Chair's Report on Highlights of the Past Year
June 8, 2005
Remarks by Board of Regents Chair Joel O. Wooten, Jr.
Last July, when I assumed the chairmanship of this Board, I noted the powerful influence of change on the System and upon the issues and actions of the Regents. Thankfully, I could not predict how central change was to prove in the ensuing 12 months. This has been a very challenging year for this Board. There have been many issues and decisions, particularly with the budget and our relationship with cooperative organizations. But this Board and the System have responded to issues and opportunities - as they always have responded - with decisions that serve both to maintain what has been built and to strengthen the ability of our System and our institutions to move forward. And our response is rooted in another key attribute I mentioned last August in my first meeting as Chair. That is our adherence to the basic principles and goals that have guided this and previous Boards over the 73 years of the University System's existence. Those principles and goals can be summed up in our mantra: "creating a more educated Georgia."
Let me say at the outset that throughout my service on this Board and during the past year, I have taken pride in our focus on that goal. As a governing board for 34 institutions - soon to be 35 - that have 38,000 employees, more than a quarter million students, and a budget that will exceed $5 billion this year, we have a busy agenda and a tremendous responsibility to our citizens. And while funding, budgets, and fiscal concerns certainly are a crucial component of our monthly and yearly agenda, the bottom line is that the dollar - despite some commentary to the contrary - is not what drives our actions. Students and student needs drive our decisions.
There's no question that this Board has faced some very tough issues in the areas of budgets, policy, and governance. Some of our decisions may be unpopular with some, but they have been made with a focus on the System and what's best for our students. Making the right decisions for the present and the future, even in the face of popular opinion, takes leadership, and this Board has shown its willingness to make tough decisions this past year. A close examination of what has taken place here at the Board of Regents and throughout the System over the past 12 months will reveal thousands of dedicated faculty and staff working very hard to improve higher education, to strengthen academic quality, to broaden educational access, and to increase research opportunities.
We are here to serve the students of Georgia. That is our purpose and that is our focus. The results in rising academic quality and standards are proof positive that when it comes to priorities, this Board and this System are moving in the right direction. Georgians need not worry about the direction of public higher education in this state. We have a history and a tradition of solid educational leadership. I'm pleased and proud to say this Board is not just maintaining but building upon that tradition for the next generation of students.
Today, as my chairmanship comes to a close, I appreciate the opportunity to review the past months relative to the day-to-day realities we faced and measured against the priorities I outlined at the outset of my term. Among those priorities were a focus on accountability, a focus on serving students with high academic quality, a focus on promoting economic development, and a focus on increasing the public and private investment in the System. To achieve these goals, I noted that we would concentrate on planning for the future. In addition to examining enrollment growth and the ongoing need for classrooms, labs, and other academic facilities as our student population increases, I suggested that our planning also had to incorporate efforts to establish in Georgia a culture of lifelong learning. So, with that reminder, let us review the past year.
Our budget continued to pose some challenges, as we saw last fall, with the cuts we had to handle. But we, as a Board, continued to focus on ways that ensured that the dollars were there for our core mission. We have continued to be accountable as good stewards of the state's resources, and that record helped us when the Governor made his fiscal year 2006 budget recommendation. We had the support of the Governor and the General Assembly, as evidenced in an 8.5% increase in state appropriations and full funding of the formula this past session. This support reflects an appreciation of the importance of the University System's mission in educating Georgians and supporting the economic growth of our state. We must continue, however, to work for an updated formula and for more funding for critical capital projects so we can meet the needs of an ever-increasing number of deserving new students. Through a wide range of efforts, we must continue, as we have been, to keep our funding partners and other partners informed regarding why we take the actions we do and how we use the resources provided by the state and our private partners.
I must emphasize that this Board's good work on planning has helped in the area of accountability. Beginning with our retreat last August at Augusta State University, we have maintained our focus throughout the year on assessing statewide needs and taking subsequent actions to meet these needs. For example, out of this planning came the Board's decision to rescind its 1996 moratorium on changing the names, mission statements, and missions of our 34 institutions. To date, we have approved name changes at Floyd - now Highland - College, Clayton State University, and the University of West Georgia. But the Board's actions in this area have deeper implications for the future. We have positioned the University System of Georgia to be able to meet the emerging statewide and regional needs of citizens and business. We have the flexibility to tackle needs with new degree programs, for example. Perhaps the most historic result of our statewide planning has been the creation of the first new institution in the System in decades. With our approval today of the creation of a new state college in Gwinnett County, this Board has fulfilled a key recommendation of our statewide assessment.
We also have made significant progress on other recommendations from our statewide assessment. The Board took action to revise our admissions policy at our two-year institutions. This new policy will strengthen our two-year colleges' role as key access points for higher education. In February, we saw the launch of the statewide Education GO Get It initiative that has the dual goal of increasing Georgia's high school completion rate and enrollment in postsecondary education. This public-private partnership will help create that culture of lifelong learning I mentioned earlier.
