December 2003: Vol. 83, No. 1

Improving an already-great campus

f you have been on campus any time in the past few years, you have no doubt encountered construction and the attendant delays and inconveniences that come with adding facilities at a large and complex institution. The work on Baldwin Street, which was motivated by the need to improve pedestrian safety in that very busy section of campus, was completed about 18 months ago. That area is indeed safer, it is more accessible to those with physical handicaps, and it is more attractive, with brick walls along the sidewalks and terracing on the Park Hall lawn.

Michael F. Adams

The Student Learning Center, adjacent to the Tate Center, opened with the start of fall semester and is exceeding all expectations. I have never been involved in a construction project in which design and function have meshed so completely. Every time I am in that facility, it is alive with academic activity—students working together in the group study rooms, classes taking place in the new classrooms, students at computer stations or tapping into the wireless network. There are guest lecturers, student groups, and faculty meetings taking place throughout the building. It is a magnificent centerpiece for the UGA campus and should serve our students well for decades to come.

Also completed is the new home for the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, the first building in our research village off Riverbend Road. The CCRC has been one of the most productive research centers at UGA, and is now in its third home, having outgrown the previous two.

Rising from the ground on the far edge of East Campus, tucked against the Athens Loop, are the first residence halls to be built at UGA in more than three decades. The East Campus Village, with a new dining commons connected to the nearby Ramsey Center, will offer space for more than 1,200 students in the fall of 2004. Earlier this year, the University Cabinet approved a policy requiring freshmen to live on campus—a move based on extensive research showing that the academic performance of students living on campus is better than those living off campus, as well as a desire to integrate UGA students more fully into the breadth of campus life. A truly strong academic environment needs students on campus for more than classes and labs; they need to be here for guest lectures and concerts and art exhibits and athletic contests.

The Paul D. Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences will soon be under construction on South Campus, across Brooks Drive from the College of Veterinary Medicine. This $40 million facility, funded in part by the federal and state governments and in part by private money, will house the Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute and a number of researchers involved in critical research in those areas.

We are hopeful of state funding in the next year or two for a new home for the Dodd School of Art, which is currently scattered across campus in seven buildings, one of which is actually downtown on Broad Street. The new building will be located on East Campus near both the Georgia Museum of Art and the Performing Arts Center. When it is completed, the University of Georgia will have a world-class fine arts center on campus.

The Physical Master Plan calls for greenspace running north to south and east to west. The conversion of a portion of Brooks Drive into a pedestrian mall brought the feel of North Campus to South Campus; in the coming years, we will extend that pedestrian mall north to Conner Hall. An important component of the east-west greenspace axis is improving Reed Alley, the now cramped passageway along the north side of Sanford Stadium. Plans call for ornamental fencing along the Reed Hall and Memorial Hall edges—expanding the environs of the stadium, as Campus Architect Danny Sniff puts it—and may include concession areas and restroom facilities. This will be an inviting area before, during, and after football games, as well as during the rest of the year.

All of these projects support our mission at the University of Georgia. Most of them are student-centered, improving the learning environment and providing the kind of facilities that this strong student body deserves. As a land-grant university, we are charged with conducting research that impacts the lives of Georgians, and the research under way through the CCRC does just that, making inroads into the very basic life processes of cells and looking into the mechanisms of cancer.

A great university campus nurtures and sustains a great learning environment. Great university campuses are alive with thought and inquiry at virtually all hours of the day. Great university campuses extend learning beyond the classroom and the laboratory and into public spaces and residence halls, museums and concert halls, shaded lawns and amphitheaters. I believe we are building just that sort of environment at the University of Georgia.

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