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By Larry B. Dendy
ldendy@uga.edu
The university will start the academic year Aug. 16 with the Opening Convocation, a colorful ceremony that drew raves from new students last year for making them immediately feel a part of the UGA family.
 The convocation--held the day before classes begin--will begin at 4 p.m. in Stegeman Coliseum. UGA alumnus and Rhodes Scholar Robert G. Edge, a partner in the Atlanta law firm of Alston and Bird, will be the main speaker.
More than 5,000 new students, parents and university faculty and staff members attended last year’s Opening Convocation, which featured a speech by Zell Miller. The ceremony, created at the suggestion of a student leader, is designed to introduce new students and faculty into the university’s academic environment and to celebrate the beginning of the academic year.
UGA President Michael F. Adams will preside at the convocation, which begins with a colorful processional of hundreds of faculty members in academic regalia. In addition to the featured speaker, the program will include greetings from Garrett Graveson, president of the Student Government Association; Charles Keith, chair of the University Council Executive Committee; Sarah Fraker, president of Staff Council; Eloise Starbuck, treasurer of the National Alumni Association; and Doc Eldridge, mayor of Athens.
All students who are entering UGA for the first time--including freshmen, transfer students and graduate students--have been invited to the convocation. Families of all new students have also been invited, along with all current and new UGA faculty, all retired faculty and all staff members.
Response from those who attended last year’s ceremony was strongly positive, says Carol Winthrop, co-chair of the convocation planning committee.
Mary Ann Knox of Thomson, who was a freshman last fall, says the convocation “was the first time I realized that I was a part of UGA and it was a part of me.
“I have sung the Alma Mater for years and thought of it as my parents’ university,” Knox says. “But during the convocation I realized I was singing about my own university.”
Stephen Bruner of Roswell, who was also a freshman, says Miller’s speech last year “ignited a drive for my academic success.” Bruner says he had been apprehensive about the university’s size, but the ceremony “made UGA more personal, and because of that I felt more confident in my ability to succeed in such a large community.”
Knox, Bruner and other students also say they enjoyed meeting faculty members and fellow students at the convocation.
Karen Holbrook, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, says a key to the success of last year’s convocation was the strong participation of faculty. “It was truly an impressive sight to see 600 faculty members process into the coliseum to open the ceremony,” Holbrook says. “The faculty’s presence added immeasurably to the occasion and signaled the importance of the university’s most important resource--its faculty.”
For last year’s ceremony, poet and novelist Judith Ortiz Cofer, a UGA English professor, composed a poem titled “To Understand El Azul.” Response to the poem was so enthusiastic that it will be a permanent part of the convocation and will be reprinted in the program each year, says Winthrop.
For this year’s ceremony, music professor Thomas McCutchen and the Georgia Brass, an ensemble of faculty and students in the School of Music, will perform a selection from a violin concerto by Aram Khachaturian arranged by McCutchen.
Everyone who attends the convocation is asked to bring a can of food to donate to the Food Bank of Northeast Georgia. Collection containers will be outside the coliseum.
The convocation will be followed by a reception in the Myers Hall quad, about a block north of the coliseum.
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