2006 Academic Affairs Faculty Symposium

Achieving Academic Excellence Through

Rigor, Relevance & Reflection

Unicoi State Park and Conference Center

April 14-15, 2006

Overview by Joe Broder, Planning Committee Chair

I am pleased to welcome you to the 2006 Academic Affairs Faculty Symposium. Good morning, my name is Joe Broder and I have the pleasure of serving as Chair of the Symposium Planning Committee and Executive Committee Chair of the UGA Teaching Academy. Today’s symposium is the 16th in a series of symposiums that were initiated in 1991. I invite you to review the topics of past symposiums. Many significant academic initiatives at the University were conceived at these gatherings. Often, the impacts of these symposium are not immediate but new ideas are certainly set in motion for future opportunities.

These symposiums have become an integral part of the University’s conversation on teaching and learning. Four years ago, we held a symposium on service learning. This past year the University established an Office of Service Learning with the collaboration of the Vice President for Instruction and the Vice President for Public Service and Outreach. At this symposium, we will pause to reflect on the challenges and opportunities of rigor at the University.

These symposiums represents a testament to the University’s teaching mission and to the administration’s effort to support faculty in this endeavor. Having transcended two administrations, I believe that this Symposium series has been institutionalized as part of the University’s academic culture. Thus, I feel the conversation we have here today will not only engage those in attendance but will be carried to the larger University Community. The goal of this and earlier Symposia is to give us time to reflect on the status and potential of our teaching enterprise. Our task today is not so much to find solutions to our problems but to ask relevant and pressing questions about our University.

In preparation for this symposium, each of you were asked to write a reflective essay on your personal experience with academic rigor. Submitted essays were posted on the web and anonymous copies of these essays are found in your registration package. You were also asked to view the PBS video, “Declining by Degrees”. I found the video to be well-written but uncomfortably close to home. If you did not have a chance to view the video, we will play the video in the break-out group area. Also, the video is scheduled to be played again on UGA’s Channel 15, at 8:00 p.m., this Sunday, April 16th.

Today’s symposium was motivated recent surveys and task force efforts that found that many of our students may not be sufficiently challenged or engaged for attending a world class institution. Last year, the symposium culminated a year-long efforts by the Task Force on General Education and Student Learning. The recommendations of that Task Force have since been published and a plan developed for implementation. We’ll learn more about the progress towards these recommendations later in the program. While many of these recommendations have yet to be implemented, we ask you to look beyond the efforts of that Task Force, to think broadly about the concept of academic rigor and relevance. Keep in mind that this is a faculty affairs symposium. No doubt, while many of the recommendations of the Task Force are student centered, this symposium should focus on roles which faculty play and can play in achieving academic excellence through rigor, relevance and reflection. Ultimately, it’s the faculty who must set the standards of excellence, who must serve as role models and who create the learning environments for our students. I would encourage you to think broadly about teaching and learning, to think about the faculty culture that nurtures or stifles the pursuit of academic excellence. Please keep these thoughts in mind as you work in your break-out groups and draft your group reports.

And now to officially welcome you to the 2006 Academic Affairs Faculty Symposium is Dr. Arnett C. Mace, Jr. Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs and Provost