Chancellor's Report, June 7, 2006
Chancellor Erroll B. Davis Jr.
Board of Regents Meeting
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I noted yesterday in my introductory remarks, June has been a busy month in terms of the Board agenda and my own. We continue to move forward on two presidential searches at Waycross College and Georgia Perimeter College. Interviews of the candidates on the two campuses ended last week, and we will begin the Regents' interviews of candidates shortly.
Tomorrow, I will resume my campus visits. Since February 10, I have visited 27 campuses, and beginning tomorrow with North Georgia College & State University, I will wind up my campus tours with visits to eight institutions. The tours will wrap up in mid June, and I will complete my visits with Regents over the next month or so as well. Once the visits are finished, then I will focus my efforts on strategic planning.
Let me just say at this point that our strategic planning will focus on the System and how the System can best meet the needs of its customers. As a result of our governance training, I now also have a sense of what you believe are the critical issues in the System. One of my responsibilities as Chancellor is to ensure institutional resources align with these System goals, and I will focus on creating a strategic plan that more closely aligns our institutions with these larger goals. We will provide a connection – and hopefully, appropriate incentives – between institutional ambitions and System goals. The point of strategic planning for the University System will be to strengthen the System and discourage the sense of a loose confederation that we, in many ways, have today. We have a constitutional responsibility to maintain and strengthen the strong System Georgians have created, supported, and sustained. This historical reality will inform and underlie our strategic planning in the coming months. The campus visits help set up this planning, as will your continuing input.
Two presentations you heard yesterday – plus two today – will also inform this planning. Yesterday, you heard the Associate Vice Chancellor for Planning and Policy Analysis, Cathie Mayes Hudson, discuss enrollment projections. The biggest variable in future college enrollment numbers is Georgia's high school completion rate. Any significant improvement in this rate will have profound implications for our strategic planning. We must recognize this variable as we begin our strategic planning and understand that we must be very flexible in our thinking and policy direction. The Vice Chancellor for Facilities, Linda M. Daniels, and the Director of Planning, Alan S. Travis, presented our interim capital process. We are moving toward a process that allows strategies and mission to drive construction. This reflects my belief – and intent – that missions drive budgets; budgets don't drive mission. Over the longer term, our capital process must be placed in a multiple-year, strategic context. As you heard in President Daniel W. Rahn's presentation, facilities also must align with what we determine to be the state's strategic priorities. This alignment can be seen in our recommendations at the Medical College of Georgia, Kennesaw State University, and the University of Georgia for facilities that address the need for health professionals in Georgia.
However, we cannot just focus on distant strategic needs; our focus also must be timely and responsive. In this vein, you will note that we continue to prepare to implement our guaranteed tuition plan – “Fixed for Four.” Under the direction of our Vice Chancellor for Fiscal Affairs, William R. Bowes, most outstanding issues have been resolved, and public receptivity remains positive. This is a good example of the model I will follow to use data to inform our decisions, to act in a timely and responsive manner, and to be flexible in the subsequent implementation of policy.
Responsiveness and accountability are the watchwords of our funding partners. “Fixed for Four” does send a strong message in this regard to both the Governor and the General Assembly. My belief is that we must send another strong message with our budget for fiscal year 2008. We must make strategic progress, and we must make operational progress as well. Our partners demand this. I don't want to steal his thunder, but the Senior Vice Chancellor for External Activities and Facilities, Thomas E. Daniel, will report immediately after my comments on our current activities and future plans with our funding partners. One of the themes running through Tom's presentation will be our awareness of and efforts toward increasing accountability and responsiveness to those that fund our core functions. To that end, we will be creating new opportunities for you as Regents to interact with our funding partners and to help communicate our key messages.
Let me take a moment to update you on five open items from the May meeting. As we seek to use data in new ways to drive our policy decisions, we will begin to examine potential changes in our financial reports to ensure these reports are responsive to our needs. Work will begin shortly. We also are poised to begin a review and potential revision of Policy 203, which deals with the removal and resignation of presidents. A revised look at our Board and Committee schedules and formats will be discussed with you in August. Also in August, we will discuss with you recommendations for the revision in the makeup of the Regents Committees for presidential searches. And finally, later in the year, we will begin discussions on the relationship between the Board of Regents and Department of Technical and Adult Education.
As you know, the Board will not meet in July, but our staff will continue to move forward on a number of fronts that I have referenced today and many others. A new budget cycle is underway. We have clear instructions from the Governor on the fiscal year 2008 budget request that we must adopt at the August meeting in order to meet the September 1 requirement. Our institutions are gearing up for another fall semester. We will be bringing back to you more detailed plans for our new capital priorities process. In August, we will be looking at some findings from our communications survey. We will share them with you in September. Strategic planning will be getting in gear as we begin the new fiscal year, and we will have new board leadership ready to move the System forward and to build upon the good work of Chairman Shelnut and his predecessors.
As you take this brief hiatus, I do want to thank you for your ongoing support and guidance over the last four months. They have been exciting ones for me. There is a lot of work to be done, and I am anxious about putting a team in place to tackle it! Any questions? If not, let me wish you all a great summer!