Welcome

In the face of 36 months of budget reductions, this university has continued to excel in all areas. Three general statements sum up the successes of last year: UGA set a new record for private giving with $77.8 million and more than 53,000 individual donors. We set a new record for external research funding with almost $160 million in contracts and grants. And we enrolled the most academically competitive class in UGA’s history.

The following are just a few examples of UGA’s specific successes in the past year:

• Nine UGA students won major national scholarships, including the Marshall, the Truman, the Goldwater, the Gates-Cambridge and the Mellon, bringing the total since 2001 to 26. The quality of the UGA student body continues to rise.
• We enrolled the most diverse freshman class in UGA history, and now have the most diverse overall student body ever.
• The Student Learning Center is well into its second year of operation, and is now truly the signature academic building on campus, filled at all hours with students, faculty and staff engaged in the full range of academic activity.
• Dr. Jeffrey Bennetzen, a Georgia Research Alliance professor of molecular genetics, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, joining six of his UGA colleagues in that elite body. One of his Academy colleagues, Dr. Susan Wessler, was elected to a position as councilor in the Academy this year as well.
• UGA alumnus Joel Wooten succeeded another alum, Governor Joe Frank Harris, as chair of the University System Board of Regents.
• East Campus Village and the East Village Commons opened at the start of the academic year, and have increased the energy level of not only that part of campus, but the entire campus. Great academic communities need students to learn and live on campus.
• The Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences is under construction and will house the Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute, the core of UGA’s burgeoning life sciences research program.
• Other projects completed in 2004 include phases IV and V of the marine sciences renovation, phase III of D.W. Brooks Mall, a new women’s softball stadium, the northwest precinct parking deck and expansion of the South Campus deck, a microgin in Tifton and renewed work on the Animal Health Research Center on this campus.
• We broke ground for the new home of the Lamar Dodd School of Art, a $36 million facility that is very much needed. The new home of the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center was dedicated and continues to be a source of significant findings and funding.
• UGA was named one of America’s top 10 “Connected Campuses,” based on such factors as the ratio of computers to students, the quality of the campus-wide network, the presence of a wireless network and other factors that speak to the availability of the latest information technology on campus. This is an area where this campus was clearly deficient only five years ago.
• We are now eighth in the nation in the number of students having a residential study-abroad experience.
• Garnett Stokes was named dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, following the retirement of Wyatt Anderson. Rebecca White was named dean of the School of Law. Nancy Kropf is serving as interim dean of the School of Social Work. With College of Family and Consumer Sciences Dean Sharon Nickols and Graduate School Dean Maureen Grasso, UGA now has five excellent female deans.
• Damon Evans became the new director of athletics, a groundbreaking moment for the Southeastern Conference.
• We produced over 954,000 academic credits and will soon cross the million-credit threshold annually. That UGA recorded a third consecutive increase in credit-hour production with a reduced complement of faculty is a tribute to the dedication and hard work of the teaching faculty.

I have looked for another public institution in America where fundraising was up substantially, research funding was up substantially and student board scores rose by more than 20 points, and I cannot find one. The University of Georgia stands today in rare company.*

I appreciate your support for and love of this university. I am privileged to be its president, to walk the campus on a daily basis and to get to know our students. Please keep in touch with us.

Michael F. Adams
President, University of Georgia
*excerpted from 2005 State of the University Address

For more information, contact

Deborah Dietzler
542-2251
dietzler@uga.edu

Wray-Nicholson House
298 South Hull Street
Athens, GA 30602-4372
Main phone: (706)542-2251 Office fax: (706)542-8143