An increase in the amount of funding and research opportunities UB has received in the last year is part of the reason Provost Elizabeth Capaldi feels the university is in "terrific" shape, she said during her State of the University Address at Tuesday's meeting of the Faculty Senate.
According to Capaldi, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, School of Architecture and Planning, the School of Computer Science and Engineering and various other departments have received substantial grants this semester, and an additional $50 million to $60 million in new grants is anticipated for January.
The amount of money donated to the university is a good measure of the institution's success and quality of research, said Capaldi. With this revenue, the provost believes UB "can be a national center of excellence in the bioinformatics and the research discovery fields."
She said fiscal resources given to UB by the government for research projects have increased from last year. The state government boosted funding for the university from $167 million to $187 million, and federal funding has increased from $185 million to $196 million.
"Annual giving went up," Capaldi said. "That shows that we are generating more money from our alumni, which is also a measure of quality because the better they feel about you, the more likely they are to give you their money."
Livingston Watrous, an art history professor, told Capaldi that he does not think there is a relationship between the amount of funding the university has received and the quality of the education available to undergraduate students.
"Even though I am proud of all the things that you said, I don't think there's much relevance to what you said and the quality of the undergraduate experience here," said Watrous.
Conversely, Capaldi believes better research opportunities attract top professors to the university.
"I disagree totally, because the quality of the faculty is important, obviously, in terms of undergraduate education," she said.
