Following tradition, my brief remarks today are in the form of a letter. Today’s letter is addressed to the parents in our audience.

Dear Parents:

One of the most difficult things to avoid at this point in your son’s or daughter’s life is bragging. We all know that it’s not polite to brag and it’s a bit annoying when someone else brags about their children, but we also know that it is almost impossible to avoid. You’re talking to a friend and they ask you about your son or daughter and boom you can’t stop. You tell them that they just graduated magna cum laude from UB with a 3.8 GPA in Mechanical Engineering and they’ve taken a $68,000 a year job with Exxon-Mobil and they are leaving tomorrow for Houston Texas to help cap the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico ...and ...oops you’re bragging!

Why do we do it? Perhaps because we’re amazed that this person, our child, who just a few years ago came home in tears at the end of a school day because no one liked them. And somehow we were able to stop their tears, dust them off, feed them dinner, convince them to do their homework and get them ready for another day. And now here they are, wearing a cap and a gown, achieving what you knew they could reach. You’re busting with pride and you want to brag!

But when is it appropriate, or at least tolerable to brag? Two days for sure, the day your son or daughter graduates from college and mother’s day, so for the next 36 hours, mothers, it’s time to brag. Dad’s you’ve got just another 11 hours!

So let me begin and brag about my UB family. I am fortunate to have a very big family: twenty thousand alumni, 3500 students, 150 faculty, 200 staff, and hundreds of close friends to the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. They are the ones that I want to brag about.

For example this year’s graduating class found great jobs at places like Moog, Harris, General Electric, Goodyear, and Turner Construction, with salaries as high as $70,000 per year. And others in the class are attending great graduate schools like University of Pennsylvania, Virginia Tech, Stanford and the University at Buffalo.

Our entering freshman class this year will have a record high SAT score, approaching an average of 1270 on their combined math and verbal scores.

Our student retention and graduation rate has doubled in the past ten years under the guidance of our student excellence program.

The number of students applying to our school of engineering and applied sciences has doubled in the past 5 years.

Our faculty’s research proposal output has tripled in the past three years.

The win rate of the faculty’s research proposals has increased by 80 percent last year reaching $36M of award wins.

We have raised more than 7 million dollars for our new engineering building, putting it close to financial completion. And the building is ahead of schedule and on budget.

One of our faculty this last year won one of the highest teaching awards given to engineering faculty in the country. And one of our faculty won the highest research and innovation award from President Obama.

In a time when the sky appears to be falling in Albany, our school has found ways through smarter enrollment management, better research, intelligent deployment of resources and more generous philanthropy to not just survive, but to thrive.

And this year we will hire 14 new engineering professors, expand our graduate programs, and graduate a record number of students with advanced degrees.

Yeah I’m bragging. But the faculty, staff, students, alumni, friends and you the parents made it happen. I am just reporting the facts. So Moms Dads BRAG ON - you are just reporting the facts!