Up Front | President's Column

September 2002: Vol. 81, No. 4

Taking stock at the five-year mark

nyone who has been on this campus lately has seen the signs of our progress—many of them reading "Construction Zone" or "Road Closed" or "Caution—Work Zone."

From the Student Learning Center at the heart of campus to the East Campus parking deck and residential village, from the Student-Athlete Academic Center to the improvements at Gate 6 of Sanford Stadium, from Myers Hall to the Fanning leadership building, from the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center to the Coverdell Building for Biomedical and Health Sciences, we have about $300 million in construction underway or planned for the next year or so. We are in the middle of the most ambitious construction program in the history of the University of Georgia. We are constructing facilities to meet the needs of our students, researchers, athletic program and visitors.

Michael F. Adams

But while the progress we are making on facilities needs is apparent to any campus visitor, we are making equal progress in other equally critical, yet less visible, areas. You will read in detail about these in the pages of this issue, but I want to highlight some of the most important items.

The quality of our incoming classes continues to rise. The 4,200 or so students we enrolled this fall were expected to bring with them an average SAT score of 1210 and an average core-curriculum GPA of 3.7—statistics that put them in the very highest echelon of college-bound students in America. These very good students perform very well here; we have had eight Goldwater Scholars in science and mathematics in the past two years, three Gates Cambridge Scholars in that honor's first two years and three Rhodes Scholars in the past seven years.

This influx of good students has set us on a cycle of quality. They help us attract very good faculty, who, in turn, improve the quality of our teaching and research and help attract even better students, and so on. We are competing at a very high academic level at the University of Georgia, and I see that in every classroom.

Our research program is growing stronger every year and is increasingly recognized as one of the nation's best. Our annual budget for research exceeds one quarter-billion dollars. External funding for UGA research—funding that is awarded through a competitive grant process—increased by 35 percent from 1999-2001, reaching a total of $123 million. The final figures for the most recent fiscal year were being tabulated as this issue went to press, but we anticipate another double-digit increase.

Of particular note is the increase in funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, the two most prestigious and most competitive federal agencies that support university research. Our funding from those two agencies increased almost 70 percent over that two-year period. Proposals from UGA's researchers in cancer detection, molecular structure, aging and a host of other biomedical areas are being recognized for their quality. As a land-grant institution, charged with conducting research in the public interest, we are proud of our rising stature in the research community.

More and more UGA students are spending a semester or more studying abroad, a very important component of their education in the global economy. We now rank 15th among major universities for the number of students studying abroad, and we intend to crack the top 10 soon. We purchased our first residential study abroad facility, in Oxford, England, three years ago; this year, we have added two more, in Cortona, Italy and Costa Rica. These facilities provide a stable and secure environment for UGA students, and make tangible our commitment to international education.

Finally, our athletic programs continue to pursue and attain quality across the board. All but one of our 16 varsity sports teams posted winning records this year, three of our teams were runners-up for national championships, and we were again named in the top 10 of the Sears Director's Cup, the annual ranking of athletic programs. I have always believed that UGA athletics is a positive component of the total campus environment, offering an opportunity for students, staff, faculty, alumni and friends to unite in support of the Bulldogs. I want the University of Georgia to be top 20 in academics and athletics, and this past year we were.

The progress at the University of Georgia is exciting and invigorating. This is a University on the rise, and each of you should share in the pride and satisfaction of being a part of it.