Columns:: Digest

since 12/15/98

Columns::September 3, 2002

Digest

First-year class sets SAT, GPA records
The 4,298 new students who began their studies at UGA this past month comprise the most academically superior first-year class in the university’s history, scoring a record-high 3.71 high school grade point average and 1215 SAT average.
The 2006 class, which also boasts an average composite ACT score of 26, includes a larger number of African Americans and a higher percentage of minority students than the 2001 class. The class enrolled under admissions criteria implemented this year that base admissions decisions only on academic qualifications.
The high school GPA for this year’s class is higher than the 3.64 average for the 2001 class, and the SAT average is eight points higher than the 1207 score for last year. The composite ACT score is the same as last year’s.
In response to a federal court ruling last year regarding use of race in admissions, UGA instituted a policy whereby applicants for this fall’s class were evaluated on grade point average, rigor of high school curriculum and test scores.
Though there had been some concern about a possible decline in first-year enrollment of African-American and minority students, the opposite occurred. African-American enrollment rose to 218 from 207 last year, with a percentage increase from 4.8 to 5.4. About 14 percent of this year’s students are classified as non-Caucasian, compared to 13 percent of last year’s class.
“This is good news,” says Vice President for Instruction Del Dunn. “Across the country, universities that have lost court suits have almost always experienced decreases in African-American enrollments in the following year. We are delighted that did not happen here.”

SREL lab to conduct study of at-risk species
Scientists from the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and two federal agencies will evaluate the effects of forest management practices and military training activities on the Fall Line Sandhills community and the suite of threatened and endangered species--both plant and animal--that are found there. The study will use habitat models, field surveys and experiments at three sites: Fort Benning, Fort Gordon and the Savannah River Site.
The $940,000 Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program grant, funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, is entitled “Impacts of Military Training and Land Management on Threatened and Endangered Species in the Southeastern Fall Line Sandhills Community.”
Forestland management typically has focused on timber production, according to Rebecca Sharitz, SREL senior research ecologist and principal investigator. Management for rare species has generally focused on targeted, selected threatened or endangered species, such as the red cockaded woodpecker, without taking into account how promoting habitat condition for one species might affect others that share the same habitat.

GPTV rebroadcasts Odum documentary
A 27-minute documentary on the life and work of the late Eugene Odum will be rebroadcast on Georgia Public Television Sept. 8 at 5 p.m. Odum, who died Aug. 10 at the age of 88, was known widely as the “father of modern ecology.” On the UGA faculty for more than half a century, Odum is credited with bringing important new concepts to the study of ecology.
“We are delighted that Georgia Public Television will air this documentary in memory of Dr. Odum,” says David Silvian of the Georgia Center for Continuing Education and director of the documentary. “It was an honor to make this film on the work of a great man.”
The documentary looks at Odum’s life, from his boyhood in Chapel Hill, N.C., through his arrival at UGA in the early 1940s. It also traces his ideas--which at first had little support in the scientific community--and how they became accepted worldwide.

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