University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: November 30, 2006

By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer

Two top university administrators recently updated the Professional Staff Senate on academic and infrastructure initiatives as implementation of the UB 2020 strategic planning process continues.

Satish K. Tripathi, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, and James (Beau) Willis, interim executive vice president for finance and operations, addressed the general membership meeting of the PSS held on Nov. 16 in Squire Hall, South Campus.

"During the past two and a half years, we have done the planning needed to create the base to achieve what we want to achieve," said Tripathi.

Among those goals are increasing research funding by 60 percent and increasing philanthropic gifts three to four times to match those of comparable universities.

One of the most important strategies to achieve these goals is engaging in research that has an impact, Tripathi said. "We have to be relevant in terms of where we are (locally) and also in terms of where we are in the world," he said, noting that relevance stems from research that has an impact on a local, national or global scale, in particular on issues such as education, homeland security and medical research.

White papers have been submitted in seven of the 10 strategic strength areas identified in UB 2020, Tripathi said, explaining that the planning initiative plays an important role in increasing the impact of research because it focuses resources on a select number of vital, interdisciplinary topics.

"Once you have the impact," he said, "the national recognition comes."

He pointed out that boosting UB's recognition in campus review publications, such as U.S. News & World Report, as well as high-profile academic reports focused on professional schools are an important step in attracting students and high-profile faculty.

"Whether or not you like it, there is a lot of evaluation of everything we do," he said.

On the subject of national rank, Tripathi noted that UB recently moved past UCLA to No. 10 among accredited U.S. universities in international enrollment, but added that the number of UB students participating in study abroad programs needs to increase. He said improvement also is sought in racial and "geographic" (out-of-state) student diversity.

In order to further enhance the undergraduate experience, Tripathi said plans are under way to increase the number of faculty seminars available to incoming students. The aim is to encourage closer and earlier communication between students and faculty, he said, ensuring greater participation in UB's diverse undergraduate research opportunities.

Willis spoke during the second half of the PSS meeting, presenting a progress report on the reorganization of various support functions at UB.

Major initiatives have begun since a campus-wide assessment two years ago concluded UB possessed an "aging, poorly maintained and very unplanned infrastructure," said Willis.

"The reason we're undertaking [the strategic transformation process] is to free people up from the transactional nature of the activities that consume much of their time," he said, so that staff members can perform the duties that they are "trained to do and want to do."

An assessment of human resources found that HR was delivered at 61 points across the campuses, said Willis, noting that duplication of services, inconsistencies and high rates of paper transactions and data re-entry were responsible for serious bottlenecks and high rates of error.

"When you put all of it together, it was costing $12 million a year," he said. In response, a strategic transformation of human resources is under way to streamline organizational processes and concentrate HR duties into three divisional units. (For more details, see lead story in this issue.)

The second strategic transformation process Willis discussed concerned information technology. Technicians are working to consolidate more than 75 phone systems into a single system, he said, a process estimated to be completed within two years. Moreover, he pointed to plans to reduce the number of email systems on campus from 24 to two and to consolidate computer servers.

Willis added that organizational changes in IT are bringing about a more "robust cyber-security environment" because experts in the field are now able to concentrate more time on better protecting UB's multi-million-dollar investment in IT.

In addition, Willis pointed to the merger of two offices—Grants and Contracts Administration and Sponsored Programs Administration—that are responsible for handling pre- and post-award services for UB researchers. "If we have goals to increase faculty research," he said, "we need to make sure we're providing the kind of environment for researchers that supports that goal.

"I think that we can agree that in these areas a lot of things have been done; things we can be proud of, that gives us the foundation [Tripathi] speaks of to really start building and growing the university," he said.