The University of Georgia has a nearly $4 billion economic impact on the state of Georgia, has a record-setting, high-achieving freshman class and has raised a record amount of money to help it fulfill its mission at the state’s land-grant institution, the university’s president said Tuesday.
In a wide-ranging speech Tuesday, President Jere W. Morehead updated the Gainesville Kiwanis Club on the university’s academic achievements, its fundraising efforts and a renewed emphasis on research and faculty excellence.
Morehead, who became the university’s 22nd president in 2013, said the university’s economic impact “was something I have been saying all along, but I now I have the facts to back me up.”
The size of the economic impact shows that the University of Georgia is important to the state of Georgia, he said.
“Georgia needs the University of Georgia,” he said. “What we’ve been able to do at the University of Georgia has helped the state of Georgia. And when the state becomes stronger, it is able to do more to benefit the University of Georgia.”
Morehead said the current freshman class is the best in the university’s long history. The class had an 3.9 grade point average and a 1289 average SAT score.
“We have every reason to believe we may even be able to move beyond those extraordinary numbers this fall,” he said.
That’s because competition to get into the University of Georgia, driven in part by the HOPE scholarship, is at an all-time high. More than 22,300 students have applied for admission this fall, but the university thinks it will have only 5,400 open slots.
Of the students who do make the cut and gain admission to UGA, 94 percent are retained after their freshmen year and 85 percent go on to graduate. Both numbers are the highest in the University System of Georgia.
External audiences have also looked favorably at UGA in recent years. The university was ranked in to the top 20 in U.S. News and World Report’s annual Best Colleges issue for the second straight year. And Kiplinger rated Georgia has a top 10 value in public education.
“All signs are that we are on the right track,” Morehead said. “The University of Georgia is a place of excellence.”
But Morehead said the school won’t rest on its successes. The University Council recently approved one of his proposals to create an experiential learning component for every undergraduate student at Georgia. He said that experience could be an internship, work in a research laboratory or some other endeavor that allow students to get experience that best matches their major field of study.
That push for excellence also extends to the faculty and its research, Morehead said.
Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences, was recently awarded $19 million by the Gulf of Mexico Research Institution to study the impact on oil seepage from the Deepwater Horizon well, he said. UGA researcher Rick Tarleton was awarded $5 million by the Wellcome Trust to study Chagas disease, which affects between 10 and 20 million people, mostly in Latin America.
Morehead said the university is actively seeking high-quality faculty who have active research grants that they can bring to the University of Georgia.
But he added that while research is an important component of the University of Georgia, teaching remains tantamount. In that regard, Morehead still teaches a freshman seminar each fall, and had recently encourage his provost to do the same thing.
Morehead is a 1980 graduate of the UGA School of Law, and he’s the first alumnus to be named president in more than 45 years. He has received several universitywide teaching awards, including the Josiah Meigs Award, UGA’s highest honor for teaching excellence.
