Jos?PI leaving for Indiana

As Vice President for Research Jorge V. José prepares to leave UB to become the Vice President for Research at Indiana University, he has mixed feelings about the move. He is excited for the new opportunity but feels bittersweet to be leaving his friends and colleagues.
"It's a bigger challenge, it is an advancement professionally," José said.
José joined the UB community in 2005 after leaving Northeastern University in Boston. He was initially interested in the University at Buffalo because of the UB2020 plan and is happy with how far the UB community has come in five years.
"In the last five years there has been a cultural transformation [at UB] and there has been significant progress and changes with the planning of UB2020," José said.
José is excited for his new position at Indiana University that, he hopes, will open more opportunities for his career.
"It is a broader responsibility, here I am the vice president for research at one university in the SUNY system and there I will be the vice president for research for the whole system, and that is seven campuses, so I will oversee the research operation of several campuses at the same time," José said.
His new position is similar to his position at UB in what it entails, but is spread out on a much wider scale. The research is dispersed throughout the campuses and deals with statewide issues rather than local problems.
During José's five years at UB, research expenditures increased from $259 million to $350 million, a 33 percent increase. With this increase, José says he and his colleagues have been able to achieve a lot.
Though this move is a good choice professionally for José he is sad to be leaving all the people he has built relationships with.
"I am very happy living here and I leave with mixed feelings, because now I have a number of friends … but this is a mostly professional decision," José said.
José is not alone in his move to a new university. Elias G. Eldayrie, the chief information officer at UB, is leaving for the University of Florida. While these loses to the UB community may seem like a negative thing, José believes they are a positive reflection on the university.
"All universities hire professors from other universities and lose professors to other universities. We have an average of about 5 percent of our faculty leave and we hire many people from other universities too," José said. "It is a normal business practice … it is actually a good sign of having outstanding faculty that is attractive to people in other institutions."
Though he is leaving UB, José plans to keep in close contact with the campus and feels invested with how UB2020 turns out. His last words of advice for the UB community are to support UB2020 as much as possible.
"This is the best opportunity Western New York has of revamping the economy, revamping the image and revamping the standard of living in Western New York," José said. "It is very important that people don't loose track of the fact that we are going to find ups and downs in the process but as long as the derivative is positive this is really going to transform the region."

E-mail: news@ubspectrum.com