Index:
The Planning Environment:
The University of Georgia
seeks to be
one of the foremost
public research universities
in the world.
Mission
The University of Georgia, a land-grant and sea-grant
university with state-wide commitments and responsibilities is the
state's oldest, most comprehensive, and most diversified institution
of higher education. Its motto, "to teach, to serve, and to inquire
into the nature of things," reflects the University's integral and
unique role in the conservation and enhancement of the state's and
nation's intellectual, cultural and environmental heritage.
The University of Georgia shares with the other research universities
of the University System of Georgia the following core
characteristics:
* A statewide responsibility and commitment to excellence and
academic achievements having national and international recognition;
* A commitment to excellence in a teaching/learning environment
dedicated to serve a diverse and well-prepared student body, to
promote high levels of student achievement, and to provide
appropriate academic support services;
* A commitment to excellence in research, scholarship and creative
endeavors that are focused on organized programs to create, maintain,
and apply new knowledge and theories; that promote instructional
quality and effectiveness; and that enhance institutionally relevant
faculty qualifications;
* A commitment to excellence in public service, economic development,
and technical assistance activities designed to address the strategic
needs of the state of Georgia along with a comprehensive offering of
continuing education designed to meet the needs of Georgia's citizens
in life-long learning and professional education;
* A wide range of academic and professional programming at the
baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral levels.
With its statewide mission and core characteristics, the University
of Georgia endeavors to prepare the University community and the
state for full participation in the global society of the
twenty-first century. Through its programs and practices, it seeks to
foster the understanding of and respect for cultural differences
necessary for an enlightened and educated citizenry. It further
provides for cultural, ethnic, gender, and racial diversity in the
faculty, staff and student body. The University is committed to
preparing the University community to appreciate the critical
importance of a quality environment to an interdependent global
society.
As a comprehensive land-grant-sea-grant institution, the University
of Georgia offers baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral and
professional degrees in the arts, humanities, social sciences,
biological sciences, physical sciences, agricultural and
environmental sciences, business, environmental design, family and
consumer sciences, forest resources, journalism and mass
communication, education, law, pharmacy, social work, and veterinary
medicine.
The University attracts students nationally and internationally as
well as from within Georgia. It offers the state's broadest array of
responsibilities in graduate and professional education, and thus a
large minority of the student body is post-baccalaureate. The
predominantly Georgian undergraduate student body is a mix of highly
qualified students originally admitted as freshmen and selected
transfer students principally from other University System
institutions.
With original scholarship, basic and applied research, and creative
activities constituting an essential core from which to draw, the
impact of the land-grant-sea-grant mission is reflected throughout
the state. Cooperative extension, continuing education, public
service, experiment stations, and technology transfer are all
designed to enhance the well-being of the citizens of Georgia through
their roles in economic, social, and community development.
As it has been historically, the University of Georgia is
responsive to the evolution of the state's educational, social, and
economic needs. It aspires through its strategic planning to even
closer contact and interaction with public and private institutions
throughout the state as well as with the citizens it serves.
(Mission statement approved by the University System of Georgia Board
of Regents, October, 1996.)
Goal
The institutional goal of the University of Georgia is to
provide the best possible education to its students; the best
possible service to the citizens of the state of Georgia and beyond;
and research, discovery and creative achievement of the highest order
to benefit Georgia, the nation and the world.
Achieving this goal requires the following elements:
* Comprehensive strength in undergraduate educational programs, with
emphasis on excellence in teaching.
* Premier graduate and professional programs in a significant number of
areas.
* A faculty of national and international distinction.
* Premier research, creative work and scholarship.
* A culturally diverse and inclusive academic community.
* Strong ties between the University and external constituencies.
* A comprehensive learning community and working environment of high
quality.
* A leading outreach program to extend knowledge and expertise to the
people of the state and beyond.
Institutional Values
* The University of Georgia recognizes its responsibilities to a
broad range of diverse constituencies: To its present and future
students, undergraduate and graduate; to its faculty and staff; to
its alumni, donors, and friends; to the citizens of Georgia; to its
governing board, the University System of Georgia Board of Regents;
to the General Assembly and the Executive of the state; to the
community and the citizens of Athens and Clarke and neighboring
counties; to the farmers, small-business owners, civic leaders and
elected officials throughout the state who are the focus of so much
of its public service and outreach efforts; to the corporate sector
throughout Georgia which relies on its research and development
activities; and to the poor, minority, and underrepresented citizens
of the state for whom higher education is the primary opportunity for
advancement. The University embraces the complex and manifold
expectations its various constituencies present, and seeks to serve
them all with distinction.
