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: As a flagship in New York State, UB is a premier public research university. Our deep and cross-disciplinary scholarly work, research and creative activities are at the center of our ambitions into the Top 25 in ranking and to make a lasting impact on the local and global community. My primary roles are in building a world-class infrastructure for research and creative activities, supporting a culture of open conversations to tackle challenging problems of importance to the society and working with faculty members and department leadership in pursuing national and international recognition for our world-class researchers.

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

A: The College is a leader on campus when it comes to attracting exceptionally talented faculty members with diverse and complementary research and creative backgrounds. UB community is in the midst of an unprecedented opportunity to recruit world-renowned researchers in these areas: democracy and society; human health; sustainability; and transformational technology. These carefully identified research areas straddle across several departments in the College and the depth and breadth of research and creative activities are vital to UB’s mission and our Top-25 ambitions.

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

A: I view this as a privilege and rare opportunity to serve the College’s research community. I look forward to learning more about the excellent scholarship and diverse research and creative activities that are carried out by our students, staff and faculty members. This is a great opportunity to interact and work closely with world’s leading academicians with expertise in arts, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and mathematics. I would like to create a model research support system for the researchers in the College that works towards reducing the burden of research administration on the researchers, thereby creating additional opportunities to engage in scholarship. The College’s pioneering efforts and successes in establishing administrative support systems are valuable in achieving this.

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

A: Associate deans play a crucial role in fostering research collaborations within the university. I strongly believe that a positive research culture is important in establishing successful research collaborations. Leaders will lead by example, boost morale of the participants and provide a support system that takes the burden of managing large collaborations away from the researchers. Timely and open communication is vital in establishing collaborations across sectors and departments and schools. I will strive to provide networking opportunities and to make sure that researchers have the necessary information, facilities, equipment and support to tackle pressing problems in the society. It is also important to recognize and reward significant collaborative efforts.

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: 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.