UB, On the Horizon

In strictly public relations terms, the University at Buffalo has had a rocky tenure as a public university here since its inception as such in 1962.  (The university was founded by U.S. President Millard Fillmore in 1846 as a medical training school for the Buffalo/Niagara region.  Then called The University of Buffalo, it remained a private institution until 1962 when the State University of New York acquired it and renamed it the University at Buffalo.)

First there was the announcement in 1964 that it had purchased a parcel of land in suburban Amherst as the site of the new non-medical/undergraduate campus.  Protests against and arguments for the non-urban site have yet to subside, more than 40 years later.  Those against it say it severely curbed the potential for significant downtown—specifically, waterfront—development.  Also there’s the realization that the campus was built on an area of Northeast Amherst that is essentially a swamp.

Most recent woes include the lackluster performance of the school’s Division I-A football team, causing many to wonder the merits of that prime distinction in the NCAA.

Those concerns, however, are only one side of the coin.  Part and parcel with these issues and others, are the great successes and distinctions the university has earned over the years.  Many remarkable faculty have come from and flourished at UB, including poet Robert Creeley; Nobel Prize winners J. M. Coetzee (2003, literature), Herbert Hauptman (1985, chemistry), and Ronald Coase (1991, economics); world-renowned composer Philip Glass; and the Father of Buffalo Theater, UB distinguished professor Saul Elkin.  The list goes on, of course, and that’s not even including the alumni, many of whom have gone onto work in Hollywood and the entertainment business and the media.

The school’s medical campus, based almost solely on the original Main Street (or South) campus, is spreading its wings to downtown with the city’s flourishing medical corridor.  Recent announcements that the school would acquire two large industrial buildings on the corner of Goodell Ellicott and streets, the M. Wile factory and Trico plant, are warm words to the ears of urban patriots.

President John B. Simpson, who took over for William Greiner in 2004, has instituted a number of long-term strategic planning initiatives, the least of which is UB 2020.  He speaks of a(n abbreviated) downtown campus, one that caters to the medical corridor and a population of urban UB students and faculty.  It does not appear to be a step toward the still-regretted and still-not-happening waterfront campus dreamed about 40 years ago, but it is something.

Block Club is looking forward to working with UB and the office of community relations in the near future.  We hope to bring you more news of development on the UB academic and civic fronts, as well as more ways the university can help bridge gaps within our own communities.  Stay tuned!

Photo courtesy Jerry Godwin.  This guy has some great pictures of UB, check them out!

Posted by on 10/17 at 10:53 AM