* The University recognizes, nevertheless, that it must select some
programs on which to focus special resources in order to achieve the
national, and international, distinction it must achieve to serve
Georgia best. All of the University of Georgia's programs, however -
academic, research, service, and student support - are expected to be
of such high quality as to be regionally distinguished.
* UGA expects to continue to increase its role in economic
development for Georgia. Participation and leadership in economic
development for the state of Georgia is the primary way in which the
University will refine and carry out its traditional role as a
land-grant institution of higher learning in the 21st century.
* UGA serves the state best by being an international University,
with affordable opportunities for international experience for all
students, and with outstanding language and cultural programs to
support a wide range of international activity by students, faculty
and staff. University policies, procedures and practices must be
continually reviewed and, where necessary, revised to assure that
international activity is encouraged and supported.
* UGA must expand its sources of support: State support will
continue, of course, to be paramount, but more private, corporate and
federal support must be sought and secured, and more imaginative,
entrepreneurial, fiscal and programmatic partnerships with public and
private entities must be developed.
* UGA recognizes the necessity of creating/fostering as positive a
workplace environment as possible, for faculty and staff: The
"knowledge worker" environment of the 21st century makes it more
important than ever for UGA to be able to compete globally to hire
and retain a superior faculty and staff.
* UGA recognizes and prizes its vital relationship to Athens/Clarke
County, and recognizes the vital importance of cooperative planning,
development and growth.
* UGA is, above all, dedicated to providing an educational experience
of the highest quality to each of its students, both inside and out
of the classroom, integrating to the extent possible various
dimensions of that experience in a challenging, fair, individualized,
"student-centered" environment.
What strategic planning is...and is not
What we mean by strategic planning at the University of
Georgia is crucial to understanding what our plan says and does not
say.
Strategic planning in higher education is a process of
collaborative thinking and decision-making about the actions and
initiatives necessary to respond to new external conditions
(demographic, intellectual, economic, technological, political), in
order to provide greater competitive distinctiveness to a school or
university and to increase the institution's quality, service,
stature and financial health in the coming decade. It is strategic
because it responds to external conditions in order to achieve
internal goals.
The purpose of UGA's strategic planning effort is to identify
and prioritize strategic actions the University can take to help it
best accomplish its goal, fulfill its mission and realize its vision
-- in short, to become, and be recognized as, one of the nation's top
public research universities.
In order to be strategic, an action (or program or
initiative) must do three things:
1. It must build on institutional strength.
2. It must respond to external opportunity for new or significantly
enhanced achievement.
3. It must be supported by a feasible plan to take the action.
A strategic plan is not about business as usual. Our
planning assumption is that business as usual at UGA is the
incremental effort to become an increasingly excellent public
research university. The myriad ways in which we do this and try to
do this and plan to do this make up our operational plans.
A strategic plan, though, is an identification of a
relatively small number of actions/initiatives/programs which respond
to an external opportunity (or critical challenge) to make a major
difference in the institution's work and/or the apperception of its
work. The external opportunity is usually the result of a change in
the external environment.
"Operational effectiveness," as Harvard's Michael Porter puts
it, "means performing similar activities better than rivals perform
them.... In contrast, strategic positioning means performing
different activities from rivals', or performing similar activities
in different ways." *
So, for example, a college may have as part of its
operational plan a program to increase its research contracts in the
field of genomics, increase its enrollment of black
students, reduce its average class size from 30 to 20, and improve
its teaching of undergraduates - and have none of these important
initiatives appear in its strategic plan. Then a major foundation
with ties to the college announces its intention to make scholarship
grants to colleges to help attract minority students to study
biochemistry: Now the college has an opportunity to create a
strategic initiative building on its strength in genomics and its
interest in recruiting black students.
The University of Georgia, like most institutions of higher
education, has an almost limitless appetite for doing good things.
What we tried to do in this strategic planning process is determine
which of those good things have - because of the opportunities made
evident - the best chance of major success. As Porter puts it, "the
essence of strategy is choosing what not to do."
The strongest and most sustainable strategic position, however, is
one that builds on combining and synergizing functions. This is
called "fit," and the competitive advantages of UGA are in the areas
where our activities fit and reinforce each other (e.g., focusing our
computer science research in the area of bio-sciences informatics).
The planning cycle for strategic planning should be annual,
in the sense that plans should be reviewed, and revised if necessary,
as budgetary plans are made. Plans that are not embodied in the
institution's fiscal plans and allocations are not likely to be
realized. However, the establishment of strategic positions "should
have a horizon of a decade or more" (Porter, 74) in order to build
continuity and "fit."
The planning cycle must integrate strategic planning,
resource allocation and assessment. An annual report on the progress
of the strategic plan and its linkages with resource development,
allocation and assessment will be published.
