University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: October 4, 2007

By MARY COCHRANE
Contributing Editor

If Tuesday's meeting of the voting members of the Faculty Senate could be compared to a class, then President John B. Simpson taught a compelling one.

He also, as tough professors are known to do, included some hefty homework for his fellow academics and the State of New York.

Saying that "UB is doing pretty well" as an institution of public higher education, Simpson outlined his evidence, including the hiring in the past three years of 270 faculty, including 94 new positions, with 22 of the hires "distinctly linked to our strategic strengths, the eight areas of excellence" in the UB 2020 plan.

"It is my view that faculty are the university," Simpson said. "Their work defines the university and therefore we should maximize the number of faculty we have."

UB also is well under way in its master planning process for all three campuses, and the recent purchase of the former M. Wile building in Buffalo "will continue to augment and genuinely establish the presence of the university downtown."

"Some of you may not know there are already considerable UB facilities scattered about downtown Buffalo and this will provide a specific and direct home which is easily identifiable as part of the university and which will establish us as very much a part of and an important player in the City of Buffalo and its future," Simpson said.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer, in regard to the UB 2020 plan, "likes it, supports it and wants it to happen," Simpson said, adding that "he does not, however, control the financing."

And there begins the homework, or rather, the agenda that Simpson has for UB.

"What we are trying to do is to change the way the State University of New York system behaves and the way higher education behaves in the state, what I might call a change from socialism to social Darwinism," Simpson said. "We are trying to force the state and SUNY to invest selectively in its universities."

Public universities across the nation are subject to "oppositional forces: a continuous and almost relentless decrease in the funding to those universities by the state, coupled with an equally relentless increase in regulatory controls," Simpson said.

UB compares unfavorably with six peer institutions—the universities of Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Washington, North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Pittsburgh—in several categories: the number of undergraduates (UB has 17,329; the average number at the six universities is 21,338); the amount of money spent per student (UB: nearly $25,000, the others, an average of $45,000), and faculty-student ratios (UB: 11-1; the others, 6.5-1).

"It's simply a matter of resources and at the end of the day, that is what determines what happens and, more importantly, what can happen in public versus private universities."

Simpson called on the faculty to join UB Believers, the initiative that enables university community members to join him in Albany "directly, by email, by letter and by calling our elected officials" to support this agenda.

"That's votes, so they will listen, and this becomes a community imperative," he said.

Following the president's remarks, Phillips Stevens, associate professor of anthropology, asked whether Simpson had considered withdrawing UB from inclusion in the college ratings issues of some national magazines.

Simpson said that while he is frustrated "with the incredibly wide range of these ratings that may or may not say anything" about the schools they profile, "I don't want to ignore them because they are important in who we get access to as students and how we're viewed as a university nationally."

Robert E. Baier, executive director of the Industry/University Center for Biosurfaces, asked about the progress of plans for a UB department of bioengineering, which Provost Satish K. Tripathi replied is still in the works and would be housed within both the schools of engineering and the medical school.

Asked whether new student housing is part of the UB master plan, Tripathi said there is one 600-bed project in the design phase. Simpson added that UB also is considering other kinds of housing for graduate students and using UB land to provide homes for postdoctoral students, faculty and retired professors "to make a more balanced community."

David G. Ellis, director of the telemedicine program, asked about the proposed merger of Kaleida Health and the Erie County Medical Center. The president replied he believes the board overseeing the matter, which he serves on, will produce "some sort of organization that functions very much like a university hospital."

"My view is that I would like to not own a hospital, but I'd like to have all the benefits of it," he said to laughter. "So maybe we can get to a place like that."