Excerpts from a recent "state of the university" address given by Michael Adams, president of the University of Georgia (one institution that’s done a great job moving from a mediocre state college to a top-20 public university in a relatively short period of time).  It continues to amaze me how our visioning and strategic thinking appears so focused on tactical and not particularly academic matters. 

Frankly, the opportunity for USM to be a unique, quality-oriented "people's university", helping to enrich the lives of our state's citizens is overwhelming.  Yet, the absence of true leadership to help fulfill this opportunity is incredibly saddening. 

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In the face of 36 months of budget reductions, this university has continued to excel in all areas. Three general statements sum up the successes of last year: UGA set a new record for private giving with $77.8 million and more than 53,000 individual donors. We set a new record for external research funding with almost $160 million in contracts and grants. And we enrolled the most academically competitive class in UGA’s history.

The following are just a few examples of UGA’s specific successes in the past year:

• Nine UGA students won major national scholarships, including the Marshall, the Truman, the Goldwater, the Gates-Cambridge and the Mellon, bringing the total since 2001 to 26. The quality of the UGA student body continues to rise.

• We enrolled the most diverse freshman class in UGA history, and now have the most diverse overall student body ever.

• The Student Learning Center is well into its second year of operation, and is now truly the signature academic building on campus, filled at all hours with students, faculty and staff engaged in the full range of academic activity.

• Dr. Jeffrey Bennetzen, a Georgia Research Alliance professor of molecular genetics, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, joining six of his UGA colleagues in that elite body. One of his Academy colleagues, Dr. Susan Wessler, was elected to a position as councilor in the Academy this year as well.

• East Campus Village and the East Village Commons opened at the start of the academic year, and have increased the energy level of not only that part of campus, but the entire campus. Great academic communities need students to learn and live on campus.

• The Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences is under construction and will house the Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute, the core of UGA’s burgeoning life sciences research program.

• We broke ground for the new home of the Lamar Dodd School of Art, a $36 million facility that is very much needed.
• The new home of the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center was dedicated and continues to be a source of significant findings and funding.

• We are now eighth in the nation in the number of students having a residential study-abroad experience.

• Garnett Stokes was named dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, following the retirement of Wyatt Anderson. Rebecca White was named dean of the School of Law. Nancy Kropf is serving as interim dean of the School of Social Work. With College of Family and Consumer Sciences Dean Sharon Nickols and Graduate School Dean Maureen Grasso, UGA now has five excellent female deans.

• We produced over 954,000 academic credits and will soon cross the million-credit threshold annually. That UGA recorded a third consecutive increase in credit-hour production with a reduced complement of faculty is a tribute to the dedication and hard work of the teaching faculty.

I have looked for another public institution in America where fundraising was up substantially, research funding was up substantially and student board scores rose by more than 20 points, and I cannot find one. The University of Georgia stands today in rare company.

The only explanation for what has happened here is good people working very hard. I am deeply indebted to each of you and regret very much that because of the state financial situation, we have been unable to give adequate salary increases.

But today’s question is, “What must we do now to move this university to the next level?”

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UGA currently expects of graduates that they leave here with the following proficiencies: an understanding of arts and literature; computer literacy; an understanding of contemporary culture; language and communication skills; quantitative literacy; scientific literacy; social science literacy; and environmental literacy.

That’s an exhaustive list, but what it describes at its core is a true liberal arts education, liberal in the classic sense of an education that is liberating—an education that frees one to pursue all that life holds. It is an education that is broad in scope and which prepares a student for the deeper study of his or her chosen area of emphasis. A liberal education prepares students for a career and, more importantly, for life. A liberal education makes a person more nimble in adjusting to life as occupations and trends come and go. A liberally educated person is not simply “trained.” He or she is educated, and prepared for a lifetime of learning.

As Carol Geary Schneider said when she delivered the McBee Lecture last fall, liberal education is “a philosophy of education that empowers individuals, liberates the mind, cultivates intellectual judgement and fosters ethical and social responsibility.”

It is an education which prepares citizens for life in a rapidly changing 21st century.

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I need to speak directly to the faculty for a moment. The public scrutiny of the educational delivery process at UGA has been greater in light of the budget cuts and, in my opinion, will be greater still in the months to come. The central administration has talked at length with legislators, with the media and with the general public about the impact of budget cuts on the quality of education at UGA, and much has been written and said about what we can and cannot do, what we should or should not do, and whether we can or cannot absorb additional cuts to the state portion of our budget.

Now more than ever you must help us make sure that UGA’s sponsoring public understands the totality of your work as a member of the faculty at the University of Georgia. Help them understand that in addition to your time in the classroom, you do research, provide public service, serve on committees and task forces, advise students, grade papers and fulfill a myriad of other tasks. Talk to your representatives and senators in the General Assembly. Tell them what you do during an average day. Be diligent about how you spend your time and help the public understand that the job of a faculty member at a top-20 public university is multifaceted, challenging, demanding and rewarding—and that state support over the past 15 years or so has helped UGA attain that ranking. We are proud to be Georgians and we want Georgians to be proud of us, our work and our quality.

Further, as I have mentioned, I want the faculty to join me in making sure that the rigor of the UGA curriculum and academic process has kept up with the increased quality of the student body over the past several years. As you know, the provost’s office has tasked a committee to undertake a review of the core curriculum, and I want to thank Provost Mace, Associate Provost Jere Morehead, Vice President for Instruction Del Dunn and the members of the faculty who are serving on that committee for the hard work they have already done.

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Finally, I was heartened by a recent discussion at University Council about the need for a focus on academic rigor and a recognition that the quality of the UGA curriculum must keep pace with the quality of the UGA student. I know that Student Government Association President Adam Sparks is right when he notes that many students are up late studying at the Student Learning Center and that many good things are happening here academically. I now want to extend this conversation to every faculty member and every academic department head. I hope you will ask, with particular emphasis on undergraduate requirements, whether or not you have ratcheted up the quality of the curriculum and the reading and writing requirements consistent with the greatly enhanced quality of the UGA student body. I want to see every department hold a faculty meeting to ask questions about academic rigor.

I truly believe that in the next five to 10 years the University of Georgia has the capacity to become a premier American university mentioned in the same sentence with Berkeley and Michigan and Virginia and North Carolina.

But before we make these claims, we yet have work to do: better student-teacher ratios, better classroom rigor, better writing and speaking, better use of time throughout the week. We make these efforts to strengthen the quality and rigor of the curriculum not because of national surveys, but because we have a signal responsibility to the people of this state to do no less.

Let us not lose sight of the importance of our work here. More than any other institution or organization in this state, the University of Georgia bears the responsibility of preparing the next generation of leaders that will help determine Georgia’s place in the world.