Academic Leadership

Q: How do you see your role in the College as fitting with the plans to move UB into the top 25 public research universities?  

A: I intend to push for the recruitment of exceptional scholars to diversify our faculty membership, to advance new research and funding opportunities and to increase the recognition of our outstanding faculty colleagues. I am also focused on improving student success, increasing the retention of our first-year students and promoting new programs to meet student demand for rewarding careers.  

Q: What are some of the opportunities you see for the College in pushing forward our research and academic mission?

A: Interest in the Social Sciences is growing. While communication, economics, and health and human services remain popular majors, programs such as criminology, environmental studies, international trade and political science have experienced sharp increases in the number of undergraduate majors. I should like to think that these students are interested in solving some of society’s most pressing issues including poverty, inequalities, sustainable cities and communities, peace, justice, and strong institutions, decent work and economic growth, and climate action, among many other topics. New degree programs such as computational linguistics, global affairs, philosophy, politics and economics will further expand the cross-disciplinary opportunities for our students and faculty colleagues.

To be successful Social Scientists, students need a toolkit comprised of theoretical knowledge, competency in qualitative, quantitative, and interdisciplinary research methods and skill in using modern technology. The increased student interest focused on society’s greatest challenges surely will drive academic and scholarly innovation within the College. 

Q: What are you looking forward to learning and accomplishing in your role?

A: I should be a facilitator, working to help every department chair, every faculty and staff member, and every student achieve the professional and life-long learning success that we all desire. This means that I should listen to and think strategically with our colleagues, searching for innovative ideas, connections and solutions to broaden our impact within CAS and UB. By doing this, I then can be an advocate for the social sciences by clearly articulating a compelling vision as to why our disciplines matter now more than ever.

Q: How will you help to build a culture of collaboration across sectors and among departments, programs and institutes?

A: The current pandemic has provided abundant evidence that we need a more efficient approach to meeting our university obligations, so that we can devote more time and energy to strategic planning, scholarly endeavors and education. Reorganizing the College into sectors and creating administrative teams are important steps in fostering a culture of collaboration and efficiency. These deliberate actions should encourage research and programmatic innovation within and across disciplines and sectors.

Q: How will experiential learning be further incorporated as an integral part of the sector’s priorities?

A: Both students and employers recognize that experiential learning is a keystone activity for a successful career—it provides the hands-on knowledge and networking connections critical to jump start a student’s transition into the workplace. Degree programs such as environmental studies and health and human services have a long and successful history in placing students into meaningful internship positions. The College has recently expanded these experiential learning opportunities in the Social Sciences and is seeking ways to secure the funds necessary to support these endeavors.

Q: How do you see your role in the College as fitting with the plans to move UB into the top 25 public research universities?

A: I will do whatever I can to enhance retention, which is a critical value for our university. The Blue Ribbon Commission has provided us with important data on retention broken down by course and discipline. The critical next step is to plan the most appropriate next steps in order to enhance retention while maintaining the high academic standards that make UB such a great place to get an education.

In graduate education, we talk about “attrition”, which reflects the very same problem. The Blue Ribbon commission focused only on undergraduate education, though as per the analyses of the PhD Excellence Initiative committees, keeping graduate students on track is also a critical issue, and plays an indirect role in UB’s ranking given that strong, directed graduate students contribute to our research mission.

Diversity in the student body is likewise a critical area for improvement. This past year has seen a particularly strong realization of the continuing problems of systemic racism, though these issues have been with us for centuries. Also, any discussion of diversity must go hand-in-hand with consideration of equity and inclusion for students from diverse backgrounds.  

Q:  What are some of the opportunities you see for the College in pushing forward our research and academic mission?

A: I find myself thinking about one of the features that really sets UB apart: experiential learning. In my soul-searching moments as a faculty member, I have often considered why a student should attend a large school with large classes as an undergraduate, as opposed to a small college. One of the most compelling answers I come up with is the fact that UB offers students an opportunity to take an active role in ongoing research that will be published and make an impact. I think we already do a good job at this, but I think we could do even more by including more students, giving them even deeper experience and broadening the range of disciplines for which this activity is standard. In my role, I look forward to exploring how I may help enhance experiential learning for students and to realize greater benefits for students and faculty alike.

Q: What are you looking forward to learning and accomplishing in your role?

