Vol. 32, No. 4 - APRIL 1996
Keeping with its commitment to maintain tuition in Georgia at a relatively low level, the Board of Regents at its April meeting approved a 6 percent increase, effective July 1, 1996.
At the System's two-year institutions-where costs were reduced last year by 5 percent for in-state students-tuition will increase by $20 per quarter, from $340 to $360. The increase will result in students paying $30 more per quarter for in-state undergraduate tuition at the University System's four-year colleges and regional universities, raising tuition from $498 to $528 per quarter. At the System's research institutions, resident undergraduate tuition will increase from $665 to $705 per quarter, a $40 difference over last year's rates.
Chancellor Stephen R. Portch said the System's tuition rates are a point of pride for the University System, particularly since they allow Georgia to maintain its status as a low-tuition state.
"In our strategic plan, we pledged to 'be responsive to the needs of Georgians first and foremost,' and we are honoring that commitment," Portch said. "The Board recognizes the need to guarantee educational access and affordability even as we enhance the University System's emphasis on quality and excellence. I am pleased that we can continue to provide an educational bargain for Georgia students attending System colleges and universities at the same time that we are investing increased resources in improving quality."
Out-of-state students attending System institutions will pay 20 percent more after July 1, the 6 percent plus an additional amount to close the gap between what they pay and the real costs of their education. The second year of a four-year phase-in of the full cost of tuition for out-of-state students will take effect, amounting to a 14 percent surcharge being added to their cost of undergraduate study.
By 1998, out-of-state students will pay 100 percent of their educational costs, which prior to last year's tuition reform by the Board of Regents was being subsidized by Georgians, who paid 25 percent of non-resident students' costs. During the final two years of the four-year plan, additional out-of-state surcharge increases will range from approximately 12-14 percent annually to achieve full-cost tuition levels.
In a related action at its March Board meeting, the Board of Regents voted in support of a tuition differential policy that will increase the cost of graduate tuition by 20 percent over undergraduate rates. The plan will be implemented over a four-year period, beginning this summer, at a rate of 5 percent annually.
"As I've said on many occasions, Georgia System's of public higher education is a real educational bargain," said Portch. "We just don't want to be a steal!"
Georgia's position as a low-tuition state is enhanced when considering national data on the advantages of a college education. A recent article in Business Week cited "the rate of return on four years of college at about 11 percent-beating most financial instruments over the long haul." In addition, the article noted that in 1993, male full-time workers earned an average of 89 percent more than their comparable high school grads.
Conducting post-tenure re-views - the process of evaluating college and university faculty periodically after they have been awarded tenure - is likely to become part of a standard operating procedure within the University System of Georgia. The Board of Regents discussed a series of recommendations at this month's meeting and will act on a revised version of the recommendations in May.
In a move aimed at ensuring that Georgia's public colleges and universities maintain a world-class, diverse faculty and staff, the Task Force on Faculty and Staff Development has proposed one of the most sweeping professional development initiatives ever undertaken by a university system.
If the recommendations are
approved by the Board, tenured faculty would be evaluated at least once
every five years, with the first 20 percent of faculty being reviewed in
the spring of 1997. Once the program is launched in 1997, an additional
20 percent cohort would be reviewed annually, completing the cycle every
five years. In instances where faculty are identified during the post-tenure
review process as having unsatisfactory performance, a formal plan of development
will be developed outlining specific goals and outcomes, a timeline for
addressing concerns, and the criterion for monitoring progress.
In addition to initiating a performance management/professional development policy for tenured faculty, the new policy direction would, among other things, formalize a process of annual evaluations for all faculty, graduate assistants, professional and support staff and administrators.
"Last March, when the Board of Regents adopted the Faculty/Staff Development Policy Direction, I knew that we would have to devise multi-faceted initiatives to achieve our goals," Chancellor Portch said. "This task force has met that challenge by creating vehicles to raise the bars of performance and persistent professional development, both of which are essential to operating a nationally preeminent university system. I am extremely pleased with their collaborative and consensus-building efforts, which will serve this System well for years to come."
The task force's recommendations are designed to establish a "comprehensive and systematic set of policies and procedures on recruitment and hiring, evaluation, and continued professional development of all personnel." Over four-fifths of the University System's budget is allocated to personnel costs, representing a major investment in human resources. The thrust of the proposed policy is to invest in the System's human capital, to reward high performance and to provide opportunities for continual professional development.
The University System goes virtual
Imagine taking a tour of any campus of the University System of Georgia, taking care to visit each building and inspecting each street, parking lot and driveway. What if it could be done without driving or walking a single mile?
This scenario is becoming possible as construction begins on a "virtual" University System of Georgia, complete with roads, buildings, maps and detailed information about each, all stored in a computer graphics database. It's all part of an effort to catalog the University System's vast property holdings. When finished, the database will contain information about all land and real estate owned or leased by the System and the System's foundations.
"It will greatly enhance the capability to effectively manage our property," said Peter Hickey, assistant vice chancellor for facilities.
Building the database is a painstaking process of gathering detailed information about thousands of acres of land and recording it using a Geographical Information System. GIS is already widely used in private industry by companies such as Georgia Power, which employs it to record the path of electrical lines, and by agencies such as Georgia's Department of Transportation, which is using GIS to catalog all roads in the state, Hickey said.
