UNIVERSITY WELCOME
New students, new faculty, and parents, I would like to extend to you a warm welcome to the University at Buffalo. And to our returning students and faculty, welcome back!
I suspect there is a healthy mix of excitement and anxiety stirring within our new students (and parents). Don’t worry, that is a very natural response to entering the next phase in your life. And moms and dads, well that’s just part of being a parent!
Assembled today, our class of 2011 represents the best and the brightest. And indeed, you are the most academically accomplished entering class in our university’s history.
To be gathered here, you have already achieved many educational and personal successes. These previous successes, built one atop the other, are the foundation from which your intellectual maturity, your academic knowledge, your ethicality of being will be further built.
Only a few months ago, you stood at the top of your high school class. Here you are part of a greater student body noted for their academic achievements; here you are part of a greater student body applying their educational knowledge and creative imaginations toward social justice goals. Here you are part of a greater student body who want to make a difference.
Contemplating my remarks for our University Welcome, I was taken back to this past spring semester when President Simpson and I had the wonderful occasion to assist in the conferring of the SUNY Honorary Doctorate to UB’s distinguished alumna, Terry Gross, the host of NPR’s Fresh Air. During her acceptance remarks, Terry reflected on her undergraduate days at UB. She characterized her undergraduate years at UB as a time to explore the world — in its many cultural, political, artistic, intellectual manifestations — and how these explorations broadened her perspectives, understandings, and experiences in ways she had never imagined. It was these myriad experiences Ms. Gross suggested that transformed her personal and professional life.
During your next four undergraduate years at the University at Buffalo, I challenge you to continue this legacy and participate in the myriad and diverse transformational opportunities UB affords.
To give you a glimpse of a few of these transformative activities, this week the University at Buffalo announced the speaker line-up for this year’s Distinguished Speakers Series. A wonderful UB tradition, this year’s speakers series once again welcomes to our campuses acclaimed artists, poets, environmentalists, advocates, scientists, political figures, writers, economists, and journalists.
And, this year is no different. I invite you to take part in this transformational opportunity. And in case you haven’t heard, our Speaker Series opens with a lecture from the controversial and Academy Award winning documentary filmmaker Michael Moore.
Thinking of transformational opportunities, I challenge you to participate in our Discovery Seminar Program. The Discovery Seminar Program spans the disciplines with faculty from Architecture, Engineering, English, the Libraries, Management, Pharmacy, and Physics (to mention a few) offering courses such as “Your Brain on Music,” “Decoding DaVinci and the Renaissance,” and “Infectious Diseases: Modern Plagues and Pestilences.” These courses are purposefully designed to pique your interest through connecting — in very real ways — the academic disciplines to the dynamic nature of our 21st century world.
I further challenge you to participate in an undergraduate research project. Visit our Center for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities and discover the many faculty-mentored research and scholarly opportunities that you can take advantage.
Thinking of undergraduate research, scholarship, and community service opportunities, UB’s Undergraduate Academies provide students with the opportunity to be involved in theme-based seminar courses, lectures, and research and artistic projects under the direction of academy faculty master scholars. Through the Undergraduate Academies, you will be introduced to tailored workshops and relevant university and community clubs and organizations enhancing your undergraduate experience.
As Terry Gross seized her time at UB to learn and study in traditional venues and untraditional venues, I challenge you to do the same: add a minor to your academic portfolio — perhaps in an area that is diametrically opposed to your major, or in an area that complements your major, or in an area that you just find to be fascinating.
Just by walking across our University at Buffalo campus, you will find UB to be quite cosmopolitan — enrolling students from across the globe. Become a friend, study partner, teammate to your international student peers. And, perhaps these experiences may entice you to expand your sense of adventure and your intellectual and cultural perspective through immersing yourself in a new culture through our many Study Abroad opportunities.
So in closing, it is my challenge to you during your undergraduate years at UB, to explore the richness of UB and the greater world in which it is a part.
To the Class of 2011, may curiosity, humanity, integrity, and persistence be your hallmark as you begin this new exciting chapter.
Welcome to the University at Buffalo.
Satish K. Tripathi
University at Buffalo Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
Last Modified: Tuesday January 22 2008