A: The first thing I am looking forward to is learning more about academic programs in the College. When I became chair of Psychology, I didn’t anticipate how much I would enjoy getting to know chairs of other departments and learning more about how other departments operate. The College is a cornucopia of intellectual diversity, and it’s fascinating to learn about how these different areas of study conduct research and teach. I am also constantly impressed by the genuine kindness and generosity of people at UB. The faculty and staff here are great people to work with. As a chair I enjoyed getting to know my colleagues better and I really enjoyed working with the phenomenal staff in my department. I also look forward to working with the excellent team in the College.

Q: What do you see as the priority areas within this domain?

A: Falling back on my earlier theme, I really see retention and the enhancement of diversity as incredibly critical and the two ways in which I can have the strongest impact in this position.

Q: How will academic affairs help to promote new opportunities for students?

A: I plan to work with the directors of undergraduate programs and College administrators to enhance opportunities for experiential learning; student success and retention; opportunities for continuing education and graduate study that embrace a broad range of career choices; and to promote practices in graduate training that likewise enhance student success here and after graduation.

Q: In your position, how will you operate to maintain student needs as the highest level of importance?

A: First, keep track of relevant data concerning rates of student success and what factors seem to benefit student success. Second, I hope to remain in active communication with faculty and staff who are closely involved in undergraduate programs at the level of departments and programs.

Q: Is there anything else you think is important for readers to know?

A: This is an entirely new experience for me. I look forward to and expect a great amount of learning on the job. I am grateful for the tremendous support and faith shown by the Dean and others in the College that I am up to the job, and humbled by the opportunity. One thing I learned as chair is the critical importance of university staff who have skills and institutional knowledge far beyond what I could offer on my own.

Q: How do you see your role in the College as fitting with the plans to move UB into the top 25 public research universities?  

A: In addition to cultivating an ethos of collective excellence and collaboration, I see my role as a tireless advocate of the vital role of the arts and humanities in the University’s aspiration to be among the top public research universities, which will include seeking new funds through grants and philanthropy for institutional development. Quite simply there are no outstanding universities without vibrant arts and humanities because both areas are a public good and one of the foundations of the vigorous public democratic culture.

In this historical moment, I would like to emphasize the key role of arts and humanities in building antiracist democratic culture. I see this task as one of the most meaningful ways to enhance the future development of the arts and humanities, as well as the mission of the University, together with its aspirations to rise to the top 25 public research universities.

In this context, one of the urgent tasks is further diversification of our faculty and student body with the emphasis on hiring more underrepresented minority faculty.

Q: What are some of the opportunities you see for the College in pushing forward our research and academic mission?

A: We are especially fortunate that arts and humanities at UB both represent a unique historical legacy and constitute enormous intellectual strengths of the College. What is distinctive about this heritage is the ongoing reflection on the possibilities and limitations of our culture, together with the commitment to pushing the boundaries beyond what is currently possible in research, artistic expression and political activism. At UB, preserving the tradition of excellence in arts and humanities is therefore inseparable from supporting the ethos of experimentation and democratic culture.

One of the recent outstanding achievements in building such a bold future for the humanities based on its distinguished tradition is the $3.2 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the creation of Department of Indigenous Studies and an Indigenous Research Center, both of which will advance further the 50-year tradition of Indigenous scholarship at UB.

Q: What are you looking forward to learning and accomplishing in your role and how will you help to build a culture of collaboration across sectors and among departments, programs and institutes?

A: I am looking forward to learning more about the professional cultures, achievements and collaborative aspirations of each department in the arts and humanities sector. I believe that most successful collaborations among scholars and departments emerge from bottom-up initiatives, reflecting specific interests of the faculty and contributions of the different disciplines. At the same time all of us are aware that we need to work together in order to find solutions to the institutional difficulties facing humanities nationally and to respond to such urgent social tasks as rebuilding anti-racist democratic cultures locally and nationally. The existing interdisciplinary centers, for example, Humanities Institute or Gender Institute, will be extremely helpful in providing a framework for new collaborative intellectual and institutional initiatives.

I also want to expand collaborations initiated by the department chairs in the humanities in order to find the institutional solutions to increase enrollments; create more research and grant support geared specifically toward arts and humanities; enhance the excellence of graduate education; increase and diversify employment opportunities for our graduate and undergraduate students. 

Q: How will experiential learning be further incorporated as an integral part of the sector’s priorities?

A: Experiential learning on both undergraduate and graduate levels is of key importance if we want to increase our enrollments and create more diverse work opportunities for our students not only in cultural and academic institutions but also in every sector of the society which values research, writing, communication and critical thinking abilities, for instance, social work, political organizing, non-profits, government agencies and industry.