Planning Environment

Vision

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:

It must build on institutional strength.
It must respond to external opportunity for new or significantly enhanced achievement.
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 one of 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, faculty and 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.
UGA differs from many other universities to which it is compared in that it does not have a college of engineering, nor does is have schools or colleges of medicine, nursing, public health, or other allied health professional school other than pharmacy.
UGA is situated in a moderately small college town, which has the benefits of small-town life, but lacks convenient logistical/geographical access to urban centers of commerce and business, large medical centers, and major air and rail transportation hubs.
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

66% 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 the Franklin College of 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:

The Franklin College of 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).
53% of the graduating class of 1998 transferred to UGA (i.e. did not begin their college experience as freshmen).
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:

85% of UGA's students are white, 6% are black, 4% Asian, and 1.3% are Hispanic.
54% of undergraduates, and 60% of graduate students, are female.

Faculty:

89% of 1,780 full-time professorial faculty are white; 5% are black; 4% are Asian; 1.3% are Hispanic. 26% are female.
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%).
5 of 6 vice presidents are white.
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 can we build the best possible environment for graduate students? How will we pay for these enrichments of the university community?
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?