As a written document, the strategic plan helps to expand the
knowledge of the broader context within which the University shapes
its future. Just as the unit plans help shape the priorities of the
institutional plan, the institutional plan serves as a framework to
encourage departments, colleges, and other campus units to work
toward institutional goals, recognizing, however, that many of the
important University decisions are made in departments and colleges.
The plan will help limit ad hoc decision making, thereby making
budgetary decisions more consistent across time.
Above all, the strategic plan is being viewed as a living
document, not a static blueprint. The University of Georgia must
continue to be alert for and responsive to changing internal
strengths and weaknesses, as well as to emerging external
opportunities and challenges.
* "What is Strategy," Michael E. Porter, Harvard Business Review,
November-December 1966, pp. 61-78.
Strategic planning and operational plans
The Strategic Plan of the University of Georgia comprises the
set of strategic plans -- developed more or less simultaneously --
which articulate the plans of primary organizational units and an
institutional strategic plan.
The institutional strategic plan should be used as the
compass by which these operational plans which grow out of the
strategic plan will be developed by the university's senior
administrative staff. Those operational plans include:
* the academic plan, including research, outreach and public service,
and student affairs (responsibility of the Office of the Provost);
* the physical plan, including plans for capital outlay, renovation,
and maintenance of the University's physical plant (these plans
should also reflect the Facilities Master Plan and the fiscal plans
for both public and private resources development and allocation).
Campus-wide policy on the ideal capacity of student housing (and the
development of financing options for an expanded housing program) and
overall parking policy (i.e., how much parking, parking rates, and
who parks where) should be established (responsibility of the Offices
of the Provost and the Senior Vice President for Finance and
Administration);
* the plan for external relations, which will include plans for a
capital campaign, and should include plans for the annual fund and
priorities for planned, major, corporate and foundation gifts, and
the priorities and plans for local, state and federal governmental
relations (responsibility of the Office of the Senior Vice President
for External Affairs);
* an organizational and personnel plan, including plans for faculty
and staff development (responsibility of the Offices of the Provost
and Human Resources);
* the financial plan for the institution, including a computer
modeling component which can be used to predict consequences of
various action changes and which includes public appropriations,
student fees, internally generated income and private giving
(responsibility of the Office of the Senior Vice President for
Finance and Administration);
* and an institutional communications and marketing plan, which
should outline the ways in which all of these plans should be
articulated to the public and the key constituencies -- internal and
external -- of the institution (responsibility of the Office of the
Senior Vice President for External Affairs).
Core Values for Planning
While this plan identifies a number of specific initiatives
as optimal strategic opportunities at this time, all programs at the
University of Georgia should exhibit the following core values:
* Individual and collective commitment to provide the highest
possible quality of teaching, in all of its many forms, to our
students.
* Aspiration to achieve the highest levels of research, scholarship
and creative expression, and to secure the resources necessary to do
so.
* Individual and collective aspiration to become and be recognized as
one of America's great public research universities.
* Support for significant international experiences by students,
faculty and staff.
* Valuing the academic and human richness provided by cultural and
ethnic diversity.
* Commitment to addressing the indispensable role information
technology will play in our classrooms and laboratories and the lives
of our students.
* Understanding that the strongest "positioning" stance for our
individual and collective programs is to 'focus on the fit': The
unique set of programs at the University of Georgia, and the
relationships between them, are our strongest asset.
* An understanding of and commitment to "the land-grant mission,"
which in practice ranges from the development of social service
delivery programs to the instantaneous analysis of poultry diseases
to economic development through technology transfer, and which is
most simply expressed as 'service to Georgia and Georgians is our
most fundamental mission'.
The External Environment
The key external forces forcing change on UGA over the next
decade will include the following:
TECHNOLOGY
The revolution in the "knowledge industries" is truly
Copernican in scope. Clearly the new information and communications
technology will change everything we do at the University of Georgia
over the next decade, though no one knows exactly how.
The digital revolution driving societal change is as
significant as the invention of the printing press on the Industrial
Revolution. Since the introduction of the transistor and the
integrated circuit, people have not just been doing things
differently; they have been doing vastly different things. Nicholas
Negroponte of MIT's Media Lab describes it as the difference between
atoms and bits. Atoms are about physical things and bits are about
intangible information. As the emphasis shifts from one to the other,
almost every aspect of society is altered.
In manufacturing, business, and finance, such structural
change has already transformed workplaces and marketplaces. In
research, developments in areas such as molecular biology and
computational finance (fields which owe their existence to
information technology) are generating an explosion in which
knowledge in some fields is doubling every five years. Now
universities, always grounded in information, stand at a digital
crossroads, confronted with a rapidly changing environment and a
growing realization that ignoring change is no longer an option. The
challenge facing higher education is to prepare for an uncertain
future and to provide a technology-rich environment where students
can obtain the continuously changing knowledge and skills needed to
shape that future.
