Columns:: President addresses minority enrollment at first University Council meeting

since 12/15/98

Columns::September 24, 2001

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Campus News

President addresses minority enrollment at first University Council meeting

By Larry B. Dendy
ldendy@uga.edu

In opening remarks at the first University Council meeting of the academic year Sept. 13, UGA President Michael F. Adams thanked the university for supporting efforts to increase minority enrollment and promised to “broaden and intensify” those efforts regardless of the outcome of legal challenges to the university’s admissions process.
Adams said the past two years of court battles over admissions policies have overshadowed advances in recruiting, admitting and enrolling minority students, particularly African-American students.
“I am now in my fifth year as president, and in every year I have been here we have made minority enrollment a high priority,” Adams said.
Enrollment this fall is up in seven of eight minority-student categories even though the university no longer gives extra weight to race as a factor in admissions, he said. The one area of decline--African-American freshmen--was no surprise in light of similar drops in other states involved in admissions lawsuits, though UGA’s decrease is smaller than that of other universities.
UGA has “much larger and more significant goals than whether or not we win a lawsuit,” Adams said. “You’ll never know how much I appreciate the support of our institutional position from faculty, staff and students,” he told council members, adding, “We will continue [minority enrollment] efforts. In fact, we will broaden and intensify our efforts and seek additional state support for the personnel we need to achieve our goals.”
The council approved several editorial changes to the university’s strategic plan, including adding language requested by the Graduate Student Association that emphasizes the university’s responsibility to graduate education. The addition commits the university to give graduate students “the tools and mentoring necessary to develop as professionals,” and to prepare graduate students “for their dual roles as instructors/researchers and students.”
Two rhetorical questions in the strategic plan also were revised. The questions are: “What kind of intellectual/residential community can/should we build for undergraduates at UGA?” and “How can we create a better academic and extra-curricular community for both freshmen and transfer students?”
For the first question, the council voted to add the words “and graduate students” after the word “undergraduates.” In the second question, the council voted to replace the words “both freshmen and transfer students” with the words “all students.”
In other action, the council:
• Approved joint degrees with three journalism majors (magazines, newspapers and publication management) and five arts and sciences majors
(English, Spanish, economics, political science and criminal justice).
• Approved undergraduate interdisciplinary certificate programs in computer systems engineering and engineering physics.
• Approved a minor in Arabic.
• Rejected a recommended change to the Culture of Honesty Policy that would have required a transcript notation when a student is suspended or expelled after being found guilty by a hearing panel of an academic honesty violation. In debating the recommendation from the council’s Educational Affairs Committee, some council members questioned whether penalties for academic honesty violations may be too harsh, and others asked if the penalties really deter cheating. Several members suggested the penalties should be reviewed.
• Approved on second reading a change to the council bylaws that would add an undergraduate student and a graduate/professional student to the council’s Curriculum Committee.

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