This is the fourth time I have come before you to begin what I hope will become an annual tradition of celebrating what this excellent school is, what it has most recently accomplished and give voice to its aspirations and hopes.  We are the school, the students, the staff, the faculty, the alumnae and our friends and supporters.

This address is always given shortly after President Adams gives the annual statement of celebration and vision for this university so that we as a part of a greater academic community, can be assured that our course is complementary.

Today as is traditional, I will begin with a brief statistical description of ourselves as a statement of our progress and condition.  Next, there are pressing issues of the present and near term which will be addressed.  With a longer view I will then discuss the strategic plan for our school which has been sent on for incorporation and consideration in the larger context of the University’s plan for the future.  I will close on a matter which is emerging as I speak. A matter which with proper organization and resources could positively and profoundly effect us.

Some form of undergraduate degree in the area of landscape architecture has been in the department of art or horticulture here for more than 100 years.  The Bachelor of Landscape Architecture as we know it today is 72 years old and we should begin planning this year to make the most of the 75-year milestone in 2003.  The School itself, formed in all of the environmental movements of 1969, is 31 years old.  At 18 years the program in Historic Preservation is aging its way toward qualifying for the National Register of Historic Programs.

In a booming development market which has been demanding more landscape architects than the education system can produce, our profession’s critical design role is beginning to receive national recognition.  Yet we are struggling to academically expand our professional design ranks to meet this recognition and demand.   Into this situation landscape architecture’s largest school, and one of only a few that is growing to meet the needs, graduated 67 BLA,   16 MHP, and  15 MLA  last year.

Last year saw the retirement of nationally recognized Professor Catherine Howett.  We will continue to benefit from her association with us as she continues her research and teaches each year.  1999 saw our new faculty, Assistant Professor Hank Methvin and Associate Professor Marianne Cramer, reach the campus and begin teaching.  I noted last year that Associate Professor Neal Weatherly was elevated to Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architecture.  In joining Professors Allen Stovall, Scott Weinberg, Bruce Ferguson and Darrel Morrison on the faculty as a Fellow, Neal became part of the most professionally recognized faculties in our industry.  Twenty-five percent (one in every four) of ASLA's 1999 class of Fellows was a graduate of Georgia.  

There are 432 students in our degree programs.  Sixty seven percent of the 36 in the Masters of Historic Preservation are women as are 57% of the 47 graduate students in Landscape Architecture. A clear trend in the profession is in the increasing number of women entering schools and then practice.  Presently the number of women in the undergraduate program has declined from recent highs in the low 40% range to 27%.  I believe this to be an aberration and expect that women will reach the 50% mark in the next five years. Coeds at the University of Georgia have already reached  55.5%.  Typically the numbers in design and engineering professions lag behind mainstream degree programs. 

Over the past 10 years the number of students in all of our programs has grown by 10%. What is more telling is that the growth in total credit hours taught by the school over the same period has grown by 20%.  There is a growing interest on the University’s part in credit hour production because it is the measure by which critical monies are distributed to each institution and logically to the units which are most productive.  One of the most notable effects of the conversion from quarters to semesters was in the reduction of credit hours taken on average by students.  The result has been formula losses in terms of reimbursements for resident instruction.  Hopefully this is a matter of the students making this transition simply adjusting to the change conservatively.  

While the budget has almost kept pace with our growth my greatest concerns about improving on what we are and continuing to build excellence in the School lie in resources that are outside of the budget.  Historically we have lived with what we were given.  Living within these means is no longer enough.  We must find new means.  

External funding is opportunistic rather than sustainable.  Whenever it comes and by whatever means, it builds computer labs and equips educational initiatives while it develops our faculty.  It funds, if only for a year, graduate scholarships and assistantships.  It lets us serve cities and towns, the state and various national agencies.  In its wake we have better served others, we have given our students solid service learning experiences and we have strengthened ourselves.  The equipment used as tools in the passing initiatives remain for our continued use.  

Reaching beyond the budget for external funding opportunities I believe is a new habit here.  One that I hope to facilitate and encourage to become part of our culture.  In 1996 we had $76,000 in external funding (half of which was a service contract with the Department of Natural Resources).   In 1997 it was $179,000.  This year, 600% in growth later, it is now more than  $460,000.  This incredible achievement is about all of us finding new ways of funding increments of education, research and service excellence.  