Over the next decade, many research universities will assess
broadening their current student clientele to include degrees,
courses, certifications, and training made more easily available and
customized through information technology. Competing for students,
faculty, and especially financial resources in this environment will
require a richer vision of education and a restructuring of the
organizations, strategies and policies required to achieve it.
As a traditional, resident-based university, the positioning
of the University of Georgia needs to be oneof responsiveness to new
technological opportunities, while increasing the quality of our
face-to-face, in-and out-of-class instruction and interaction with
students: We must become more like the residential liberal arts
college we once were, while providing both technological and
curricular options for on-line course work for those who prefer that
mode. We must provide "connectivity" via electronic ports or
wireless at every seat and bed in the University, and "24/7" support
for all users, and we need to be fully alert to the new kinds of
alliances and out-sourcing strategies that may prove to be the most
effective way of financing the substantial costs of such high quality
connectivity and support.
DEMOGRAPHICS
The number of high school graduates will increase steadily in
Georgia until 2009 (from 68,000 in 1999 to 90,000 or so), when those
numbers will begin to decline, so UGA's traditional base of students
will continue to grow until then. Georgia itself will grow to
roughly 9.5 to 10 million people by 2010 (from its current 7.6
million), and tax revenues should continue to grow along with that
population growth.
Black population will grow from 28% to 33% (3 million) by
2010. Latino growth will continue apace, and by 2010 will be
770,000, roughly 7% of the population.
In general, most developed countries outside the U.S. will
decline steadily in population over the century; some, such as Italy
and Japan, by more than two-thirds. The U.S. population will
continue to grow until roughly 2025 (mostly by virtue of the high
birth rates of recent immigrant groups and blacks), and then begin to
decline. The entire growth after 2015 will be in people 55 years and
older.
There will be a sharp drop in the labor force of traditional
age (i.e., below 65) throughout the developed world after 2025.
Older people, past traditional retirement age, will outnumber young
people for the first time in recorded history.
UGA will be increasingly challenged to respond imaginatively to new
emerging student markets including Black, Latino, and older students, in
both its undergraduate and graduate programs, and it may need to
develop new program offerings to reach these markets, including greatly
increased offerings through continuing and distance education.
COMPETITION
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that "within little
more than five years, postsecondary proprietary education has been
transformed from a sleepy sector of the economy, best known for its
mom-and-pop schools, to a $3.5-billion-a-year business that is
increasingly dominated by companies building regional and even
national franchises.
Competition from for-profit schools such as the University of
Phoenix; on-line course providers (which will be legion), such as
HungryMinds.com, which went live in December 1999 with 24,000
courses; local schools moving in to share UGA's common party areas
(downtown Athens, Sanford Stadium, etc.) such as Piedmont College,
Truett McConnell, and Athens Tech; and USG schools now offering our
degrees, such as the expansion of the EdD Degree to Valdosta State,
Georgia Southern, West Georgia and Fort Valley (and through them to
three other USG schools) all will require UGA to focus more precisely
on its markets to compete successfully.
Outsourcing of various management functions and services is
increasing on campuses all around the country. While the contracting
of food services, housing, bookstore, parking and custodial services
is quite common, many colleges are finding new opportunities for
partnerships in providing services, including facilities, property
and real estate management, and on-line and web-based delivery of
coursework.
One factor of the accelerated level of competition in higher
education will undoubtedly be a whole new focus on the quality of
"customer service" schools provide - and a more sophisticated
understanding of who the customers are. In today's and tomorrow's
marketplace, characterized by shortages of "knowledge workers,"
two-professional-wage-earner families and family mobility, facultyand
staff are just as much "customers" as students are, and will need to
be treated as such to be retained.
Such competition will demand that UGA become more flexible to
prosper. It is expected that the average student's transcript will
increasingly include courses from across the provider spectrum, in
particular from across the on-line spectrum, within a very few years.
(It is estimated that roughly 10 to 20% of each graduating student's
credit hours will be earned via the Internet by 2010, and that very
few of those credit hours will be generated by Georgia institutions.
In current dollars, this would cost the University of Georgia, unless
it is getting paid for those credit hours, some $60 million a year.)
Some are suggesting that universities will become
"degree-granting-bodies" or DGBs, in the near future, making degree
decisions over collections of courses from hundreds of providers.
