Dear UAB Community and Friends,

I am delighted to welcome students, faculty and staff back to campus for fall semester. Our Welcome Week events are in full swing, including the First Year Student Convocation held Tuesday and the ribbon-cutting for our new intramural fields yesterday, and there is great energy and anticipation as we embark on an exciting new academic year.

We begin this academic year honored and gratified by a remarkable new ranking: UAB is the Top Young University in the nation and 10th globally in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. This is a testament to the exceptional teaching, research and scholarship conducted every day all over our campus. I could not be prouder and more grateful for the dedication, collaboration and innovation of our faculty and staff — and the talented young minds you mentor and inspire — that continue to bring such international renown to our university.

That innovative spirit is central to the history, character and continued success of UAB. It is also, fittingly, at the heart of a bold new branding campaign we recently launched to run through 2020: “Powered by will.” This campaign will define and promote our brand more effectively than ever, highlighting innovation and entrepreneurialism that is pushing frontiers — in the sciences and medicine, technology, education, business, the arts and humanities, and other fields — and impacting lives throughout our state, nation and world.

That impact becomes all the more profound as our faculty continue to secure highly competitive research funding. Our research expenditures are now at a record high, exceeding $562 million in FY17, and we rank 15th in federal funding nationally among public universities (top 4 percent) and 31st overall (top 5 percent). In NIH funding, we rank 8th among publics (top 2 percent) and 23rd overall (top 4 percent) with more than $244 million.

We are translating that NIH funding into leading-edge patient care, as UAB was again recognized as the top hospital in Alabama with 10 specialties in the nation’s top 50 in the recent U.S. News & World Report rankings. We are taking the lead nationally in advancing precision medicine; developing revolutionary therapies for diseases such as diabetes; conducting the world’s longest live-donor kidney chain, which recently surpassed 100 transplants; and partnering to bring quality care to the most underserved areas of our state.

The dramatic transformation of our physical campus continues, pursuant to our Campus Master Plan, with the opening of three state-of-the-art facilities in just four weeks. Last Friday, we opened the new home of our Collat School of Business and Bill L. Harbert Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, where — now under one roof — we’ll mentor and train future business leaders and entrepreneurs, accelerate commercialization and the formation of start-up companies, and help grow a robust innovation-based economy for Birmingham and Alabama. Next Thursday, Sept. 6, we’ll officially open the expansion and renovation of our School of Nursing building that provides some of the most technologically advanced learning spaces in the nation to continue training the nurse-leaders of tomorrow. Earlier this month, we cut the ribbon on our new UAB Police and Public Safety Headquarters, a 28,000-square-foot facility that gives our officers and staff the room and resources they need to further maintain a secure environment for all on campus.

We are also promoting the arts and culture more effectively than ever on campus, throughout our region and beyond. Our Cultural Arts District is thriving around the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts (AEIVA) and the Alys Stephens Center, which recently became a participant in the Kennedy Center’s Partners in Education Program that assists arts organizations in expanding partnerships with local school systems and providing professional learning in the arts for teachers. WBHM reaches 110,000 weekly listeners in the heart of Alabama and, online, around the globe — including service members in the Middle East and regular listeners in Ireland.

We are deeply grateful to our donors, alumni and friends for your continued partnership as The Campaign for UAB is now on the home stretch, having just passed the $900-million mark with nearly 102,000 donors. We so appreciate your support, advocacy and involvement in the life of our university, and I hope you will join students, faculty and staff at Legion Field tonight to cheer on our Blazers in our football season opener versus Savannah State.

We look forward to continued excellence in every arena this academic year. Approaching UAB’s 50th anniversary in 2019, we harness the innovative spirit that hearkens back to our beginnings as we continue Forging the Future, propelled toward success and powered by will.