It is Marguerite Koepke building a computer graphics lab.  It is Leo Alvarez’s summer studio in campus planning.  It is Ian Firth working with the National Park Service and René Shoemaker collaborating with the University of Maryland for USDA.  It is Neal Weatherly and his profitable workshops and Richard Westmacott working with the University of Dresden building a new studies abroad program.  It is Mary Anne Akers, Judith Wasserman and Mark Reinberger setting up research initiatives.  It is others of us setting out in smaller but equally important ways and it is Pratt Cassity and the outreach crew making useful and new service initiatives throughout this state.  

These are passing opportunities and not by themselves sustainable.  What can become sustainable is the recognition that the School is building for its relevant work.  It is this reputation and the new culture of competing for grants and contracts that will give all of our efforts in this area continuity.  We are not necessarily in the grant league with the research sciences or medicine but I consider the 5-year growth from $76,000 to $469,000 a phenomenal accomplishment on the faculty’s part.

I earlier noted that our programs will grow simply because the profession we prepare students for and serve directly is growing.  The budgets to support growth will always lag behind the immediate resource needs.  I also assume that the golden ages of educational support come and go and that we are presently in one of those golden ages.  Running scared simply means that we must build a permanent and sustainable resource base if we wish to assure ourselves of excellence.  That base is the School’s endowment.  That endowment has doubled in the past 4 years to its present level of $2.1 million which is roughly $5000 per student.  As I’ve said in the past this is also a matter of building a culture of giving and support among the alumnae and friends of the School.  It takes time to build and cultivate the momentum that is already enjoyed by schools of law, engineering, business and medicine.  We have begun.  

Before turning toward the future, let me address the key issues that have added to this year’s tensions.  Our school is going through the tough transition from quarters to semesters while test driving a curriculum that, two years ago, was built entirely from scratch by our faculty.  Major changes such as this, complicated by program growth and space needs, has put many of us on edge and in my case has profoundly tempered any joy that has come with our progress.  The issues are administrative, academically related or involve space.  

On the administrative front changes are already being made.  Environmental Design is the only school or college in the University (or in any University that I am aware of) that does not have department heads, associate deans or any internal management support for the Dean.  The responsibility of a Dean has grown to become one of longer-range external management.  The job of long range external and short-range internal management is schizophrenic at best.  The Provost has approved the requested position of Associate Dean for Academic Affairs who will become responsible for the day to day management of research and teaching for the school.  The faculty has nominated two of their senior colleagues from whom I will select the Associate Dean. That person will phase in this semester and assume a two-year term beginning with the Fall of 2000. When I arrived here in 1996 it was my judgment that management would have to become more relaxed to allow the school to unwind from the conditions of its previous management.  Evaluations were informalized in part to learn each of the faculty’s roles, talents, strengths and interests.  The faculty clearly wants a more quantifiable or measurable approach to their evaluations and I accept that.  This year with the new Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the faculty, I will develop an acceptable approach.  I will also continue to assume the responsibility for faculty evaluations.  

On the academic front there are three issues:  teaching loads, studio class size and student excellence.  Some of these are partly attributable to the growth and changes taking place in the School but all must be addressed.

Five courses per year (15 hours) along with academic administrative requirements unique to our School such as the annual load of theses and senior projects is a greater teaching load than that typical in a comprehensive research university.  This matter will get more difficult in 2001 when a greater number of courses designed into the semester conversion come on line in the School.  This case is being made with the Provost’s office and funding for three unfilled faculty positions has been requested.  The funding is in addition to funding normally assigned to those positions but used to purchase course-teaching contracts with temporary instructors.  We should note however that the university as a whole faces what President Adams has described as a steady state budget.

