VISIONARIES: John B. Simpson
Posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2010
by block club
The economic impact of the University at Buffalo is estimated at $1.7 billion. Two campuses––South Campus in northern Buffalo and North Campus in Amherst––incorporate more than 30,000 students, faculty and staff. The school employs more than 10,000 people full-time. It is, in more ways than these, a behemoth. The 2004 announcement by the then-newly appointed President John B. Simpson of a massive 15-year expansion and renovation plan solidified UB’s investment in Buffalo. UB2020, a comprehensive plan that aims to bring tens of thousands more students and employees to the region by the end of this new decade, is wide-ranging, ambitious and game-changing. -Ben Siegel
The planned downtown campus in the medical corridor is a major component of UB2020. Why the decision to build a third campus?
I think that the answer to that is that as we thought about the future of the university, we thought about biomedical sciences. Remember this university started as a medical school, so that’s very much in its DNA, in its genes. One thing one is struck by is we not only don’t own a university hospital, we aren’t even located in the same place as the hospitals. I think, and many agree with me, particularly the leadership in the health science schools, that it is an enormous advantage to research, to teaching and to our faculty and students, that we are proximal to where clinical care is dispensed.
We did not do it because we thought that having the university there might do X or Y for downtown. We did it for programmatic, sound academic reasons. And I think that it will turn out that when we build this campus downtown, it will have, buy virtue of its size and complexity, enormous impact on our downtown which is relatively quiet.
The impact it will have on the city, not just the university, should be enormous. There are a couple pieces of data that I find particularly compelling. These are projections. When we build out UB2020 to the extent that we see it now –– and that includes building on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus –– that will bring up to 13,000 people a day into downtown to work, to study; faculty of all kinds, students of all kinds. That’s a huge number of people. It also is, I’m told, an increase of at least 20 percent of the population downtown. In and of itself, it’s a huge influx of people to downtown. They’re going to live and eat and work and get their dry cleaning, where they work. It will, when this is done, make a significant difference downtown.
How is the university equipped to handle the scope of a plan like UB2020?
I think the biggest challenge in a university is to get its constituents to think in a long-term way about their future, and imagine what can be instead of react to what we’re given piecemeal year to year. At public universities, and New York is no different, you end up almost being conditioned to think about the next single opportunity or the next budgetary year because that’s the way we’ve always (worked).
There is also the challenge of what I see as a community and a university that don’t know each other very well. I think both the university and the community haven’t really considered how important the university is to the future of the community. So that’s been a challenge, to try to have an understanding both inside and outside the university. And there are always the issues that one has with policy, with politicians, with budgets.
There are a few schools of thought among Western New Yorkers about UB. One is to complain every day about the location of the North Campus in Amherst until something happens. The other is that it’s here; now what are we going to do with it?
I think that there is reality and there is aspiration. The reality is that we have a campus [in Amherst] and a campus on Main Street. I don’t think it’s appropriate to contemplate simply moving one of those in favor of something downtown. I would rather do what the university is trying to do, which is to define where we want to go and find out and think through the best ways to get there.
There is the other issue of the so-called “brain drain.” How can we retain the young minds being nurtured here? First of all there’s a very broad array of colleges and universities here. The ration of students to population is very high. Western New York is a college town. I think that students will, when they finish their degrees, go where the work is. If there’s no work here, they won’t stay here. If there is work here, they will stay here. What colleges do in general is bring people into a region for a time, and in that way you import whatever economic influence a student has. Over the longer term, UB infuses ideas and money into the local economy. So by strengthening that, the chances of having a job here have gone up because the university is strengthened by virtue of its enterprise in the local economy.
That changes the game plan significantly, doesn’t it?
I genuinely believe that the notion of having a long-term plan gives you something to shoot for. It gives you goals, an aspiration. Where you are now and where you want to be is a road whose trajectory I couldn’t begin to define. We started UB2020 five-plus years ago. What we want to be hasn’t changed.
ata2ud says: March 20th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
A cardboard cutout is a perfect representation for John B.