By Alex Edquist
“Welcome to the State of the Union,” was how it started. Unfortunately, it was not actually the State of the Union (Georgia Political Review’s budget isn’t quite enough to send writers to Washington to cover the real State of the Union). The law professor introducing UGA President Jere Morehead had meant to say “State of the University.”
However, there were some similarities between Wednesday’s State of the University speech and the previous night’s State of the Union. For one, the two presidents represented two institutions that had very good 2014s. President Morehead opened his speech with “Let me begin with a simple but compelling truth: the state of the University of Georgia is stronger now than at any point in our 230-year history.”
Here are seven things we learned from the State of the University speech:
- The incoming freshmen get scarier every year.
The current freshmen had incoming average GPAs of 3.9 and SATs of 1913. The incoming class of 2019 is even more qualified, although President Morehead didn’t cite exact numbers.
- Athena took a lot of time and resources to create.
Not that this will surprise any of you who were stuck with Oasis for months longer than expected. Athena took hundreds of staff members four years to build, and it’s the reason for the only fee increase students saw this year.
- The cost of attending UGA will remain low.
President Morehead announced the extension of the meal plan and parking pass price freezes. All other fees remain frozen except for the new Athena fee. UGA was once again ranked in the top 10 for best value colleges.
- But UGA is doing pretty well financially.
Expanding the assets of the UGA Foundation was one of President Morehead’s top priorities, and this year our endowment passed $1 billion for the first time ever after a heavy fundraising campaign. The number of endowed faculty increased by 20 percent, and merit and need-based scholarship endowment funds increased by 26 percent.
- And we’re finally recovering from the recession.
President Morehead announced a hiring initiative of 100 new professors to replace layoffs during the recession. Professors will also see their first merit-based raises since 2009.
- We’re going to be dealing with construction noise for a while longer.
Among the building projects mentioned in the speech: a new Science Learning Center will be opening in fall 2016, the business school’s Correll Hall will open this fall, a new vet school and the UGA in Washington house will both be dedicated this month, and the continued renovations of Baldwin Hall started last month.
- It’s great to be a Georgia Bulldog.
We had record-high freshmen retention rates (94 percent), five- and six-year graduation rates (83 and 85 percent, respectively), and student-athlete graduation rates (84 percent in six years). We were also named a top 20 public university.
You can read the full transcript of the President’s speech here.