Whether UGA students are on-campus or on-line taking courses
elsewhere, they will still be dependent on UGA for advising, health
care, parking, food and so on; accounting for what universities do by
"credit hour production" will be a less and less useful measurement,
and residency requirements for graduation may be dramatically revised
or abandoned altogether.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
There are enormous increases in the expectations by state
leaders of universities to contribute directly to economic
development initiatives designed to improve the economic well-being
of the state, and substantial rewards available for institutions who
do so (the Yamacraw Mission and the "One Georgia" project are two
such recent initiatives). UGA's ability to position itself to help
shape and take advantage of this role needs strengthening, and is
vital to its future.
This intensification of expectation by the governmental and
business sectors of the state must be met by a quickening response at
UGA, which by its very character as a land-grant, sea-grant
university is committed to focusing its myriad resources on the
economic needs of Georgia's citizens, young and old, rich and poor,
rural and urban.
GLOBALISM
While the Internet makes all institutions and businesses
capable of being and having global competitors, easy transportation
continues to make international markets increasingly common and
important. The major traditional businesses and economic
institutions of Georgia are "going global" at a pace only slightly
less jarring than the increasing number of Internet-based businesses
that are global almost by definition. The multicultural world in
which our students will live, get jobs and socialize is already
evident in the "Chambodia" section of Atlanta, aptly and accurately
illustrated by Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full.
The centrality of international activity in the economic, political,
intellectual and recreational dimensions of Georgia demands a
dramatically higher level of response from the state of Georgia's "flagship"
university.
GOVERNANCE
The management complexity of the 34 institutions in the
University System of Georgia, governed by a single Board of Regents,
is a considerable challenge to the University of Georgia. As the
state's largest and most comprehensive institution, with an annual
budget in excess of $1billion, it chafes uncomfortably at times in a
"system" which issues policies and develops budgets in harness with
schools with annual budgets smaller than UGA's Department of Music.
UGA is also often encumbered by fiscal, business and management
restrictions of the state or Regents' offices (e.g., year-end
carry-over policies; capital construction management) which need to
be streamlined to encourage greater entrepreneurial creativity and
more efficient use of resources. At the same time, UGA needs to find
ways to become a more effective partner to the Regents office for
helping guide higher education policy in Georgia, particularly in
ways that benefit research and its role in the state's future
economic development.
The Internal Environment
The current internal environment at the University of Georgia can be
characterized by the following attributes ranged (and sometimes
repeated) under the rubrics of Institutional; Enrollment; Students;
Diversity and Resources:
Institutional:
* A beautiful, well-manicured campus.
* Lots of new facilities (roughly $500M worth over the past decade).
* A strong tradition of interdisciplinary research in the life
sciences.
* A strong and well-known program of intercollegiate athletics.
* The beginnings, over the past decade, of a recommittment to
undergraduate teaching: In the fall of 1988, 287 full professors
taught undergraduates. By the fall of 1999 that number had grown to
429, which means that well over 50% of our full professors were
teaching undergraduates.
* UGA offers over 3000 undergraduate courses; the top 50 produced 40%
of its annual credit hours in the 1999 fall semester.
* 40 of the 50 courses producing the most undergraduate credit hours
at UGA (98-99) are in Arts & Sciences; the other 10 are in Business.
* UGA has a very decentralized (to colleges and schools) academic,
management and fiscal structure; little central coordination of
college priorities, including enrollment, research focus, or support
for graduate students.
* While the focus of UGA's institutional culture may be on research,
grad school, disciplines, majors, and institutional rankings, the
focus of most external audiences is undergraduates and jobs.
* Research dollars are declining in real numbers and relative to
peers; UGA research ranking has dropped 20 places (from 66th in 1988
to 86th in 1998) in a decade (while Emory, for example, has moved
from 59th to 36th). The major limitation contributing to this
decline seems to be the limitations of adequate research space.
* The University has "a significant (20 to 50%) deficit in research
space, and the quality of a substantial portion of [existing]
research space is poor" (Report from Provost's Committee on Research
Space).
* UGA increased the number of its students from fall 1991 to fall
1999 by over 2200 (an increase of 8%), while the number of faculty
rose by only 35 (2%).
* The principal internal governance structure, the University
Council, is seen by some as weak and largely ineffectual; there is
pressure by an energetic and socially responsive Staff Council to
become a partner in institutional governance.
* The Public Service and Outreach division in general, and the
Georgia Center in particular, are seen by some as competing with,
rather than complementing and supporting, the academic programs of
the University.
* Many feel that promotion and tenure guidelines are badly in need of
revision; those standards and practices in some areas do little to
encourage or reward international activity.
* There exists a general sense among staff and faculty of
micro-management by Board of Regents and their staff.
* There is general sense by staff that they are accorded a
second-class status and value by faculty and administrators.
* There is no real tradition of institutional market research,
planning or assessment.
* UGA has a public image beyond the state dominated by football.