Studio sizes, due to School growth, have grown to problematic levels.  The standards for studio size as stated by the Landscape Architecture Accreditation Board (LAAB) is 16.  Last week the faculty unanimously voted to publish 16 as the studio limit and to adhere to that limit by adding a fifth studio.  The academic advisor, as in the past will assign a balance of students to each of the studios and they will not be permitted to change that assignment during registration without the studio faculty’s personal permission.  This is effective beginning with the fall of 2000.  The fall of 2000 is also the time when an accreditation team from LAAB will look at our undergraduate program.  Scott Weinberg is coordinating our efforts.

Perhaps most difficult is the issue of student excellence.  There is a lot of argument about whether or not certain students meet the standards of the profession when they graduate and whether or not they should be allowed to go on to complete a bachelor’s degree of landscape architecture.  Some say that there should be grade point averages below which students should not enter the program. Do arts and sciences GPA’s accurately predict design potential?  Personally, I have considerable doubts and my concerns are more about the rising UGA entrance requirements, which may screen out very creative students who might not do well with traditional grading systems.

On the matter of grades let me be clear.  Grades are the judgment of the faculty responsible for the course, no one else.  All of us need to encourage each other to grade as the course outlines and syllabi state we will and as we see the results of tests, texts and presentations.  Our program is five years in length, requires a significant student commitment and has a high probability of course interaction with many different faculty.  I believe that any student, even one with weaknesses, who is committed to keep this university’s standards, retake courses when necessary and spend five rigorous years (or more) to complete this program has a right to be able to continue and graduate.  My experience outside of the academe is that many of these C students go on to excel particularly in the design, planning and development fields.  Right now the ranks of the profession  need the full range of students.   There is a greater loss in having a need filled by a person not even trained in the profession.  A worse scenario is not to be able to fill a needed  position in environmental design at all.  

Let me tell you what I believe must be done instead of performing academic triage on those we would marginalize and who have no degree alternatives.  Suppose, at the end of four years when all of the other students at University of Georgia are throwing their mortar boards in the air, that we had a four year degree called the Bachelor of Environmental Design.  A graduate with that 4-year degree would be well prepared for work in planning agencies and non-licensed work in design firms and development companies. Some students, caught in our long academic chute which until now had nowhere to go might now elect to graduate and leave.  Perhaps during the fourth and final year when they make the decision to graduate we would allow environmental electives in lieu of the last set of design studios.  

In a school of our size there is a broad range of student talent and work ethic.  Rather than shoot those who we think are achieving less we should be academically challenging those who may be more gifted and driven.  I intend to explore with the faculty the possibility that the top group of students in a class be given the opportunity to take a significant internship of one year during their course of study at University of Georgia.  I believe that by developing special studies courses taken during the internship, allowing some course waivers and providing for a summer studio or maymester program these environmental design fellows will graduate with their peers in five years.

The final touchy issue is space.  As I noted last year and will later note in this address, the School of Environmental Design will move to the Lamar Dodd complex after the School of Fine Arts moves to a yet to be built structure in the arts complex on the east campus.  This will take 5 to 6 years by which time most of us in this room would be institutionalized. In the meantime we are working to equip and occupy a structure which is being purchased by the University.  The budget of approximately $150,000 in building renovation and $140,000 in design studio desks and other fixtures and equipment has been presented to President Adams and Provost Holbrook.  The August 2000 hoped for occupancy would allow every student in the School of Environmental Design to have a permanent assigned desk.  In addition this will clear part of the fourth floor of Caldwell Hall for technology and graphics teaching.

I have also requested exterior building repair and basement improvements for Denmark Hall.  I should emphasize here that while everyone agrees that this needs to be done now, all is not completely tied down.  The building is still being purchased, budgets are budgets and the timing is tight.

The final draft of the School’s Strategic Plan has been forwarded to the University’s Strategic Plan Committee, which is drafting an institution wide plan.  The Committee, upon which I sit, intends to acknowledge the plans developed by units such as ours and to develop university-wide initiatives and vision.  Ours is a clear statement of where we envision being in 2010.  It does not preclude us from keeping the plan updated and to change it if necessary.  The plan lists key emphasis areas for growth and change.  Not all elements of our School are included.  Not to be included does not in any way mean that we are not interested in a particular issue.  In fact, if something were to be phased out as some often fear when they are not included, the matter would have to be listed as a conscious action to be taken in the plan. 

