State of the University
August 15, 2006

            This is the thirteenth time for me to give a report in this fashion on the state of the university.  I wish I could say that practice not only makes perfect but also makes the task easier each time. 

            But this is not the case.  It actually gets harder each year—and not necessarily because I’m running out of jokes or clever quotations (last year it was a mixture of Geoffrey Chaucer and Dolly Parton). 

            No.  The reason it gets harder is that we keep doing new and better things, which means that there’s always more to talk about but no more time in which to do the talking. 

            And I can’t speed up my rate of speaking because, well, I grew up in South Texas.

            But this problem of having too much to say if I were to say it all is a good problem to have.  It means that the state of the university is exceptionally good—and that nobody is sitting on their hands.

            For instance, just a partial list of accomplishments in the past year would include

• The appointment of a new dean—Marc Miller, our own alumnus—for the College of Business Administration.

• The creation, in our Department of Political Science, of a Center for Immigration Studies, named after federal judge Anthony Alaimo, who kindly saw to it that we were the recipient of $100,000 in unclaimed class action funds.

• The first, and very successful, year of operation for our Grants Office.

• Our first-ever summer bridge program for African-American males and the creation of an Office of Student Development in Academic Affairs.

• The completion—thanks to the generosity of former faculty member Charlie Freeman—of a beautiful pavilion at Forest Hills Golf Course.

• The successful raising of enough funds, thanks largely to Mr. Fleming Norvell, an alumnus, to build a first-class facility for our men’s and women’s golf teams.

• The remarkable success of our women’s golf team—winning five tournaments during the year, having two members of the team selected as All-America Scholars for their work on the course and in classes, and maintaining a team grade point average of  3.3.

And two more things about golf.

• The emergence of our own Vaughn Taylor as a genuine star on the PGA Tour—and the appointment of Laura Coble, a 1987 alumna of Augusta State University and one of the most accomplished amateur golfers in the history of this state, as the new coach of our women’s golf team.

And to continue my partial list of accomplishments, I could mention

• The creation of four academic departments where once there were only two—so that now we have a Department of English and Foreign Language, a Department of Communications and Professional Writing, a Department of Music, and a Department of Art.

• A substantial increase in the number of students studying abroad, thanks to the efforts of many people and the generosity of the late J. B. Fuqua.  And even 63 students studying upside down in Australia!

• Wonderful renovations to the Arsenal Quadrangle including new brick walkways, and an outdoor stage.

• The creation of a 200 space parking lot where Skinner Hall once stood.  (Anybody remember Skinner Hall?)

• The creation of a recreation field where Butler Hall used to stand.  (Anyone remember Butler Hall?)

• The design and initial site work for a 500-seat amphitheatre to go where Hardy Hall used to be.  (Anyone remember Hardy Hall?)

• The extensive renovation of Washington Hall and the creation of a rehearsal room in the Fine Arts Center to accommodate 150 musicians—all for our new departments of Art and Music.

• A gift of $25,000 to our Department of Chemistry and Physics from Washington Savannah River Company—and prospects for more from the largest employer in our area.

• The extension of our WAASU (that is, “Wireless Access at ASU”) to Science Hall and the Fine Arts.  So we now have a bigger and better WAASU.

• Our first-ever graduating class of our collaborative fast-track nursing program. 

• The establishment of a chapter of the prestigious business honor society of Beta Gamma Sigma within our College of Business Administration.

• The beginning of our new efforts across campus to improve retention and graduate rates.

• The dedication last December of our Blanchard Fountain, named in honor of Dr. Russell Blanchard, our 1928 alumnus and one of two holders of an honorary doctorate from this university.

And, finally, in this partial list of accomplishments

• An incoming freshman class in the fall of 2005 that was more than a hundred students, and more than twelve percent, larger than the class in 2004.

• The approval this spring by the General Assembly and the Governor of a $2.5 million capital project to expand our Central Energy Plant.

• A positive economic impact on the Augusta area of $161 million . . . AND

• An absolutely amazing year in private fundraising.   

           
            What a list—and only a partial list.  I got tired reading it.  I can only imagine how hard people have worked on the activities described in it. 

            But that’s not all. 

            There are three things that I didn’t include in the list because they represent very special accomplishments with, I think, great significance for the future of the university.

            One of them—the absence of which I am sure you noted in my list—was the opening, last year, of University Village.

