June 2003: Vol. 82, No. 3June 2003: Vol. 82, No. 3Our best academic year ever
ith commencement on May 10, we completed what I believe was the most successful academic year ever at the University of Georgia. Increasingly recognized as an institution moving into the upper echelon of public higher education in America, this university is now home to a body of scholars, both in the faculty and in the student ranks, that is competitive with any institution in this country.
I am extremely proud of the direction UGA is moving, and I hope you are, as well. When the national perception of this university rises, the value of every UGA degree increases. Your university is now consistently recognized as one of this country's best public universities.
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 Michael F. Adams |
I have spoken and written often in the past few years of the cycle of quality in which UGA is now operating. The increasing academic strength of our freshman classes each year builds the strength of the student body and helps us attract very good faculty. Those faculty, in turn, challenge these very good students to become even better, strengthening yet again the intellectual climate of this campus and making UGA a place that scholars, both student and faculty, want to be. The results of this year's academic scholarship competitions show that our students, working with our faculty, can compete with the very best America has to offer.
Those faculty, by any number of indicators, are among the best in the country. Each year, 800 U.S. faculty are awarded Fulbright scholarships for a year of overseas teaching and research. The Fulbright is one of the highest honors an American professor can receive and is considered by many to be the highlight of an academic career.
The University of Georgia ranks sixth nationally this year for the number of Fulbrights awarded to our faculty. Five UGA faculty, in the disciplines of agriculture and applied economics, anthropology, elementary education, forest resources, and crop and soil sciences, will travel to Mexico, Germany, Ecuador, Bulgaria and Argentina in support of the Fulbright goal of promoting understanding among countries and individuals.
We now rank 12th in the number of students participating in study abroad, a ranking in which we did not even appear five years ago. A residential study abroad experience is one of the most valuable opportunities we can offer our students; the economy they will enter when they leave this campus is increasingly global, and the experience of another culture and another language will help them succeed.
I tell new students that at no time in their lives will they have the range of intellectual opportunities that they will have at the University of Georgia, and I urge them to take advantage of those opportunities. Visit the Georgia Museum of Art, attend a concert in Hodgson Hall, go to a lecture outside their majors.
What is emerging here is the kind of intellectual community that a top-flight university ought to have. The strength of the student body and the faculty combines to energize this campus. With the opening of the Student Learning Center this fall, the addition of 1,200 beds in the East Village residence complex in Fall 2004, and the increasing desire of our students to live on campus, the UGA campus will be vibrant around the clock, a place where learning continues well beyond the classroom doors and laboratory walls.
I am thrilled when I walk across North Campus and see students sitting on Herty Field, laptops connected to the wireless network, sketch pads in hand, books open. The academic experience is vastly improved by the chance to engage a faculty member in discussion over a cup of coffee, by continuing a classroom discussion in a group study room, by seeing in person paintings in the style of those one has been studying in class.
This is the kind of campus that the students at the University of Georgia deserve, and it's the kind of campus we are building. And the results are starting to show.