There are five strategic goals listed in our plan:  actions to strengthen the existing degree programs, repositioning the School both for a transitional period and for the future, the development of new degree programs, developing the service outreach function and the expansion of the School’s endowments for sustainable excellence.  I will touch on each of these to emphasize what needs to be done and what is already underway.  Copies of the plan will be made available in the days following this address.  Read it and keep it as a reminder as it will explain the mission I intend to be on for the next few years and hopefully to avoid rumor and misunderstanding.

The first goal is to expand and strengthen the existing undergraduate and graduate programs in landscape architecture and historic preservation.  With additional space, equipment and faculty such that all students have desks, and that no design studios exceed sixteen students, the undergraduate program will be gradually expanded from the present level of approximately 345 to a level of approximately 390.  This is a growth of about 12%.   At the same time, we hope to initiate an accelerated or environmental design fellows studio block to help and encourage our top students to achieve greater levels of competency and professional preparedness.  

The ideal number of graduate landscape architecture students is approximately 50 (there are 47 presently).  Our intention is to strengthen this program through expansion of the endowment base to allow for $10,000 annual graduate assistantships in specialty areas, which will be mentioned later.  The fully funded assistantships will allow for commitments to recruit the very best students and while they are here, fund their teaching, inquiry and public service.  

Likewise, the historic preservation program, which has 36 graduate students, should be brought to 50 and at least one new faculty added to broaden the teaching base.  The goal here is also to permanently endow at least five fully funded graduate assistantships for recruitment, teaching, inquiry and  public service.  

The technology and equipment goal is to have every student of landscape architecture assigned to his or her own permanent studio desk and storage space.  Every landscape student from the time they enter the program in their sophomore year and including the graduate students will be required to have their own personal computer.  Parallel to this will be the continued expansion and improvements to the CAD/GIS/graphics teaching labs.  The personal computer requirement has to be preceded by the funding and development of a support network in the School.  

To further enrich the existing programs, an endowment target of one million dollars has been set to expand the School’s ability to support transportation for field studies, travel scholarships, specialty programs and workshops, as well as visiting scholars. 

The second goal is to reposition the School of Environmental Design for the interim as well as the long term.  The landlocked  Environmental Design School and the adjacent Terry College of Business are both growing and out of room.  There is no viable long-range future in our remaining here.  President Adams has indicated an interest in our occupying the Lamar Dodd School of Art building after the School of Fine Arts moves to new facilities on East Campus.  Their project is authorized with funding for design work.  The $35 million for construction should follow in the next funding cycle or two followed by two years of construction and an additional 10 to 12 months to renovate the existing facilities to accommodate us.  This puts us in that building in 2005 or 2006.  

Over the next two years at the President’s instruction, we will be working with the campus architects to develop a use and renovation plan for the main building.  In addition, we will be looking at determining the best strategy for utilizing the other buildings in the present art complex.  Decisions need to be made, for example, about whether existing structures are better renovated or whether new structures should be constructed more effectively for the longer term.  

As I noted earlier, we are seriously short of space now and will have greater shortages in the fall of 2000 and 2001.  A building of approximately 15,000 square feet, which is generally in one open space, is being purchased by the University’s new Real Estate Foundation.  We have already developed preliminary estimates to make the building usable for an open bay design studio of 130 to 150 desks, crit walls and a classroom.  The bulk of the investment will be in movable desks, lockers, equipment and other fixtures that can be brought to the Lamar Dodd Building in five or six years. 

The concept for this space is to put the most senior of our undergraduate students in the space and to furnish it much like the professional offices they will be graduating to.  The proposed building is located on the edge of North Campus within easy walking distance.  

The Art School will likely take the Lamar Dodd name with it.  The building into which the School will move may have an opportunity to be named in exchange for a significant endowment in the School’s development interests.  Caldwell and Denmark Halls never afforded us that opportunity.   

With the BLA degree program turning 75 years old in 2003, there is precedent and timing to look at naming the School itself in exchange for endowment support.  For a school of our size, the amount should be at least $2 million.  Likewise, the graduate programs, particularly historic preservation should also be named.  Names should be strategically and economically given to increase both visibility and sustainable funding support.  

