As the UB community heads into another semester, the university's vision of an improved and enlarged campus is coming into focus. The evolution of UB's plan to grow by 40 percent continues, with a focus on research, expanding enrollment and also the "look and feel" of the North, South and Downtown campuses.
UB 2020 is the framework for changing the culture of the university, according to Robert Shibley, senior advisor to the president. Shibley is overseeing UB's master planning process, and he said that the goal is to change the way UB students think, feel and act toward the university.
One aspect of the student experience on campus that Shibley hopes to change is the feeling of isolation caused by UB's lack of gathering areas on the academic spine and lags in transportation services.
UB 2020 will focus on improving transportation systems for the campus, so that students will no longer feel like the city or other campuses are inaccessible. This also applies to community members coming into the UB environment.
Shibley said that community involvement with campus, and student involvement off-campus are important aspects of UB 2020.
"If buses are still using diesel fuel, then we've failed in transportation," Shibley said, describing the three main goals for transportation services. "If students are feeling isolated from the community, and the community is feeling isolated, then we have failed in transportation."
In addition, Shibley hopes to lure students out of their dorm rooms. By creating more areas where students can gather after class rather than returning to their rooms, Shibley said he hopes to make the campus more "fun, beautiful and fulfilling."
Some of these venues would include dining areas, community lounging, meeting spaces and entertainment rooms.
Kinsey Davidson, a freshman political science major, thinks that more lounge areas are necessary to keep students on the academic spine.
"Other than the Student Union, which is always loud and crowded, there are very few places for students to just relax with a couple of friends," Davidson said.
The plan is to construct between two and three million square feet of new buildings on campus, Shibley said.
This square-footage will mainly go to academic buildings and student living spaces to accommodate the anticipated population growth. However, these plans are still in the drafting stage.
According to Shibley, architects are also keeping environmental guidelines in mind during the design process. One goal is to make all campuses carbon-neutral, so buildings will be up-to-date when the project is completed.
UB is also focusing on securing a position on the cutting edge of research by 2020.
"We'll focus directly on research endeavors and increase productivity," Shibley said.
In the future, UB 2020 will link the research sciences, applying "strategic strength (and) unification across disciplinary lines," Shibley said, and that doing so could be accomplished through improved facilities and the hiring of more research professors.
All educational programs will eventually be improved through UB 2020 initiatives in order to provide increased academic performance and more research opportunities, he said.
Shibley foresees the research sciences being combined to create a unified research base that will be able to create and achieve far more than before, and rival top research universities in the country.
Research will also have an economic impact on the university and surrounding community. In the last year, research has improved by 30 percent to contribute a total of about $1.2 billion. It is expected that in 2020, research revenue will be more than twice that amount.
"Every million of research makes 29 new jobs," Shibley said.
Another main advancement goal is to increase enrollment by 10,000 students over the next seven years. Ideally, the new population will be equally divided among special program, graduate, international, regional and out-of-state students, he said. In addition, UB will employ an additional 750 faculty and 600 staff by 2020.
According to Shibley, these three focal points will eventually work together to create a new UB.
"It will be a seamless understanding of three campus centers as one Buffalo," he said.
Photo: Courtesy of SUNY
