Chancellor's Report, February 8, 2006
Chancellor Erroll B. Davis Jr.
Board of Regents Meeting
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Elaine and I are excited to be in Georgia and to have the opportunity to work for such a great University System and with this outstanding Board of Regents. We have been overwhelmed by your legendary Southern hospitality and we like it!
Knowing that our meeting is being webcast, I also want to extend my greetings to our 35 colleges and universities as well as to our System staff. As the administrators, faculty, and staff of this System, your work is an important contribution to our state and in many instances to our nation. We must be driven by our mission of "creating a more educated Georgia" – a mission that changes individual lives and enhances the overall quality of life for our state's citizens. This is a significant mission. In today's modern world, education is a common denominator to success – successful intellectual participation in society and successful participation in our nation's economy.
And, it is your work and effort each day that make a nationally recognized higher education available throughout the State of Georgia. As I mentioned at last week's Regents' Awards for Excellence in Education celebration, this System also powers Georgia's economic engine. It's no surprise that this state is the fastest growing east of the Mississippi. That did not happen by accident. People and businesses are drawn to centers of education and intellect, and you are the nucleus of that intellectual activity. And you must be the catalyst for its expansion. That is why what you do has so many implications for the future prosperity of this state. I appreciate all that you do to create and sustain a world-class system of public higher education, a system that serves more than 250,000 talented students, who understand the indisputable impact that education – quality education – will have in their lives.
And to those students who might be listening, first, I hope that you are not missing any classes. We appreciate your commitment to educational excellence and achievement. By seeking to enhance your horizons, you reflect well on our state and its future promise. You are the primary reason that more than 38,000 employees work so hard each day to ensure your access to high-quality academic programs, top-flight faculty, and first-rate facilities. As the beer commercial states, "You only go around once." Enjoy yourselves. Savor the experience, but try to do it quickly! I urge you to take every advantage of the outstanding resources you have at your disposal on our campuses. By optimizing your educational experiences, you give us all hope and assurance that our future will be in excellent hands, in yours, our next generation of leaders. So, I say to the entire University System family, it is an honor to begin this association with you, and I look forward to meeting many of you in the coming weeks and months.
Before I go any further, there's one individual I would like to publicly thank at the outset. (I should have done this before I began.) And that is Corlis Cummings. Corlis, you have my heartfelt thanks for the outstanding job you have done as Interim Chancellor, and I especially appreciate your "dumbing down" the communications to me during this transition period.
I am in a learning mode at the moment. I am learning already that no decision here is quite as simple as it seems. That is probably appropriate, given the scope, size, and complexity of this organization. Corlis and Tom [Daniel, Senior Vice Chancellor for External Activities and Facilities] are presently guiding me through the arcane nuances of Southern politics. It probably will take more than one session to become familiar with this important area, however.
I expect that I will make changes over time in many areas, but they will not be precipitous. Change should be rational, its basis understood, and where possible, be fact and data driven. As most of you already are aware, this is a large, yet public organization. To paraphrase Blanche Dubois for the last time, "We depend upon the kindness of strangers" for our existence. We need to recognize and to fully appreciate this fact in our daily work. Such awareness means that we must be open, transparent, and accountable, and we must develop and operate with a high "say-do" index.
For those new Regents who have just joined this Board, we have something in common. As we face this complex System, we share the need to begin to understand its history, its accomplishments, and the challenges ahead. This Board draws much of its strength from its continuity. We have great institutional memory among our long-serving Regents such as Elridge McMillan and Don Leebern. We also have new Regents anxious to get on with the task of governing this vast institution. I am anxious as well to get moving on my new assignment.
As I've talked with many of you, my "to do" list seems to grow exponentially by the hour. I am truly being "force fed from a fire hose." Already, I have had meetings with staff and phone conversations with legislators and have been charged by the Governor with safeguarding Georgia's "crown jewels."
I do plan to meet with each of you on this Board individually. I am anxious to learn your views regarding what is working and what isn't as we jointly establish the future direction of this System. Similar questions will be posed to faculty, to students, and to community and business leaders. So, I plan to be busy perfecting my active listening skills.
My immediate goal is to visit all of our campuses over the next three to four months. Initially, I wanted to complete these visits in the first 90 days, but understand that I have significant legislative responsibilities as well. I did, however, have the pleasure of spending time on my first day at the Lanette L. Suttles Child Development Center at Georgia State University, seeing the intersection of our education programs in a laboratory setting. I will use such visits as data-gathering opportunities to help formulate my vision and plans for the future. I want to better understand our System, its current performance, and the needs and issues on our campuses before drawing any conclusions. I also plan to meet with our legislative partners while they are in session and after they return home. I value their support, but we must continue to work to earn it.
Our 2007 budget is off to an excellent start, thanks to what I understand from many individuals was an outstanding budget presentation by Corlis to the Joint Appropriations Committee, as well as the daily follow-up work by many throughout the System, led by our own Tom Daniel. The System received a number of strong fiscal year 2007 budget recommendations from the Governor. Our top priority for this budget was to achieve full funding of the formula. The Governor delivered for us on this key objective, and now it's up to us to help him secure this in the final budget appropriation from the General Assembly. We also will be working with the legislature on other key recommendations by the Governor, including a strong capital package and well-needed merit salary increases, as well as some strategic initiatives we believe are critical to the state.
As I noted earlier, it will be important to me – and the team I assemble – to act in ways that create a record of accountability. Our results can be measured in any number of ways. They can be gauged by the numbers of students we encourage to enroll, how academically prepared they are for college, the numbers of students we retain in our System, the pace at which we move them through the System, and the numbers we graduate ready to assume their roles as contributing members of society. It can be measured by our impact on communities, the number of jobs our technologies create or the way we impact the quality of life for people in this state.
So, in the coming weeks and months, I'll be working with you and others to shape a coherent strategy that we can use to move the System forward. The world does not stand still, of course, while we develop strategy. As we move toward recommendations, we will continue to tackle critical policy issues as they arise.
We heard several important reports during this meeting, such as President [Daniel W.] Rahn's briefing on the Health Professions Task Force. These reports emphasize the need for policy decisions to be made by this Board to get moving in these areas. Cathie Mayes Hudson [Associate Vice Chancellor for Strategic Research and Analysis] also outlined data from two student surveys. The survey data indicates that while our students perform at about the national average for student engagement, we have room for improvement. To me, that is a signal that we must make improvement. These survey results also mesh well with Governor Perdue's new statewide focus on customers. We need to be in sync with the Governor's call to identify and implement ways to improve customer satisfaction. These two projects were initiated well before my arrival, but they are excellent examples of how data should inform decisions, a process I definitely will continue to encourage.
Some might view all of this activity as a bit daunting. I take a different viewpoint. The activity I see – budgets being developed, new presidents being named, academic programs being evaluated, and economic development taking place – all reflect the incredible vitality and significance of this University System. My pledge – my contract – with you is to develop and articulate clearly what we will do, how we will do it, what our end results should be, and certainly how they should be measured.
This is a great time to be involved in public higher education. Never before in the nation's history has the creation of a more educated society held such great significance for the future direction of this state and our nation. In a world in which some countries are just starting to realize the dynamic power higher education holds to transform societies, our role in affirming that truth here in Georgia takes on a new, competitive urgency. I'm excited to be here in Georgia, working in this role and with this dynamic board, our 35 institutions, and our funding partners. I'm also looking forward to working with the talented staff here in the University System Office. Let me close by again thanking you for the opportunity to serve. I look forward to celebrating our future achievements together.