Dear Colleagues,

We enter l999 committed to continuous quality improvement of the
university, building on its historic approach to "strategic planning" and
"budgeting" - and by adding emphasis to measuring institutional
effectiveness.  As we continue also to ask for our work to be done openly
and carefully, I want to remind us of the organizational context for our
work and of the people who have generously agreed to represent us in
University Oversight Committees.

To be sure, every academic and operational unit of the university must and
does employ necessary cycles of planning, budgeting, and evaluating.  The
Faculty Council remains the most fundamental planning body with its
attention to curricula and all academic policies.  Groups such as the
Employee Relations Committee, the Student Government Association, and
others provide the university invaluable and essential planning. The major
university effort for the next two years is the crucial SACS Self-study.
That Self-study will itself not only require careful attention to planning,
budgeting, and evaluating, it will become a mechanism for the planning itself.

We continue, however, a need for clarity of the one "place" where the
entire university comes together for oversight of all our planning,
budgeting, and evaluating. This memo reminds us of the oversight committees
and the responsibilites they have accepted.


THE UNIVERSITY PLANNING, BUDGETING AND EVALUATING COMMITTEE...

is charged to monitor, review, and lead institutional change where
appropriate in campus mission, goals, objectives, strategic initiatives,
funding, and evaluation of the university.

>Bill Stacy, Chair
>Teresa Adcox
>J. William Berry, Vice Chair
>Michael Biderman
>Kathy Breeden
>Leroy Fanning
>Linda Fletcher
>Oval Jaynes
>Phil Kazemersky
>Margaret Kelley
>Richard MacDougall
>Skip Pond
>Verbie Prevost
>George Ross, Vice Chair
>Clint Smullen
>Dana Wertenberger
>Stephen White
>Mary Tanner

>Professional Staff:
>William Aiken
>Susan Cardwell
>Richard Gruetzemacher
>Joel Harrell
>Deborah Parker


THE UNIVERSITY BUDGET (Sub)COMMITTEE...

is delegated the responsibility to craft university budget recommendations
to reflect the priorities of the strategic plan of the campus.

>Bill Stacy, Chair
>George Ross, Vice Chair
>Teresa Adcox
>J. William Berry
>Linda Fletcher
>Phil Kazemersky
>Margaret Kelley
>Warren Koegel
>Richard MacDougall
>Skip Pond
>Verbie Prevost

>Professional Staff:
>William Aiken
>Brad Goldsby
>Deborah Parker


THE UNIVERSITY INSTITUTIONAL EFFECTIVENESS (Sub)COMMITTEE...

is delegated the responsibility to evaluate the effectiveness of the
university in meeting its academic and operational expectations.

>J. William Berry, Chair
>Bill Stacy, Vice Chair
>Teresa Adcox
>Michael Biderman
>Kathy Breeden
>Richard Brown
>Leroy Fanning
>Richard Gruetzemacher
>Richard MacDougall
>Verbie Prevost
>Skip Pond
>Clint Smullen
>Alicia Sprinkle
>Dana Wertenberg
>Stephen White

>Professional Staff:
>William Aiken
>Fred Obear


We shall need, of course, to be careful that each planning group remain
aware of each other's work and that we not duplicate nor unnecesarily
contradict each other.  Our SACS effort will give us a very fresh picture
of our institution and offer us precisely the data the institution must use
in the continuous planning of mission, purposes, goals, objectives,
strategies, funding, and evaluations to prepare its students for successful
mastery of the obligations and opportunities of the 21st century. We shall
need frequent communication with our SACS team - and need to be careful to
give them necessary primacy at times in the planning and evaluating
processes. The most deliberate linking of the SACS effort and university
oversight committees is the University Institutional Effectiveness (Sub)
Committee.  That body is a specific SACS committee and the university's
regular oversight committee simultaneously.

Although this memo has already taxed your patience and perserverence with
its length, I cannot resist reflecting a context for our planning offered
by one of the nations's foremost educators.  Governor Zell Miller told the
annual meeting of the National Association of State Universities and Land
Grant colleges this year:

     "What education really needs to give to students is a mind that is by
habit questing and inquisitive...a mind that sorts out new information and
integrates with what is already known...a mind that is not only comfortable
with change and diversity, but anticipates it and even seeks it out...a
mind that will be the foundation for the lifelong intellectual inquiry that
will serve its owner well, not only as a job skill, but in all other
aspects of life.

     As we look to the 21st century, it is absolutely essential that our
students learn to negotiate a complex economic and technological
environment. Higher eduction must strengthen its programs to meet the
demands of a technology-driven, global economy.  But at the same time, we
must not forget that education is about more than money.  What you do on
your campus must be as essential to living as it is to earning."

Such a context reminds us that a university is an active "doer", never
merely a passive "being". What are we to do?

I look forward to continuing to work with you.

Bill Stacy