Law School Report

UB 2020

Regional Institute
Building a better Buffalo Niagara

One of the signature ways the Law School engages with the Buffalo Niagara community, and exerts its influence to improve the region, is in the Regional Institute. With its mission of "providing regional understanding and promoting regional progress," the institute is a major source of unbiased information for policymakers, as well as a sponsor of scholarly study, conferences and projects that benefit the binational Buffalo Niagara region.

The Institute for Local Governance and Regional Growth, as it was then known, was founded in 1997 by former State Sen. John B. Sheffer II, who maintains a presence at the institute as a senior fellow. Under the direction of Kathryn A. Foster, who took over in 2005, the institute has become a unit of the Law School and has broadened and deepened its work. In January 2007, the program changed its name, adopting the shorter moniker Regional Institute.

The institute marked its 10th anniversary in 2007 with a series of events, foremost among them a successful Symposium on Change that convened regional leaders and community members in October. It was also announced that the Regional Institute, which has been housed in Beck Hall on UB's South Campus, will become an anchor tenant of the University's planned third campus in downtown Buffalo, a key support for UB's push to develop its civic engagement and public policy presence.

At an anniversary reception following the Symposium on Change, Dean Nils Olsen reflected on the institute's work and its place in the Law School.

The realignment that brought the institute into the Law School, he said, "has provided the Regional Institute with an academic home to reflect its dual mission of scholarship and public service. That placement makes sense in a lot of ways, because it reflects the interests that we in the Law School have in common with those who are deeply involved in the work of the Regional Institute, and we can build on the synergies that result from those common interests."

As examples, Olsen pointed to law faculty participation in a research project on the implications of the region's aging population, and in a project investigating alternatives to incarceration in Erie County.

The Regional Institute also is co-sponsoring a Law School conference on governance of the region's water resources, he said, and works closely with the Law School's Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy on research projects, working groups and forums.

"Even though it is housed within the Law School," Olsen noted, "the institute also engages with faculty in virtually every unit at UB, including engineering, arts and sciences, architecture and planning, social work and public health. It truly is an example of how we as scholars can work together, across disciplines, to be a central player in the University's efforts toward civic engagement and public policy."