Letter from the President

August 31, 2007

Georgia State is pleased to participate in the accreditation process, as it has given us the opportunity for comprehensive review. The focus on Georgia State's institutional mission, its effectiveness, and its quality improvement efforts has been particularly helpful.

Georgia State carries out its institutional mission primarily through two plans that work in lock-step with each other: the 2005 Strategic Plan and the 2006 updated Master Plan. Our 2005 Strategic Plan defines the university's goals and priorities by focusing primarily on internal quality to support the success of academic goals. This focus is intended to lead to assisting the state and the nation through quality graduates, economic development, and serving the public interest. The Master Plan defines our vision for the development of modern facilities to include classrooms, faculty offices and research labs that will enable Georgia State to attract top students, scholars, faculty and staff.

Following SACS standards, we have implemented even stronger institutional effectiveness measures, both for student learning outcomes as well as for administrative and support unit outcomes. These measures work together with our review processes to enable us to better focus the annual goals of our Strategic Plan, and to strategically direct our resources through annual budget planning.

Quality improvement continues to be a major focus at Georgia State. Academically, our Retention and Progression Toward Graduation initiative addresses developing a culture that is both challenging and supportive for students and that creates an environment which fosters student learning. Also, the Quality Enhancement Plan required as part of our SACS reaffirmation effort will focus on Critical Thinking through Writing. The QEP will target the enhancement of these undergraduate learning outcomes in a way that will define Georgia State graduates as having particularly high levels of these valued skills.

I am confident that the SACS accreditation visit will be a positive and valuable exercise with the goal of making Georgia State an even better institution. There has been much work done by dedicated individuals to bring us to this point, and I am grateful for all their effort. We look forward to the results of your review.

Sincerely,

Carl V. Patton
President

Letter from the President (PDF)