The third goal involves the development of up to four new degree programs.  Each, like historic preservation is closely associated with and builds onto the programs of  landscape architecture.  

The first is the Bachelors Degree of Environmental Design, which for starters, may be identical to the first four years of an undergraduate’s program in landscape architecture.  The initial difference is that in the senior year the student may elect to take courses in lieu of the final pair of design studios and then graduate rather than proceeding with the fifth year.  The challenge may be to keep a large potential contingent of would be environmental design majors from plugging up the first three years of the BLA program.  

A second new program is the Masters of Landscape Studies, which will be a one and a half to two year’s non-professional degree.  The course of study allows for multidisciplinary studies of landscape issues through geography, anthropology, ecology and other related disciplines.  This generalist or arts and letters degree may be able to be constructed around existing coursework offered by the University.  

A third new degree is that of a Masters of Urban Design.  This degree of one and a half to two years will not result in qualification for licensure, but offers further pursuit of design at the masters level for landscape architects, architects, planners and engineers.  Unlike a similar new program being formed at Georgia Tech, our Urban Design program will focus on the landscape architecture based context of the built environment as a composition in the natural environment.  A unique opportunity will be to exchange students of the programs at UGA and Tech for a full semesters offering them a different environment and academic perspective.  A strong consideration, in lieu of a degree initiative in Urban Design, is to move directly to an accredited graduate degree in architecture, which places strong emphasis on structural compositions in the landscape and sustainable design.  

The final degree initiative is that of a Doctorate of Environmental Design.  This program would be tailored to accept master’s graduates from areas of the School, such as landscape architecture, historic preservation and other schools such as architecture and engineering.  It is expected that there would be only four to six students who would represent a future of research and teaching for the profession.  Since the candidates would all have terminal design or preservation degrees and therefore would be qualified to teach, they may serve as faculty instructors in the undergraduate programs of the School.  

Another related degree program which has not been included in the Strategic Plan, but for which there is a very strong need and market demand is a masters of environmental design.  It could be tailored for civil engineers, particularly those involved in transportation systems design.   

This is ambitious and not all of the degrees will get off the ground as they are now envisioned.  All of them imply that adequate faculty, space, equipment and funding are forthcoming with each degree initiative.  All of these initiatives add to the core strength of environmental design.  All of them will add a critical mass of related teaching, service and inquiry if they are formed correctly.  Many of you may doubt the ability to fund and secure the resources.  I can assure you that without creative and well formulated programs designed to meet known needs, the prospects of ever gaining resources are akin to that of a snowball in hell.      

The fourth goal is one that I addressed last year when the playing field of service outreach at the University was changing so rapidly that the creation of a new service entity for the School was difficult.  That goal is now clear.  It is to create The Center for Community Design and Preservation.  As the School’s external connection in terms of service outreach and service learning, I will continue to work directly with Pratt and his team.  I am now hopeful for the first time that the University will lend adequate support for our service programs, which have been operated almost solely through external funding.  Meetings with the administrators of related and potentially joint venture arms of the University, such as the Institute of Government, the former ICAD and the Interim Vice President for Service and Outreach begin next week.  The center itself, once created will be very visible and identifiable.  I believe that it too can and should  be appropriately named.   

The final goal is one that is integrated throughout each of the issues and initiatives outlined in this address.  It is to expand the School’s endowment base for sustainable excellence.  Time and again I have preached that only a few professions in the past have even bothered with fundraising for academic endowments.  We have begun.  In our own relatively small way, we’ve gone from about one million to over two million in four years.  It is that very important external mission that deans today must devote considerable effort to in the interests of the Schools they serve.  Many view these pursuits as basic “hustling” of money or something worse than telemarketing at dinnertime.  It is about building relationships with people and companies who actually care about things such as the environmental conditions they see each day or ominously hear about.  It is about people who remember and love this place and want to leave a legacy that continues to support an excellent idea or program forever.  It assumes that we have good outstanding needs and creative ideas for funding support or that we can help articulate their dreams.  It also assumes that we can be trusted as good stewards of their legacies.  

