Campaign for Charities surpasses goal
UGA’s Campaign for Charities collected $430,610.52 in its two-month drive to raise money for the State Charitable Contributions Program, surpassing its fundraising goal of $425,000.

“On behalf of the University of Georgia and the beneficiaries of the campaign proceeds, thanks to the captains for their outstanding leadership. My deepest appreciation is also extended to colleagues who made contributions to this good cause,” said Maurice Daniels, chairman of the campaign and dean of the School of Social work.

Campaign officials also had hoped to increase the employee participation rate to 27 percent, but the participation rate remained steady at 24 percent, the same amount attained in last year’s drive.

Terry College ranked a top ‘value’
The Terry College of Business has been ranked a top 5 “value for the money” among U.S. business schools by the Financial Times of London, which released its 2008 Global M.B.A. ranking recently.

Overall, the full-time Terry M.B.A. program moved up in the Times ranking and is again ranked a top 50 U.S. business school.

The Terry College is ranked the 46th best U.S. business school, up from 50th last year, and 80th in the world, up from 83rd.

The Terry M.B.A. was judged by the paper to have the third best “value for the money” of any U.S. business school. The Times measured value by calculating the salary earned by alumni three years after graduation and comparing it against the overall cost to enroll, including tuition and fees and the “opportunity cost” of not working for the duration of the full-time program.

Terry College also was judged to be in the top 20 nationally for its “doctoral rank,” which the Times measured as the number of doctoral graduates produced by a business school in the past three years, with additional weight given to Ph.D. graduates who are hired into faculty positions at another top 50 business school.

SEC consortium gets study-abroad grant
The Southeastern Conference Academic Consortium has been awarded an Institute for Study Abroad Foundation grant of $94,000 to provide scholarship support for students to study abroad. The joint program focuses on community service and will be hosted by Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

SECAC’s committee on education abroad wrote the grant proposal in an effort to conduct the first joint study-abroad program involving all 12 of the SEC universities. Students from each SEC school will be selected to attend the program in the spring 2009 and spring 2010 academic terms.

“It is a wonderful starting point for us, and it sets the standard for the quality of shared academic programs that will be launched through this consortium in the coming years,” said Julie Goldman, senior coordinator of the consortium.

Artist’s donation decorates Map Library
Harold R. “Huddy” Hudgens Jr., an Albany resident who holds a degree in landscape architecture from UGA, has helped brighten the walls of the UGA Map Library.

A regular library user, Hudgens urged his artist friends Rena Divine and her husband, William T. Divine Jr., a former member of the University System of Georgia Board of Regents, to donate four artist’s proofs from Rena’s series “Plantations of Southwest Georgia.” Primarily a wildlife watercolorist, Rena has produced some of the most stunning paintings of quail, dove and ducks in the Southeast.

The Map Library, located at the intersection of Whitehall Road and Milledge Avenue, is a research-level cartographic collection whose substantial holdings include maps, aerial photography and remote sensed imagery, atlases, digital spatial data and reference materials.