Enrollment:
* 666% of UGA freshmen graduate in 6 years; 69% graduate from
somewhere in the USG in 6 years; 66% of full-time transfer students
(most of whom are sophomores by our standards) graduate from UGA in 5
years.
* Undergraduate applicant pool numbers look to be strong for the next
decade: The number of Georgia high school graduates is projected to
rise from 68,000 in 1999 to more than 90,000 in 2010. Roughly 13,000
of those 68,000 applied to UGA, and roughly 4,200 or 6% of those
students enrolled at UGA.
* Transfer numbers look to be steady and strong over the next decade.
* Retention from freshman to sophomore year is close to 90%.
* 63% of undergraduate students are from Atlanta, 14.5% from
out-of-state or country. (Atlanta's population is 63% of Georgia's.)
* UGA has agreed to enroll 32,500 students by the fall of 2003; in
the fall of 2000, UGA enrolled 31,000.
* There is little public understanding of the value of foreign or
out-of-state students; non-resident enrollment of new freshmen has dropped
from
20% to 10% over past decade (overall non-resident enrollment is
21.8%).
* Many leaders, including Regents, are pushing distance learning as
an inexpensive alternative to traditional higher education despite
wide-spread concerns within the higher education community about its
quality and its cost.
* There has been almost no increase in total number of professional
and graduate students enrolled in past decade; slight decline in past
5 years; has been roughly 20% of student body for the past 20 years.
* We have restricted undergraduate majors in roughly 60 programs.
* 6% of the UGA student body is black; Georgia is 28% black.
Credit Hours 1991-1999:
* Credit hours produced by the Colleges of Agriculture and Arts and
Sciences and Vet Med have been level for 5 years.
* Business has grown by about 3% over the past 20 years, but by 33%
over the past 5 years.
* Education has declined steeply by almost 20% over the past 8 years.
* Journalism has declined by a third over the past decade, and has
been level for the past 5 years.
* Environmental Design, Family and Consumer Sciences, and Forestry
have grown a bit over the past 5 years, but are down this year.
* Law is down a bit over the 10-year period.
* Pharmacy is up by 15% over the decade and by 25% over the past six
years.
* Social Work has declined by 20% over the past six years.
* The University has approximately the same number of faculty and is
producing essentially the same number of credit hours in 1999-2000 it
did in 1991-1992, though it has increased the number of students
during the same period by over 2200 (28,691v. 30,912), or
approximately 8%.
* In that period, undergraduates grew by 1655, or 7%, and
undergraduate credit hours grew by 2.3%.
* Graduate and professional credit hours are essentially level for
the past decade, and down by 11% over the past four years - while
enrollment has increased by roughly 550 students.
* The decrease in credit hours in Arts and Sciences and perhaps some
other colleges in 1998-99 is at least partially due to the conversion
to a semester calendar; we'll need more data from future years to
understand if this is a trend.
* The trend over the past five years or so of declining average
credit hours per student is undoubtedly due in large measure to the
way in which the HOPE Scholarship Program is constructed.
Students:
* Arts and Sciences and the Honors Program are developing an
ambitious freshman seminar program that uses small classes to
introduce first-year students to senior faculty and the academic life
of a research university. In 2000-2001, this program offered some
150 seminars to 2250 freshmen.
* The University has begun a promising new residence life enhancement
program.
* The University has developed an increasing number of study abroad
programs (60) and participants (917) in 1999; = 3.7% of undergrads).
* UGA residence life has 6,500 beds, and a 20 year plan to upgrade
current facilities and add new ones, resulting in 12,000 beds by
roughly 2018.
* Surveys of enrolled students show generally high levels of
satisfaction; lowest scores come from minority students who don't
believe they are well supported by student services.
* 98% of new in-state freshmen are on HOPE Scholarship, which pays
tuition and all fees (athletic; parking, health; student activity;
others).
* There is little real institutional initiative in continuing
education, for-credit, distance learning or outreach to
non-traditional students.
* UGA students tending to take fewer credit hours per semester, in
part in order to maintain HOPE eligibility.
* Most residence halls are old and out-of-date.
* There is a national and state perception that undergraduate
education is being neglected; partly because of too many graduate
student teachers, particularly foreign graduate students.
* 6% of the UGA student body is black; Georgia is 28% black.
Diversity:
Students:
* 20,675 of 23,681 undergraduate students are white (87%).
* 4,140 of 5,540 graduate students are white (75%); (another 16% are
non-resident aliens).
* 1,178 of 1,332 professional students are white (88%).
Faculty:
* 1,584 of 1,780 full-time professorial faculty are white (88%).
* 971 of 1,149 full-time non-professorial faculty are white (84%).
* 989 of 1,092 tenured faculty at professor and associate professor
level are white (90%).