Looking beyond some of these big picture issues and decisions, the Board focused on a number of the details of the System. We thoroughly examined the issue of textbook costs and acted to empower the Chancellor to set guidelines for our campuses. Our intent is to help students realize the maximum value for textbook purchases. We approved an initiative to address the growing need for K-12 teachers. Our "Double the Number, Double the Diversity" will help address both the raw numbers of teachers needed in Georgia's schools as well as the number of minority teachers we prepare. We continued our "Best Practice" awards competition with recognition of eight institutions last November. We dedicated a new 80,000-square-foot Office of Information and Instructional Technology building in Athens that consolidated our far-flung information technology staff into one central, more efficient location. Our own University System of Georgia Foundation, Inc. (the "Foundation") held a very successful gala in November that served both to recognize outstanding University System faculty and alumni and also to raise needed funds for scholarships at our 34 colleges and universities. Closer to home, the gala also singled out our own Regent Elridge McMillan for the Foundation's first lifetime achievement award, an award now named in his honor. As we continue to see pressures on state budgets, it is even more critical that our various foundations play a strong supporting role for our institutions.
And this fact brings me to one of the major issues and challenges faced by this Board over the past year. As external forces shape our System, this creates some changes and shifts in our relationships and partnerships. We all are growing, and with growth inevitably comes growing pains as we discover how our respective roles should be defined to achieve our common goals. So, we've been through some growing pains, but these are positive changes.
I want to commend and thank the members of this Board for your support and guidance as we have developed a clear new relationship between the Board of Regents and our cooperative organizations. One of the unique strengths of the University System of Georgia was the decision of Georgians to create a unified System under a single governing body. This was an intentional decision to create strength and a clear understanding of authority. This model has served Georgia well in the past, and with our actions related to cooperative organizations, a unified System will continue to serve the state as it was intended by the System's founders. History continues to bear out the wise decisions of this and previous Boards on other fronts, and these are, ultimately, the areas in which we will be judged.
One such area is our student quality. In January, we received a ten-year analysis of freshmen in the University System. The key finding of that study is that we are drawing significantly more qualified students today. This is a result of our heightened admissions standards, the HOPE Scholarship, and the constantly improving quality of our institutions. Another measure of quality is the growing number of institutions, colleges, and programs recognized in national rankings. Beyond the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Georgia - both in the nation's top 20 public universities - a growing number of the programs at our universities rank in the nation's top 50. And at an individual level, our students seem to be on a winning streak in terms of the numbers of prestigious national scholarships awarded. Over the past several years, University System of Georgia students have earned ten Goldwater, two Marshall, two Truman, and numerous other national scholarships. Students have won prestigious Rhodes and Churchill scholarships for study at Oxford and Cambridge. Overall, we have the best qualified students we have ever had enrolled in the University System of Georgia. As a result of our planning and our programs, we are seeing significant gains in retention and graduation of our students. This is fundamental to our goal of creating a more educated Georgia. On another key front, the System continues to increase our income for extramural funding, which includes our research grants. We set another record this past year of $980 million. And our increased focus on audits has led to strong showings by our institutions as more and more earn the best rating. Finally, the latest study of the University System's economic impact on the state shows a $1.7 billion increase since 2002 to a total of $9.7 billion.
All of these performance measures - academic quality, research dollars, economic impact - testify to the University System's stability and to its continued growth even during difficult economic times. It is sometimes easy to lose sight of these core achievements when tough decisions are required in other areas of the Board's responsibilities, but we cannot lose that focus on the larger issues. And, in a dispassionate review of the past year, it is clear this Board has remained focused. We have met the challenges of the moment while planning for the future. We continue to be accountable. We continue to concentrate on serving our students with high academic quality. We continue to use the System's resources on behalf of the state's economic development. And we continue to make strides in strengthening and creating public-private partnerships to advance our goals and find the resources to meet our needs.
Let me close with some personal acknowledgements. First, let me thank all of our presidents for their continued leadership... and we have some great presidents in our System. Over the past year, we have seen some notable retirements. Yet, our processes continue to help us identify new leadership to carry forward the work of those presidents leaving us. This past year, we welcomed John Black as the new president at East Georgia College, David Potter at North Georgia College & State University, and Thomas Wilkerson at Bainbridge College. At the Board this year, we welcomed Richard Tucker to the Board, and welcomed back Don Leebern and Wanda Yancey Rodwell.
This is an important Board, and I appreciate all of the hard work and support each of you provided over the past year. I especially appreciated your willingness to be flexible as we implemented a new process for our meetings to try to encourage greater participation by the Board. And I appreciate the leadership and vision of our Chancellor, Tom Meredith. He has dealt with all of these issues day in and out. He has provided leadership to this System through personal trials as he and Susan recovered from their serious auto accident back in November. The Chancellor has been supported by an able and very talented staff. I just want to say thank you to all of these individuals for their professionalism and dedication. Let me also acknowledge and thank Secretary Gail Weber for her continuing assistance and her valuable contributions to the work of this Board. And finally, I want to thank my Vice Chair, Regent Tim Shelnut, for his support and work over this past year. Regent Shelnut, I think you understand me when I state that I am delighted to turn over the gavel to your care!
Again, thank you for the opportunity to serve this Board, this System, and the state. It's been a tremendous challenge and opportunity, and I truly have appreciated your support and your help throughout this past year.