could receive a final decision on accreditation next month.
Greiner said that one area in which evaluators expressed some concern was the role of the UB Council in campus affairs. He noted that ongoing efforts by council Chair Jeremy M. Jacobs to obtain more authority for the council from SUNY Central Administration in the areas of academic affairs, property and plant, and finances—as was noted by Jacobs in his report earlier in Tuesday's meeting—would be helpful in addressing this matter with Middle States.
Greiner also updated council members on other professional program accreditations that have recently been completed, noting that all programs received accreditation—and with one or two exceptions—passed "with flying colors." He cited in particular the School of Dental Medicine, the School of Architecture and Planning, and the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The medical school's accomplishment is particularly noteworthy, he added, because the accreditation review came the year after the new first-year curriculum was implemented and while responsibility for the residency programs was being transferred to the medical school from a consortium of local hospitals.
In other business, the council:
Heard a report on UB's "Enrollments, Profiles and Campus Readiness" from Greiner. Greiner noted that UB's overall enrollment hit 27,254 this fall, the highest since about 1990. Among those students are about 3,600 freshmen—the largest freshman class in history and about 400 more students than anticipated.
Heard a short talk by Harvey Breverman, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Art, who described how he created the diptych that now hangs on the wall in the Council Room, replacing portraits of UB's past presidents and chancellors. The diptych, which previously had hung along the wall just outside the Council Room, features some of UB's most noted faculty members, among them Leslie Fiedler, Al Cook, John Sullivan, Larry Chisholm and John Barth. "These were really colorful people," Breverman told council members as he described the process of putting together the art work from numerous sketches.