Jacobs School Will Benefit From UB’s Hiring Initiative

By Bill Bruton

The initiative, “Advancing Top 25: Faculty Hiring,” plans to add upwards of 200 full-time faculty over that period. Faculty hiring on this scale hasn’t happened at UB since the 1960s, when the university joined the SUNY system.

This will help to contribute to the long-range strategic goal to be recognized among the top 25 public research universities in the nation.

The state’s flagship designation for the university, increasing research funding and the lure of an integrated downtown medical campus should go a long way toward luring prospective faculty to the Jacobs School.

“There’s never been a more exciting time to be at the Jacobs School at UB. People are extraordinarily excited at the opportunity of bringing in new researchers and working collaboratively with our hospital partners. Our faculty, students and staff are energized by being in this wonderful building,” says Allison Brashear, MD, MBA, UB’s vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School. “This is a time when we’re going to be able to train the next generation of clinicians and researchers, to do research that really has an impact, and to be a real active, integral part of our community.”

As the face of academic medicine continues to change, the Jacobs School has made advancing gender and racial equity a priority during the hiring initiative.

“The Jacobs School is committed to diversity. We are working directly with the community and must make sure we are training a diverse workforce,” Brashear says. “A year ago, there were no Black tenure-track faculty. Now there are four. Thank you to the chairs who heard and realized these numbers had to change. We have much more to do, and I commit that we will continue to expand our existing efforts to increase the diversity in our faculty and staff.”

UB set a record for fiscal year 2022 with $200 million in federal research expenditures. The goal is to double that to $400 million by 2030, which will be a tremendous benefit to the Jacobs School.

“We want to create hubs of innovation and to think about bringing in cluster hires and individuals who will help synergize with our large patient population and our strong basic and clinical research programs,” Brashear says.

All told, the next few years will see dramatic improvement throughout all areas of education and research at the Jacobs School.

“The future is bright,” Brashear says.