Columns:: Back to school

since 12/15/98

Columns::March 25, 2002

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Back to school

By Beth Roberts
beth@uga.edu

Roy Moore

Roy L. Moore is associate dean for graduate studies in the College of Communications and Information Studies at the University of Kentucky, but for this academic year he has been visiting UGA as an American Council on Education Fellow. He described the goals and successes of his year for Columns.

Columns: What’s an ACE Fellow?

Moore: The American Council on Education is a large policy-making group--a coordinating association of 1,800 colleges and universities. Each year about 35 people are selected in a national Fellows competition to spend a semester or an academic year being mentored by an administrator, usually at another institution.

Columns: That’s a lot of time for your institution to get along without you.

Moore: It’s a big commitment, because your home institution--in my case, the University of Kentucky--pays your salary for the year, and you’re expected to spend at least a year back at your home institution.

Columns: How is the host school chosen?

Moore: It’s a mutual agreement between the Fellow and the institution. First of all, presidents nominate possible ACE Fellows. Then an ACE screening committee looks at the applications and nominations and narrows the list down. Then there are interviews at the ACE offices in Washington, D.C.
Then the Fellows submit a list of schools in which we’re interested--usually five or six. ACE then contacts the chief executive officers of those institutions and asks them whether they are interesting in having an ACE Fellow. Those ACE Fellows who indicated an interest in a particular institution then interview with the president. It’s a pretty rigorous and time-consuming process. UGA was my first choice all along, for many reasons.

Columns: Why?

Moore: It’s a top-20 public research university. The University of Kentucky, my home institution, has a legislative mandate to become a top-20 public research university. Obviously we have 18 other schools that are benchmarks, but my president and I agreed that Georgia would be the ideal place to go.

Columns: So you were looking for a place where you--and Kentucky--could learn something.

Moore: It’s like an internship, an academic administrative internship. It’s a chance to spend a significant period of time--an academic year--at another institution, being immersed in the culture of that institution, seeing how decisions are made and observing the role leadership plays. Then you can take those skills and that knowledge back to your home institution and be a more effective administrator.
You have a whole academic year in which you can observe, watch and be mentored. My chief mentor is President Adams. I also worked with Kathryn Costello, and now Steve Wrigley and Tom Landrum will share mentoring responsibilities for me. I’m also being mentored by Karen Holbrook and Hank Huckaby. I’m getting exposure to several different positions.

Columns: Do you work on projects for your mentors?

Moore: I work on some individual projects, but not large projects--if you get involved in a major project, then that can take all your time, and you don’t have a chance to observe. I did some research for Vice President Huckaby on home football game policies at SEC schools, and I’m working on a couple of other projects. I’m an ex officio member of the search committee for the dean of the graduate school. I’m also serving on the minority advising committee for the College of Journalism and Mass Communication--as an ex officio member.
Most of my time is spent talking with people and attending meetings. I attend the president’s senior staff meetings and the meetings of the provost with the deans and vice presidents. I go to events--such as the President’s Club gala at the Fox. That was nice--a chance to talk with major donors and get their perspective on the university. Dean Anderson of the College of Arts and Sciences has invited me to attend the college Faculty Senate meetings, and I also attend the University Council and Executive Committee meetings.

Columns: It’s good to have a year to think about administrative issues while not teaching.

Moore: It’s an enormously successful program. Several hundred of the 1,200 or so who’ve gone through the program have ended up as provosts or presidents or deans.
I had been wanting to do an ACE Fellowship for some time, but it’s difficult to free up an entire academic year.
We have assigned reading--articles, books and monographs about issues in higher education. I found that to be very useful. I also make site visits. I’ve been to the Griffin campus, and I spent a day at the legislature with the Blue Key Honor Society. I’m going to go to visit the UGA Oxford campus later this spring.

Columns: You’re going to know more about UGA than anyone here.

Moore: I have to some extent felt that. ACE Fellows treat everything with confidentiality. The idea of the fellowship is to observe and learn, to see how it all fits together. I think communication here is excellent, and it is interesting to see how information disseminates throughout the university.
The fellowship includes four week-long seminars. The seminar in August included almost an entire day on crisis management, with some case studies, and on Sept. 11 I could see how what I had learned applied here. I was quite impressed with the way the administration here handled Sept. 11.
The seminars also deal with areas such as management and accounting principles. Strategic planning, budgeting, diversity--you name it, if there’s an issue in higher education, we learn about it in depth at the seminars.
I have also “shadowed” four presidents as part of the fellowship--President Adams, the president at Georgia College and State University, the new president at Eastern Kentucky University, and the new president at the University of Kentucky. Shadowing involves a full day, from morning to evening, sitting in on everything from one-on-one meetings to conferences to large meetings such as the Faculty Senate.

Columns: A way to see what people actually do in these positions.

Moore: Yes. When you put all that together, you really get exposure to a wide variety of higher education activities. That’s hard to beat. We’re told we’ll be very confident in what we do as administrators when we’re through, knowing far more than we would have known if we hadn’t gone through this.

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Columns is produced by the UGA News Service, a unit of UGA Public Affairs.
Beth Roberts: Columns editor, Juliett Dinkins: Columns managing editor,
Janet Beckley: Columns art director. Peter Frey: Columns photo editor

Questions or comments should be directed to columns@uga.edu