June 2001: Vol. 80, No. 3June 2001: Vol. 80, No. 3Former Soviet leader recalls first UGA visit in acceptance speech
Gorbachev receives 2001 Delta Prize
As the former president of the Soviet Union entered an interview room at the Ritz-Carlton/Buckhead on April 16, a group of UGA students clustered around him. With TV cameras whirring and photographers jockeying for position, Mikhail Gorbachev—the man credited in large measure with ending the arms race and the Cold War—smiled broadly and uttered two words in English: "Say cheese!"
When the photo opp ended, Gorbachev reverted to his native tongue to answer reporters' questions about U.S.-China relations, Russia's embattled independent TV network, and the reason he was in Atlanta—to accept the 2001 Delta Prize for Global Understanding.
 Gorbachev (flanked by UGA president Michael F. Adams, at left, and Delta Air Lines CEO Leo Mullin) received the Delta Prize for Global Understanding in recognition of his efforts to end the Cold War and promote environmentalism. |
Prior to the award ceremony, Gorbachev's role in ending the Cold War and his current efforts in promoting environmentalism were discussed at a symposium attended by Sam Nunn and Ted Turner, who was addressed by Gorbachev as "Comrade Billionaire."
Symposium panelist Pat Mitchell (AB '65, MA '67) recalled working on CNN's 24-episode documentary The Cold War. "It was an opportunity to step back and look at how close we came—several times—to conflagration," she said. "We conducted 600 interviews with world leaders and every one of them spoke of President Gorbachev's courage and his actions."
Mitchell later found herself "drafted into a new green army" when she agreed to head Global Green U.S.A., an affiliate of Green Cross International, which Gorbachev founded in 1993 following the United Nations Earth Summit meeting in Rio de Janeiro.
An important part of the Green Cross International agenda is the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, noted Alexander Likhotal, vice president of the organization. He was joined on the panel by Igor Khripunov, associate director of UGA's Center for International Trade and Security, and Gorbachev's daughter, Irina Virganskaya. Asked to provide personal insight into her father, Virganskaya said: "He loves people, all kinds of people."
Gorbachev is the third recipient of the Delta Prize, established with a grant from the Delta Air Lines Foundation. The inaugural award in 1999 went to former President Jimmy Carter, his wife, Rosalynn, and the Carter Center, the base from which the Carters address health and human rights issues around the globe. The 2000 award was presented to Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, the outspoken foe of apartheid who then chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in its aftermath.
Calling Carter and Tutu "old friends," Gorbachev said he considers himself in good company. In accepting the Delta Prize, Gorbachev fondly remembered his visit to UGA in December 1999 and the standing-room-only crowd that filled Stegeman Coliseum to hear him speak. [See March '00 issue of GM.] He repeated many of his themes from that evening, calling for a new world order that is "more stable, more humane, and more just," and for a focus on the environment—"the number-one item on the agenda of the 21st century."
Noting he had recently celebrated his 70th birthday, Gorbachev vowed to stay active: "I have some years remaining and I will use them to do good things."
New deck slated for fall
The new 800-space South Campus parking deck is going up fast, thanks to a precast construction method that should have four of the deck's five levels ready for use by the start of fall semester on Aug. 16. The new deck will be open to faculty, staff, and students, and the net gain of 450 spaces will ease parking problems on South Campus. In the future, the new deck will serve those who work in the academic achievement center that will be built on the old Alumni House site, and in the $40 million Paul D. Coverdell Building for Biomedical and Health Sciences, which will eventually be located on D.W. Brooks Drive, facing the College of Veterinary Medicine.
U.S. News lauds graduate programs; WSJ: UGA a fallback to "New Ivies"
Rankings report
Using the Ivy League as the optimum goal for college aspirants, the Wall Street Journal asked five admissions counselors to establish a pecking order of next-in-line college choices after the Ivies. The panel came up with four tiers headed by the so-called "New Ivies," followed by three other categories—Safe, Safer, Safest—populated by schools that incoming freshmen consider as quality alternatives to the New Ivies.
The 11 schools listed as New Ivies (e.g. Duke, Georgetown, Notre Dame) are all private, as are all but two of the 11 on the Safe list (Boston College, George Washington). UGA made the third list (Safer), along with the likes of American University, Boston University, Furman, Georgia Tech, Syracuse, and Vanderbilt.
"In terms of profile, they've gone from zero to 60 [mph] in three years," one panelist said of UGA, which was lauded for the HOPE Scholarship program.