* 3 of 559 male tenured full professors are black (0.5%).
* 5 of 86 female tenured full professors are black (5.8%).
* 8 of 645 male and female tenured full professors are black (1.2%).
* 14 of 310 male tenured associate professors are black (4.5%).
* 13 of 137 female tenured associate professors are black (9.5%).
* 27 of 447 male and female tenured associate professors are black
(6%).
* UGA is fifth in the nation among universities in the number of
black tenured and tenure track faculty.
Staff:
* 7,906 of 9,589 full-time and part-time UGA employees are white (82%).
* 142 of 165 non-custodial and maintenance Athletic Department
employees are white (86%).
Administrators:
* 9 of 10 assistant vice presidents are white (90%).
* 9 of 10 associate vice presidents are white (90%).
* 10 of 12 deans are white (83%).
* 4 of 5 vice presidents are white (80%).
* 3 of 3 senior vice presidents are white (100%).
UGA Athletic Association:
* 15 of 16 head coaches are white.
* 32 of 39 assistant coaches are white.
* 13 of 15 administrative senior staff are white.
* 52 of 63 support staff are white.
* 30 of 32 clerical staff are white females.
Resources:
* State allocations grew by 82% over the past decade: Among highest
growth rate in the nation.
* There is a steadily increasing gift dollar volume (average annual
giving total has grown from less than $30M annually to +/- $50M over
the past decade).
* A huge benefit to the University is the Hope Scholarship Program
and other dollars provided by the lottery, and the additional good
students attracted by HOPE.
* Over the next decade, faculty and staff retirements are projected
to yield $82 million (in current dollars) in "turn-over" salary
dollars: This will amount to over $100M in annual dollars over the
course of the decade ending in 2010.
* The city of Athens itself is an unparalleled resource for the
University of Georgia: The students, alumni, faculty and staff of the
University revere its tree-lined streets, historic homes and gardens,
its music and nightclub scene and its small, semi-rural size and
setting.
* UGA's % of state-funded support for its total budget among the
highest in the nation (45%, vis-a-vis UVA and Michigan's >10%).
* The funding formula provides 5 times as much state allocation
support for graduate student credit hours as for lower-division
undergraduate credit hours; and 3 times as much as for upper-division
credit hours.
* The economy is wonderful; many folks worried about it continuing.
* The future of state allocations looks to be "steady-state" for the
better part of the decade.
Key Management Issues for UGA: 2000-2010
* What are our enrollment targets, by college and school, and by
level? How do we balance graduate students with undergraduates, and
entering freshmen with transfers? Where do we have growth capacity?
In which colleges should we create additional capacity? In what
disciplines will our future students want to enroll?
* How are we going to make UGA a place black Georgians can call their
own? What new programs and resources are needed for success?
* Where can we grow in quality and dollars in research and creative
work; where can we be among the national leaders? In what other
areas do we have a national or regional strategic advantage? In what
areas of the arts, humanities, sciences, social sciences and
professional schools do we have the opportunity to build nationally
prominent programs?
* What kind of intellectual/academic/residential community can
we/should we build for undergraduates at UGA? What are the new
physical requirements for building this community? How can we create
a better academic-and-extracurricular community for both freshmen and
transfer students? How will we pay for it?
* What are the educational market opportunities for
international/global programs at UGA? What are our
strengths/advantages?
* What role will cyber-education play at UGA, given our mostly
traditional student profile and our institutional and state
demographics? How will we pay for the technology, software,
connectivity and "24-7" technical support this kind of education
requires?
* What are our strategic (as opposed to master) plans for acquiring
and developing the property and the physical facilities we need to
grow properly over the next generation?
* How do we become the most productive and credible factor in the
state's economic development?
* How do we create budgeting and fund-raising priority-setting
processes that help realize our plans, and the assessment and
accountability procedures to demonstrate our stewardship and progress?
* What is our role and what are our goals in higher education for
non-traditional students?
* How should the University of Georgia grow together and in harmony
with the city of Athens, and Clarke and its surrounding counties?
How can the University become a better neighbor, and what joint
projects and ventures should be developed to benefit both Athens and
its largest enterprise?
