University of Georgia: Excerpt from President Michael F. Adams, State of the University 2001

We will also continue to upgrade and improve the technology of learning and communicating on campus. Ten years ago, university presidents did not talk of port-to-pillow ratios or network backbones. Next month, I will preside at the annual meeting of the American Council on Education, and on that agenda are several panel discussions and sessions on technology in the classroom and on campus. The technology of communication is changing the way our students learn, and we must adapt the way we teach to accommodate those changes. Im not advocating a virtual UGA; Im still fairly conservative in my view of education. I think it is our job in administration to put good students with good faculty in good facilities and get out of the way. But I also recognize that there are some effective tools among the new technology that can have a positive impact on that simple equation.

Some of the new tools of teaching and learning are costly, especially when we are trying to serve some 32,000 students and the attendant faculty and staff. But if we are to serve our students well and serve them responsibly, we must commit the resources necessary to ensure access to the technology of learning. Just as importantly, we must teach our students to be discerning in their use of this technology, to distinguish good information from bad, to recognize that cutting and pasting can be electronic plagiarism, and even to acknowledge the simple advice that all of us would be well-served to remember: Take a deep breath before firing off an e-mail response.

Our obligation extends beyond simply wiring every room and equipping an electronic library. Just as no chemistry professor would ever stock a chemistry lab and send his or her students in unattended and uninstructed, we cannot simply install the equipment of the Information Age without guiding our students in its use.

We will seek ways to deliver our expertise electronically. The Provost is convening a committee to look into how we can expand and improve our use of technology in education. The new technology of education is important to our students on campus, but it also offers opportunities to take the University of Georgia off campus.

But the kind of education I believe we want all our students to experience involves much more than buildings and computers. As I have also said before, I believe that a truly great university must have a top-quality arts program, and we do. To support the excellent faculty and students in those programs, we will expand the Georgia Museum of Art, construct a new facility for the Lamar Dodd School of Art, and build a facility for our theater and dance programs. Those three projects will complete quite nicely the East Campus arts complex and be of benefit to both on- and off-campus constituencies.

For full text and webcast of the address see:

http://www.uga.edu/news/2001state/index.html