UGA's College of Education, School of Law, and Terry College of Business are listed among the nation's top graduate schools in the latest rankings from U.S. News & World Report. The new rankings—derived from a combination of factors such as reputation, student selectivity, placement success, faculty resources, and research activity—appear in the 2002 edition of "America's Best Graduate Schools," which came out in April. The rankings are also available online at www.usnews.com.
The College of Education tied for 22nd with Boston College and Maryland-College Park, up four positions from last year. Five programs—elementary education, secondary education, counseling and personnel services, and curriculum and instruction— rank in the top 10.
U.S. News ranks the College of Education among the top 15 at public schools and in the top four Southern schools, along with Vanderbilt, UNC-Chapel Hill and Virginia. It is the only Georgia school on the list.
The School of Law ranks 27th, up two positions from the 2001 rankings and tied with Emory, Boston University, Notre Dame, and Washington University. UGA ranks 11th among America's public law schools and is in the top three of law schools in the Southeast.
The MBA program in the Terry College of Business fell two positions in the 2002 rankings, but remains one of the 50 best business schools in America, according to U.S. News. There are 341 accredited graduate business programs in the U.S., and only two other public institutions in the Southeast are rated higher.
Included in this year's report are new rankings for public affairs programs, and UGA's master's program in public administration ranks sixth among public affairs programs nationwide (see this article). In the specialties of public management/administration and public finance and budgeting, UGA ranks third.
Historic trees felled in storm
Spring came in like a lion on the morning of March 20, with 40-mile-per-hour gusts that felled two large oak trees on North Campus. At 7:25 a.m., a 100-year-old oak fell in front of the Main Library. An hour later, a 150-year-old oak went down between Waddel and Peabody halls. Also lost: a 120-year-old pine near physics and a 100-year-old pine in front of plant sciences.
$4 million gift will fund endowed chair, two new student programs
Bradley-Turner aids Terry College
A $4 million gift from the Bradley-Turner Foundation of Columbus, Ga., will fund an endowed faculty chair and two new student programs in the Institute for Leadership Advancement at UGA's Terry College of Business. The gift is the second largest ever made to the Terry College.
Synovus Chair in Servant Leadership
Half of the gift will endow the Synovus Chair in Servant Leadership, a new faculty position to be held by a scholar of national prominence in leadership research. The chair is named for Synovus Financial Corp., the Columbus-based financial services company, in honor of its servant leadership culture and recognition by Fortune Magazine. [See cover story.]
 Management professor Christine Riordan will direct the new Institute for Leadership Advancement, which received a $4 million gift from the Bradley-Turner Foundation. |
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The remaining $2 million will support two undergraduate programs: the Leadership Scholars Program and the UnderGraduate Advancement (UGA) in Leadership Program. The scholars program will be an intensive leadership assessment and development program for up to 50 students. The other UGA program will provide all undergraduates with an opportunity to learn academically based leadership concepts and practices through online teaching tools, a speaker series, and a recommended reading list—culminating in an academic certificate program in personal leadership.
The Institute for Leadership Advancement (ILA), approved last year by the Board of Regents, is directed by management professor Christine Riordan, who says the first installment of the $2 million commitment to student programs enabled the institute to select its first class of leadership scholars this spring.
"The Leadership Scholars Program will provide highly individualized, one-on-one leadership development for our students," says Riordan. "We will assess their existing leadership skills and then work with each student on a leadership development action plan. Our purpose is to develop the skills necessary for effective leadership. This is a phenomenal opportunity for students to combine the functional knowledge of their majors with critical leadership skills."
The Bradley-Turner gift also supports the "UGA" (UnderGraduate Advancement) Leadership Program, which will be administered by the ILA and offered to all undergraduates. Riordan says the open program will offer any student interested in leadership development the following options beginning this fall: a recommended leadership curriculum and reading list; self-directed Web-based assessment tools and non-credit courses; a leadership speaker series; and participation in Volunteer Dawg service activities. In 2002, the ILA plans to offer an undergraduate certificate program in leadership, consisting of two required courses and three electives.
The ILA now has pledges totaling more than $6 million toward its endowment. Last year, Earl Leonard (ABJ '58, LLB '61) and Bebe Truman Leonard (ABJ '63) pledged $2 million to the Leadership Scholars Program, which will bear their names.
"We're staking our reputation on developing leaders for the world's private enterprise system," says Dean P. George Benson. "The business community and society need more and better leaders, and we are moving aggressively to meet that need through our undergraduates. We're also going to expand the Terry College's role in leadership development in graduate education and executive programs. The Institute for Leadership Advancement is central to the vision that will guide and redefine the Terry College over the next decade. We're thankful to the Bradley-Turner Foundation for making these first critical steps in our transformation possible."