To become part of the University System's database, campuses furnish survey maps, legal descriptions, property descriptions, deed records, land characteristics and land use, as well as an inventory of all buildings. The University of Georgia's Office of Campus Planning is assisting the Board of Regents in recording and managing the data. Since the project began last November, the office already has recorded information regarding seven University System campuses.
The pilot group includes DeKalb College, Fort Valley State College, Georgia Southern University, Georgia State University, Gordon College, the University of Georgia and Valdosta State University. Together, these campuses comprise approximately 86 percent of the System's land holdings. Data for an additional group of eight campuses currently is being collected and entered into the system. All campuses are slated to be included in the system this year.
The database contains color maps of the campuses, from which the user can zoom in for greater detail, or zoom out to view the location of the campus in relation to the county or the state. There is virtually no limit, however, to the type and amount of information that can be added to the database.
"The potential of GIS is just limited to your imagination," said Tom Breedlove, master planner at UGA's Office of Campus Planning.
Every piece of information in the database can be linked with another, Breedlove said. Click on the symbol of a building on a campus map and you can be linked to the photograph of that building or to the scanned-in copy of the deed of the land on which the building is located. The database also can contain aerial photographs taken of the campus which can be linked to and overlaid with other information, such as political boundaries or county lines.
"For Georgia Southern, we could call up our information and have it overlaid with streets in Statesboro [using the Department of Transportation's database]," Hickey said.
The database can be detailed enough to show the area's every bench, tree, and lamp post. Information in UGA's database, for example, already contains the location of every fire hydrant on campus. Anyone wishing to see the university's fire protection coverage for a particular building or street or for the entire institution can simply call up that information and have it displayed on a computer screen, Breedlove said. Future users of GIS may look for and identify potential crime problem areas by plotting vegetation layers with the locations of light posts to see which parts of a campus may require additional lighting.
Users also can call up data using specific search criteria. GIS can show all land used for intramural athletics, for example, or display how much land is used for parking lots, Hickey said. The system can be queried to search for all buildings constructed before a particular date or used for particular purposes. Search criteria can cover just an individual campus or the entire University System. Researching similar information in the past without the database often meant sifting through countless real estate records.
To make the database accessible to as many people as possible, the Board is considering several options, including making it available through the Internet, though the sheer volume of graphics initially might make access slow.
Your opportunity to visit every campus in the University System of Georgia without leaving home may be coming soon.
A seven-member student delegation
from Savannah State College took home the top prize at the Model United
Nations Program, winning the coveted Best Delegation award at the regional
conference. Students attending the Model U.N. held March 24-27 in Winston-Salem,
North Carolina, worked as if it was the real thing. They negotiated, resolved
problems and exercised the delicate art of diplomacy. At the same conference,
Savannah State student Walter Coffey was named Best Delegate in the Security
Council. The Savannah State team competed against delegations from 15 colleges
and universities in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida, as well as international
delegations from Canada and Russia. Addressing issues of nuclear proliferation,
third-world debt, Bosnia and the Middle East, students fine-tuned their
political and negotiating skills.
Model U.N. is a leadership development program designed to prepare students for international careers through simulating a United Nations forum. Students represent countries, develop solutions and negotiate sticky political situations.
America's view of the world is filtered by our own news media. But students on three University System campuses can now watch television news and other programming as presented by non-U.S. media outlets.
Floyd College, Southern College of Technology and Valdosta State University are part of a pilot project with Georgia Public Television and SCOLA (Satellite Communications for Learning) which hopes to provide a more global learning experience for students. The colleges will receive access to two channels during the pilot test: one for television news from key countries around the world, and the other offering a variety of programming, including documentaries, movies, soap operas, theater, sports and news magazines. Programming is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
SCOLA is a non-profit educational consortium that receives and retransmits television programs from over 30 different countries in their original languages. These programs are transmitted via satellite to educational, government and military institutions throughout North America.
The project will last for one year, beginning this spring quarter and will be the only access to SCOLA in the state of Georgia.
The eyes of the world will be on Georgia even before the Olympics begin.
Beginning May 1, dozens of professional cyclists from all over the world will race through seven states in the Tour DuPont on their way to the finish line at Kennesaw State College. It will mark the first time in the Tour DuPont's eight-year history that the race will travel to Georgia.
The Tour DuPont is the highest-ranked cycling event outside of Europe and carries a $260,000-plus prize, the third richest in the world for cycling. The race starts in Wilmington, Del., and weaves south through Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
On May 11, 126 of some of the world's best cyclists will begin the longest stage of the Tour, departing Clemson, S.C., at 11 a.m. and travelling 147 miles to finish on the campus of Kennesaw State College at approximately 4:20 p.m. The next day, the cyclists will take part in an individual time trial, a crucial stage of the event as riders race one at a time against the clock in a nine-mile sprint that could determine the overall winner.
HISTORIC EVENT: Macon College was the site of National History Day in Georgia this month, a competition which drew more than 260 students from 15 middle and high schools. Presentations included entries about women in history and the struggle for civil rights.
CAMPUS MEET: Delegates from two-year colleges and technical institutions from across the country converged on DeKalb College during the national convention of the American Association of Community Colleges. The college hosted various events of the conference April 13-16.
EARTH HERO: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has recognized Dr. Matthew Gilligan, professor of marine biology at Savannah State College, for his work to preserve and protect the environment.
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