            What student housing here means—even our apartments for only 500 students—is that some students now choose to come here for different reasons than students have chosen to come here in the past. 

            We have several hundred students who, for one reason or another, have chosen to go off to school and come here—and if they have good experiences, they will tell their friends back home, and more will continue to come here, and a slightly greater percentage of students will be those for whom we are the place to which they have decided to go off to college. 

            A second significant development this past year was the completion of the Jaguar Student Activities Center.  For the first time ever in the history of this school, which goes back as we all know to 1783, something has been built specifically to meet the extra- and co-curricular needs of our students—and, in this instance, actually paid for by students.

            The opening of the JSAC—that’s the acronym—marks a new era in student life at this institution.  It gives all students something to be proud of—and one more reason to stay in school and do well. 

            The third item that I think is of special importance was the development this past year of the Master of Arts in Teaching degree, which will help meet the instructional needs of K-12 school by preparing talented and experienced students—those who have already completed their baccalaureate degrees—to become teachers.  And it is a master’s degree in a very important field:  not administration or school financing but the most important activity of all for teachers, which is teaching.

            That was last year.  This is now this year.

            We begin the year with a new chancellor, Chancellor Erroll Davis, and several changes—for the better, I think—in the university system. 

            We begin the year with a new initiative in Customer Service, focusing primarily on our enrollment services and headed by Professor Emeritus Joseph Greene.

            We begin the year with not only the completion of many facility projects but also with one about to begin:  a $4.4 million project to improve the storm sewers, roads, and parking lots on the south side (the back side) of campus.

            We begin the year, I think, with more students than we had last year.

            We begin the year, I know, with more parking spaces than we had last year—though never, as is always the case, enough.

            We begin the year with the increased need to acquire land and develop academic facilities on Wrightsboro Road because we are only seven or eight hundred students short of capacity here on Walton Way.  I know that we look so good these days, with over $90 million dollars of new buildings that we’ve opened in the past six years.  But the reality is that most of our new facilities are replacements, not additions.  If we are to continue to grow, we need land and buildings on Wrightsboro Road. 

            We begin the year with a new tuition payment plan for our students—the “fixed for four” plan.

            We begin the year still focused on increasing retention and improving graduation rates.

            We begin the year with a new, greater goal for our “A Day” campaign and an ever more supportive and active foundation board.

            We begin the year with extraordinary new faculty and staff members, who join our already amazing faculty and staff.

            We begin the year with much to do and a terribly important task shared by other public institutions of our kind, which is, in the simplest of terms, to create a more educated public.  And we do this knowing that it is a difficult task, especially for the students whom we serve, many of whom are short on wealth, short on family experience with higher education, and often short, we know, on the kind of academic preparation that we would most prefer them.  Arrayed against as we attempt to produce a more educated public is much of our popular culture (which these days hardly ever promotes such virtues as hard work, study, and learning), socioeconomic forces over which we have little control, and a world that hardly seems to be changing for the better.

            Thinking of our task and its difficulties, I’m inclined to quote the last sentence from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby because those words sound so good.
 
            Fitzgerald wrote, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” 

            But you know what?  We are not borne back ceaselessly into the past.  We may study the past, but we are the future.  Especially for our students, we are the future—and we are the way into a prosperous and better future for them.  This is the good work that we do—and we do much of it, and we do it very well.

            And this, this business about good work, brings me to a final point, which is about something good that happened to us this past year. 

            We did something good, this institution did something good a long time ago that only came to fruition this past year.  At some point in the past, we were friendly and accommodating to one retired school teacher who, as I understand it, often visited the campus and took some continuing education courses here.  Her name was Marie Hulbert.  She was a graduate of the University of Georgia and of Duke University.  She was a biology teacher at Richmond Academy.  When she died, having told only one person of her plans and demanding of that person that her plans not be revealed until after her death, she left in her will for this university a little over a million dollars.  It was a remarkable act of generosity and, I think, a high tribute to whoever it was years ago who made such a good impression on Ms. Hulbert.

            The lesson we should always carry with us is that doing good is always its own reward—but it has been an incredible pleasure to learn from Ms. Hulbert that on occasion our treatment of others might be rewarded in other ways as well.  Let’s all remember this as we move forward into another academic year that, like all academic years, despite any currents that may run against us, is rich in the promise of service to our students, to our community, and to our world.

            And we’ll never know how many other Marie Hulberts there may be.