Office will be located in Holmes-Hunter Academic Building
Castenell to lead diversity efforts
Louis A. Castenell Jr., dean of UGA's College of Education, has been chosen by Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Karen Holbrook to serve as acting associate provost for institutional diversity, a senior administrative position that reports directly to Holbrook.
Castenell will set up an office in the Holmes-Hunter Academic Building and assemble a "design team" of faculty, staff, administrators, and students who will develop a campus-wide diversity plan.
"Our first objective," says Castenell, who will continue as dean of the College of Education, "is to address student recruitment and retention, faculty leadership and mentoring, and staff development. We'll also be looking for ways to augment current initiatives, create an empirical database, and establish benchmarks to ensure progress."
Castenell stresses that diversity issues are everyone's concern.
"We will be building on the commitment of senior administrators and campus organizations such as the Black Faculty and Staff Organization and the Graduate and Professional Scholars," he says. "I've already had offers of support from some of my fellow deans. This is going to be a community affair."
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They said it |
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JOHN SHELTON REED On definitions of the South: "Here, for example, is where you find kudzu in the United States . . . Notice it's found in East Texas, not in West Texas; North Florida, not in South Florida. Basically, where you find kudzu these days is pretty much where the South is. Not a bad definition, really."
On the remnants of the Old South: "Where you find rural black folks today is pretty much where cotton was being grown 100 years ago. And that's had all sorts of consequences for our politics, our culture. That was the area that seceded first . . . And it's still true that the Deep South, this Cotton South, is where you find the most intense concentration of fossil remains of the Confederacy on our physical and social landscapes."
On Southern politics: "The South may be becoming solid once again, but this time for the party of Abraham Lincoln . . . the South has become the most Republican region of the country, except for the Great Plains and Mountain States."
On black Southern politics: "Ironically, since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, there's been some changes, and it's been to this same Deep South . . . It's to this sub-region that you turn if you want to find really effective black political participation in America. There are about 8,000 elected black officals in the country; about 5,000 of them are in the South."
On the vanishing agricultural South: "Dixie, the South defined by it's problems, by it's agriculture—that's the one that's disappearing on us. Everytime the census comes out, the differences we've been looking at are smaller than they were 10 years ago. This South is soon going to be gone with the wind, and for the most part, good riddance. I don't know too many people who are nostalgic about hook worm or pellagra."
On the cultural South: "The South is where you find Southerners who are distinguished form other Americans by what they say and how they say it, what they eat and how they eat it . . . These are things you learn early and you keep doing. Usually you move away from home, you take these things with you. If you make more money than your parents, you don't stop doing them, you just do them more expensively."
On gender inequality in the South: "There's more sex segregation in the Southern labor force. This pattern holds in detail, and it works both ways—we not only have fewer female construction workers and firefighters, we've got fewer male grade school teachers and nurses in the South. If there's a job that has a gender expectation attached to it, the South is relatively conservative."
On football in the South: "This was not a Southern thing originally. A hundred years ago, football was kinda like lacrosse—it was a game the yankees played. As late as 1927, when the Univ. of Alabama, on a fluke, got in the Rose Bowl . . . there was learned discussion in the nation's newspapers about whether the South could actually play this game competitively. The general conclusion was that Southerners could not. Alabama actually won that game—it was a great day for Southerners . . . and we've been winning ever since."
On the longevity of Southern culture: "This cultural South—it's gonna be around for awhile . . . Some things stop being Southern because other people take them up, they become American, but people are endlessly inventive in producing new Southern things, new ways to be Southern, new ways to think about being Southern. I don't have any concern that this third South is going to disappear anytime soon."
On Southern colloquialisms: "'Y'all,' which has always been a marker of Southernness, and is incidentally one of the few universal Southernisms . . . 'Y'all' is maybe going the way of Coca-Cola—younger, non-Southerners are starting to say it, too."
On Southern manners: "There have been actual studies on helpfulness, for example, when people went and dropped things on the street, and did anybody help them pick them up . . . Southerners look mor helpful . . .I'm not saying Southern manners are better than anyone else's, but they sure are different." |
Coverage of the 2000 presidential campaign from an unlikely source, a new comedy focusing on a quirky American family, and a public service effort on cancer were among the 34 winners of the 60th annual Peabody Awards.
Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with John Stewart: Indecision 2000" joined FOX's "Malcolm in the Middle" and "Confronting Colon Cancer" reported by NBC "Today Show" co-anchor Katie Couric—along with repeat winners "The West Wing" (NBC) and "The Sopranos" (HBO)—on the list of this year's Peabody recipients.
The Peabody Board also recognized award-winning TV news director H. Martin Haag.