Specifically, our strategic goal is to take the $2.1 million we now have and add $2 million for graduate assistantships, study/travel abroad support and scholarships and an additional $2.5 million for chaired professorships.  I spoke of various chaired professorships last year.  Let me take one as an example to show how it can be built to support a number of our school’s missions.  A sponsor, concerned about the sprawl of urban and resort development across the small towns and landscapes of Georgia’s countryside creates an endowment to develop research and service outreach to support the proper approaches to rural development as well as appropriate architectural and environmental preservation.  It becomes $1 million named chair in Rural Design and Preservation.  The endowment produces an annual and sustainable funding of $50,000.  Fifteen thousand becomes a stipend awarded to a faculty member with expertise and research interests in the area.  It may also be a stipend to attract a new faculty.  An additional $5,000 is awarded to support that faculty member’s research initiatives in the area which often leads to additional grants.  The remaining $30,000 supports three graduate assistants who may be recruited to the school specifically for the rural specialty and to work with the faculty member.  The result is a rural studio which serves as a research and service base with a specialized faculty member and three highly sought after graduate students.  

As I’ve noted there are as many chairs and specialty studios as there are interest areas and potential supporters of them:  design technology, garden design and horticulture, city design, restoration design, and resort design are examples of a few other specialty chairs/studios.

Our total endowment should reach $6.6 million before 2010.  I believe that the number is very realistic and that it will be surpassed.  

In closing, let me speculate for a moment on the potential of one of the initiatives proposed by President Adams in his State of the University of January 1999.  Not without controversy, he challenged the University to look at four initiatives that he felt offered institutional restructuring to meet contemporary needs.  The initiatives might have taken any form as long as they were effective, but were generally seen as involving the formation of three or four new colleges.  One involved broadening Journalism, another the formation of an entity focused on political science, policy, national and international affairs, a third in fine arts and the fourth in the area of the environment.  The mix in the area of the environment had always been one of the natural sciences and the development of a new knowledge and environmental design, which was the application of knowledge.  It is ironic that on one hand, our faculty recently looked at landscape studies as an avenue for us to tap the new knowledge and perspectives in other sciences for our applications in design.  On the other hand, faculties of the sciences were seeking interdisciplinary collaborations with design as a vehicle for the application of the knowledge they developed.   I also found that there is a very long history of discussions and collaborations between environmental design and ecology with various hopes of significant problem solving of environmental problems.  I find it both particularly unfortunate and a bit embarrassing that a university this large and with as much talent and competence as it has, is not a major problem solving player in the Atlanta metropolitan region which is at our doorstep.  

A College of the Environment is a developing concept, which at this time proposes to involve us.  Bruce Ferguson sits on the committee and I have been informally working with the group’s leadership.  Generally the draft proposal looks to build a collaborative involving the natural sciences, human ecology and environmental design.  The base of the concept is the School of Environmental Design and the Institute of Ecology.

There is a high level of need and frustration at the regional, national and international levels that not enough is being done to address the quality of live and environmental challenges that face us.  Many are growing inpatient and see that an institution such as the University of Georgia is in fact quite capable of doing something fairly quickly if it can figure out how to appropriately structure itself to take on the task.  It is likely there are parties willing to sponsor this significant action if we choose to act.

I believe that we should use our best efforts to see if we can make the initiative work and not wait to see what happens.  I believe that there is a very significant potential that a property composed and supported College of the Environment can become a national and international player in environmental inquiry and problem solving as well. It is also clear to me that the potential international scale of this initiative meets one of the university’s principal goals of taking on a global perspective.  It is the very subject of the meeting I will attend following this address.  

Nothing that I have said earlier in terms of strategic goals and directions for our School as  a unit would conflict with the environmental initiative.  In fact, the success of the initiative could well prompt a much earlier accomplishment of all of these objectives.  Our proposed generalist-based sequence of degrees in environmental design might become central to an environmental college.  

Today on so many issues and opportunities I feel that I’m describing icebergs as I sail past them.  Each of them has a much more substantial story to relate just below the surface.  Some of them are hazards to navigate, but most of them are great resources for future mining.  I appreciate each of you for coming whether it was because you had to or because you have a genuine curiosity and interest in what we are setting out to do we begin now. 

Thank you.