UGA Today

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The decade of the 1990s saw the University of Georgia join the ranks of the best public universities in the United States: The average SAT score for entering freshmen rose 100 points, to 1200 by the fall of 2000; US News and World Report's famous "College Guide" edition ranked UGA 20th among the nation's public universities; the School of Law rose as high as 27th in those rankings, and the Terry College of Business placed among the top 40 programs in several national rankings. Five faculty in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences were named to the National Academy of Sciences; their colleagues across the aisle in the humanities, in English, History, Art, Music and others, achieved new levels of scholarship and academic distinction; and two faculty in Engineering were named to the National Academy of Engineering. The University built more than a half of billion dollars in new facilities for teaching, research and service, including a new arts campus featuring unsurpassed performance halls and a Museum of Art to rival those at the best public universities in the country. Over $400 million was raised from private sources for institutional support, and the University's endowment grew by 400%. Students won three Rhodes Scholarships, innumerable other awards and honors, and 30,000 of them became new alumni of this great institution, now 215 years old.

In many ways, however, the University of Georgia lost ground.

UGA's national research ranking fell steadily during the 90s, from 68th to 86th - while federal research dollars rose to new and unprecedented heights. Research and teaching facilities lagged behind both needs and ambition, affecting nearly every department on campus; support for outreach programs was dramatically curtailed in the early '90s and never restored; maintenance funds for facilities were steadily diminished; 2200 additional students were enrolled by the end of the decade with only 35 new faculty positions added to the budget, and some of those were supported by private dollars. Graduate enrollment showed modest growth over the decade, despite the institution's unique mission in Georgia and broad range of graduate programs. Only the University's ecology programs were ranked among the nation's top 20 by the National Research Council - and no "revenue producing" sport has won even a conference championship in over10 years.

Unparalleled Opportunity

The state of Georgia enters the 21st century as a lion whose time has come: The 10th most populous state in the nation, Georgia's current economic prosperity is unmatched in its history and unexcelled in the country. Atlanta's emergence as one of the major metropolitan forces in North America is largely a phenomenon of the 90s, and its economic might drives the entire southeastern sector of the country. Enlightened elected and private leadership, Atlanta's most telling resource throughout the 20th century, has put in place a state-funded scholarship unparalleled in the nation's history and a public-private partnership, the Georgia Research Alliance, designed to make Georgia's one of the top five state economies by 2010 by developing the high technology and research potential of its major research universities. As the largest state east of the Mississippi, Georgia's potential for success and prosperity is limited perhaps only by the ability of its educational institutions to achieve success.

The Strategic Planning Process

In 1999, the University of Georgia entered into a process of strategic planning designed to determine the optimal strategies for its role in helping build the Georgia of our dreams for the next decade. That effort, directly involving some 600 faculty, staff, students and administrators and called "Strategic Planning for the First Decade of the 21st Century," has attempted to identify, college by college by major administrative unit, the principal opportunities for serving Georgia over the next decade. The colleges and units have developed strategic priorities based on combining the most compelling of those opportunities with their strongest programs, and this institutional plan incorporates and elaborates on these priorities with additional university-wide initiatives. A description of that process and its participants appears at the end of this document.

Strategic Positioning

The unique strength of the University of Georgia lies in the extraordinary combination of elements that make up the total student experience of studying in Athens, and that emanates into every corner of Georgia in the programs and services which so clearly mark UGA as a land (and sea) grant university. Those elements include UGA's history as the oldest public university in America; its beautiful and historic buildings and grounds; its legends and stories of, among other things, the youthful follies of later famous leaders of Georgia. They include the experience of strolling beneath the 200-year-old oaks of North Campus, the world famous music and pubs and nightlife of downtown Athens as well as the historic charm of one of the great college towns in America. The excitement of football games, as alumni repopulate the campus and reinvest it with their affection and support, all amid the superior teaching, research and service programs offered by an extraordinarily talented faculty and staff working in a unique combination of academic and professional disciplines: These are just some of the elements that, taken together, make the University of Georgia a unique and incomparably rich experience for its students.

While the initiatives of this strategic plan focus on various parts of the enterprise that appear to have a strategic opportunity to achieve new levels of distinction and service, we should not lose sight of the fact that the University of Georgia's strongest strategic position is and will be the "fit" of its many elements and functions. The vital key to improving the University's competitive strategic position is to strengthen not simply the individual elements, but also the ways in which those elements and activities fit and reinforce each other.

Serving Georgia by Serving the Nation and the World

Throughout this strategic planning process of thinking about how its flagship, state, land-grant, research university serves Georgia best, we have kept ever-mindful of the national and increasingly global nature of our academic, social, cultural and economic future. UGA serves Georgia best by being an institution competitive with the best in the world, college by college by administrative unit. If the Chemistry department or the international program or the football team is only the best in Georgia, we've achieved little that will benefit Georgia. Only as they are nationally distinctive and internationally competitive will UGA's programs of teaching, research and service help Georgia build the future it dreams of.

Georgia deserves, and must have in order to reach its potential, core arts and sciences departments that are nationally competitive and regionally distinguished; law, business, journalism and mass communication and pharmacy schools that are among the best in the nation; and programs in Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, Environmental Design, Education, Family and Consumer Sciences, Warnell School of Forest Resources, Social Work, and Veterinary Medicine that provide University students with an educational experience that is second to none. Such an array of colleges immediately identifies that greatest of American educational creations, the land-grant university, which has done so much to bring prosperity to this country since its inception in 1861. The University of Georgia's service to Georgia, on-campus and off, through teaching, research, public service and outreach, is its proudest legacy, and one it can continue only by becoming more global and more competitive.

Updated 12/09/2000