The winners, chosen from nearly 1,100 entries, were feted at the annual Peabody awards luncheon, held on May 21 at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. UGA's College of Journalism and Mass Communication, which has administered the Peabody Awards program since its inception in 1940, hosted the luncheon. Christiane Amanpour, chief international correspondent for CNN and contributing correspondent for CBS's "60 Minutes," was the emcee. "The Sopranos" and "The West Wing" join "Northern Exposure" as the only shows to win Peabodys in consecutive years.
For a complete list of winners, go to www.peabody.uga.edu.
Horace Newcomb, an internationally renowned media scholar with more than 30 years of experience in higher education, has been named the new director of the George Foster Peabody Awards. Currently, the F.J. Heyne Centennial Professor in the department of radio-television-film at the University of Texas at Austin, Newcomb will become Lambdin Kay Distinguished Professor for the Peabody Awards.
 "The West Wing" is one of only three shows—the others are "The Sopranos" and "Northern Exposure"—to win Peabody Awards in consecutive years. |
A member of the Peabody National Advisory Board from 1990-95, Newcomb describes that time as "one of the best intellectual experiences of my career and as an outstanding opportunity to participate in public life. I'm honored to become a part of the program on a day-to-day basis."
Newcomb is editor of The Museum of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia of Television, a three-volume reference work created during his tenure as curator for the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago from 1994-96.
He succeeds former Peabody director Barry L. Sherman, who suffered a heart attack and died on May 2, 2000, having served as director since 1991.
No one has done more to mentor teachers than Ron Simpson
"Teacher of teachers"
Ron Simpson has often been referred to as UGA's "teacher of teachers"—and now he has the hardware to prove it.
The 2001 Regents Teaching Excellence Award was recently presented to Simpson (EdD '70) in recognition of the two decades he has spent strengthening instruction at UGA and other colleges and universities throughout the state.
"What I come down to after all these years," says Simpson, "is that teaching is a deeply emotional and human enterprise."
 Ron Simpson is retiring after 20 years of promoting teaching at UGA. |
As director of the Office of Instructional Support and Development and then acting director of the Institute of Higher Education, Simpson has been responsible for numerous programs that mentor faculty and help them improve teaching skills.
"No one in the last 20 years has done more to promote the art of teaching and support the development of faculty members than Ron Simpson," says UGA vice president for instruction Tom Dyer.
The systemwide Regents Award, which includes a $5,000 prize, is just the latest of many honors that Simpson has accumulated during a 40-year career that includes stints as a biology teacher at Sprayberry High and The Westminster Schools in Atlanta before coming to the University as an assistant professor of science education in 1972.
Simpson is retiring this month, but he was characteristically busy until the end—delivering the keynote speech at Honors Day (see p. 64), addressing the graduates at the College of Education commencement ceremony, and even attending an ice cream social hosted by colleagues in his honor.
Simpson says his philosophy of teaching evolved through the years from a focus on content to trying to ascertain what students were learning and how it was impacting their lives.
"As I come to the end of my teaching career," he says, "the most significant thing that emerges is the nature of the human relationships that I've had with students over the past four decades. That's what I'll take with me into the next phase of my life. This is the most lasting part of teaching and learning."
School of Public/International Affairs would be first new unit since 1969
New school on horizon?
A School of Public and International Affairs that would give the University one of the nation's top academic programs in that field moved a step closer to reality when University Council approved the school this spring.
Developed over the past two years by a faculty planning committee, the school would offer teaching, research. and service programs in domestic and international affairs and would also address problems of public management and policy, according to the proposal approved by the council.
 Johnson says new school will "become the leading institution of its kind in the South." |
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The new school would be built around UGA's existing political science department, which will be separated into three departments focusing on political science, public policy and administration, and international affairs. It will incorporate both the Center for International Trade and Security and the Center for the Study of Global Issues.
"The school will be heavily interdisciplinary," says political science professor Loch Johnson, chair of the planning committee, who envisions faculty coming from a wide variety of disciplines, including political science, economics, criminal justice, social work, law, and the Carl Vinson Institute of Government. Headed by its own dean, the school would offer, in addition to academic courses, opportunities for service learning, internships, seminars and access to public leaders.
The proposal for the school notes that UGA's graduate program in public administration is ranks sixth in the nation—and the five ahead of it are all located within existing schools of public affairs. Three of those five—the Kennedy School of Government (Harvard), the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (Princeton), and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs (Syracuse)—were founded in the 1920s amd '30s.
"This new School of Public and International Affairs at UGA would become the leading institution of its kind in the South," says Johnson, "and one of the best in the nation."
John Shelton Reed, Southern sociologist, delivered the Tresp Lecture in the Chapel on March 22.