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Academic state of the university
Tripathi’s annual address inspired by Spitzer’s designation of UB as flagship
By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer
Satish K. Tripathi, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, delivered his academic state of the university address during Tuesday’s meeting of the full Faculty Senate, a talk inspired by Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s designation of UB as a SUNY flagship institution in his State of the State address last month.
“This is a tremendous statement,” said Tripathi. “Those of you who have been here a long time know that we have been preparing for this sort of statement for a long, long time,” he added, noting that UB “rightly took our place among the nation’s finest research universities, public and private,” as far back as 1989 when it was elected to the Association of American Universities.
An unswerving commitment to academic excellence is one of the chief reasons UB has been designated a flagship university by the governor, he said, a trait reflected in the accomplishments of its faculty and the quality of its students.
“Our UB faculty are nationally and internationally recognized as defining leaders in their respective disciplinary fields,” said Tripathi. “And UB today is becoming the number one choice for the most academically ambitious and accomplished undergraduate, graduate, professional and doctoral students.”
He pointed out that UB faculty received 16 of this year’s SUNY Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence and nine of the 2007 SUNY Distinguished Professorships—“far more than any other campus in SUNY”—and that the mean SAT score of last fall’s incoming freshman class was 1193—a 60-point increase compared to the mean SAT of freshmen entering UB in 1997. Average scores jump to 1375 among incoming students participating in the University Honors College, he added, of which about 33 percent were also a high school valedictorian or salutatorian.
In addition, Tripathi said about 10 percent of this year’s incoming freshman class are participating in one of UB’s two Undergraduate Academies, a new program focusing on the undergraduate experience that in the fall will launch a third component addressing global perspectives.
UB’s faculty ranks also are increasing—Tripathi reported that 270 new faculty members have joined the university since 2004. A variety of resources have been leveraged to support these new hires, he said, including converting senior faculty lines into multiple lines for new faculty hires, as well as such state sources as the Empire Innovation Program, from which UB received $1.6 million in 2007.
There also has been an upward trend in the university’s research expenditures, which increased from $226.9 million in the 2002 fiscal year to $323.4 million in the 2007 fiscal year, he said, citing UB’s report to the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of its annual Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges. Among the research funds received by UB in 2007 was a prestigious $3.1 million grant from the NSF’s Integrative Graduate Education Research and Traineeship program (IGERT) that will support local ecosystem restoration through an interdisciplinary doctoral program, he noted.
“In a climate where research funding is not increasing,” Tripathi said, “this is really a tribute to the faculty at UB who are trying to compete and trying to get grants.”
UB’s efforts to establish a campus in downtown Buffalo—as well as its focus on community outreach—were highlighted in the provost’s annual address as well. The university is working to relocate the Regional Institute, the Center on Rehabilitation Synergy and the pre-K through 16 initiatives to the former M. Wile Co. Building—now known as the UB Downtown Gateway—at Goodell and Ellicott streets, which UB purchased in September. He said it also recently celebrated the opening of the Ira G. Ross Eye Institute at 1176 Main St. next to the Olmstead Center for the Visually Impaired on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.
“As UB extends its research into the community,” he said, “we as a university community contribute exponentially to the lives and the well-being of members of our community. The positive external recognition which UB has received of late—whether from the governor’s office, our UB Believers or our alumni business and industry partners—validates our belief that the University at Buffalo is a flagship university.”
During a question-and-answer session following the speech, Stephen Dyson, Park Professor of Classics in the College of Arts and Sciences, voiced concern that UB’s strong focus on scientific and medical research is resulting in the humanities being overlooked. Tripathi responded that although “it’s not advertised as well,” UB also plans to hire many new faculty members in the humanities over the next few years as part of its plan to grow by 40 percent between now and the year 2020.
“I would say that the humanities have great support at the decanal level, as well as the provost and presidential level,” he said.
Also voicing concern was Rakesh Nagi, professor and chair of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, who pointed out that poor perception seems to prevent UB from reaching the upper echelons in many national rankings, despite the university’s many upward trends in recent years.
“People have long memories,” Tripathi replied. “I don’t think there’s a magic length of time for changing perception, but I think if we show that we value scholarship, if we show that the excellence is what we really care about, then we’re working in the right direction.
“Our goal is really talking about how good UB is and also delivering the goods in terms of how good we are,” he added. “It takes time, but perception can change.”