The Strategic Planning Process
The Strategic Planning Advisory Group:
The University of Georgia's Strategic Planning 2000-2010
process was launched in March 1999 under the supervision of the
University Strategic Planning Advisory Group appointed by the
President of the University. The Group includes the following
members:
Mr. Clyde Anglin
Work Management Supervisor
Past Chair, Staff Council
Dr. Bob Boehmer
Associate Professor, Insurance/Legal Studies/Real Estate Management
Director, SACS Accreditation Study
Mr. Tim Burgess
Associate Vice President for Finance and Administration
Mr. David Clements
Director, Institutional Research and Planning
Dr. Ernestine Copas
Executive Associate Director, Georgia Center for Continuing Education
Chair, University Council Strategic Planning Committee
Ms. Kathryn Costello
Senior Vice President for External Affairs
Dr. Betty Jean Craige
University Professor of Comparative Literature
Director, Center for Humanities and Arts
Dr. Jack Crowley
Dean, School of Environmental Design
Dr. William Davis
Professor of Music
Dr. Donald Eastman
Vice President for Strategic Planning
Chairman, Strategic Planning Advisory Group
Dr. Karen Holbrook
Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost
Mr. A. Felton Jenkins Jr.
Retired Partner, King & Spalding
Emeritus Trustee, University of Georgia Foundation
Ms. Tricia Page
Senior in Political Science and Public Relations
President, Student Government Association
Dr. Scott Shamp
Professor of Journalism and Mass Communications
Past Chair, University Council
Mr. Danny Sniff
Director, University Architects
Dr. Claire Swann
President, University of Georgia Retired Alumni
Emeritus Director of Admissions
Representative, University of Georgia National Alumni Association
STAFF:
Dr. L. Steven Dempsey
Public Service Associate
Carl Vinson Institute of Government
Community and Regional Development
Ms. LeAnn Golob
Secretary to the Vice President
Office of Strategic Planning
Ms. Maggie McAllister
Administrative Specialist
Office of Strategic Planning
Dr. Wes Wynens
Public Service Assistant
Carl Vinson Institute of Government
Community and Regional Development
The Strategic Planning Advisory Group's schedule of meetings
included the following presentations:
* Strategic Planning Web-site Workshop: Workshop with strategic
planning unit heads on how to utilize web-site for submission of
strategic plans
* Demographic Trends in Georgia: Doug Bachtel
* Key Issues for Graduate Enrollment: Gordhan Patel, Wyatt Anderson,
Tom Dyer, Russ Yeany
* Opportunities for Maximizing UGA's Research Potential Over the Next
Decade: Joe Key
* Next Steps for the Campus Master Plan: Danny Sniff, George Stafford
* Facilitator Presentation to Strategic Planning Units
* Key Issues Related to Enrollment Including the Funding Formula,
Personnel and Space: Bob Bugbee, David Clements
* UGA and the Athens-Clarke Community: Issues for the Next Decade: Jack
Crowley
* The Future of International Education at UGA: David Coker
* The Future of Public Service: Gene Younts
* Plans for Student Housing for the Next Decade: Jim Day, Tom Dyer
* Student Culture, Support and Co-Curricular Activities at UGA: Bill
Porter
* Tentative Conclusions About What the Major Issues Art: Joint
meeting with the Strategic Planning Advisory Group, vice presidents,
deans, and other unit heads and planning committee chairs
* Faculty Development Needs for the Next Decade: Bill Jackson
* Students and Distance Learning by 2010: Scott Shamp
* How Does the State Government Look at UGA? What Does it See and
Expect?: Tim Burgess
* Update on Campus Physical Master Plan: Danny Sniff
* Update on SACS Review: Bob Boehmer
* Recruitment and Admissions at UGA: Nancy McDuff
* Institutional Strategic Goals for Information Technology at UGA:
Walter McRae
* Reflections on Higher Education Issues: Louise McBee
* Information Technology in Higher Education and Distance Learning:
Rick Skinner, President and CEO of Georgia Globe
* Student Strategic Planning Session: For 100 students including the
Student Government Association
* The Biomedical Initiative: Stuart Feldman
* The School of Public Policy Initiative: Loch Johnson
* The College of Ecology and Environmental Science Initiative: Ron
Pulliam
* The College of Fine Arts Initiative: Carmen CoAngelo
* The New Media Studies Initiative: Scott Shamp
* Staff Strategic Planning Session: For 100 invited staff members,
including the Staff Council
* The Yamacraw Project: Rod Canfield
* Minority Recruitment at UGA: Sherwood Thompson and Karen Webb
* University of Georgia Foundation Trustees Strategic Planning
Session: For review, comments and suggestions on the institutional
strategic plan from UGAF trustees
The Strategic Planning Advisory Group has recommended this
plan to President Michael F. Adams for his approval on September 1,
2000.
This strategic planning 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 the institutional plan incorporates and
elaborates on these priorities with additional university-wide
initiatives.
The greatest utility of this plan will result from its
absorption into the regular cycle of institutional administration and
leadership, and in its use there as a guide for decision-making and a
compass for operational planning.
It is expected that the strategic planning process will
continue in the form of annual reviews of units and institutional
plans; coordination of plans with budget, capital outlay and private
fund-raising priorities and activities; and in enhanced coordination
with other planning units on- and off-campus.