Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Arnett Mace will retire as provost at the end of the calendar year, said President Michael Adams Thursday.

Adams broke the news to a crowded Chapel near the end of his annual State of the University address.

“We’ll begin a search [for a replacement] here in the next six weeks or so,” he told The Red & Black after the address. “We’ll do a national search, and I think we will have some strong internal candidates and external candidates.”

Adams said he has asked Mace to continue to serve on a part-time basis for another two years to help with the new medical school – the Medical College of Georgia – and to “assist with a few key donors that provide promise for the University of Georgia going forward.”

During the address, Adams called attention to the Archway to Excellence campaign, a seven-year fundraising venture that ended in June 2008 and raised $653.6 million in gifts and pledges.

“Few of the funds go toward operating expenses,” he said, noting that many of the gifts and pledges are restricted to be used for specific purposes, programs or projects.

Adams spoke about the economic challenges the nation and University have faced in the past year, and said “there was relatively little impact from the budget crisis [on students] in ’08.”

“The imposition of the $100 student fee does require our students to assist with the management of the situation,” he said.

“I wish the hardships placed upon the faculty and staff and particularly those at the lower end of the wage scale were not as significant as they were.”

Adams said the University is “infinitely stronger than it was 12 or 20 years ago,” and enumerated the five actions he said the University must undertake to continue to generate revenue.

Shift fundraising efforts to school

“What we will see in the next few years is a shift from overall generic University-based fundraising to a focus on school, college and unit-based fundraising,” Adams said.

He said the responsibility will shift to the individual colleges and schools to build support among their constituencies to provide for future fundraising efforts.

“The task at hand is to identify those people, build relationships with them and connect their resources to our needs as we did so successfully in the Archway campaign,” he said.

Increase faculty’s grant fundraising

Adams said the University’s research grants “are now on an upward trajectory” and faculty must be more aggressive in pursuing grant funding.

“I have no doubt that there is additional research currently underway at UGA that is deserving of such funding, if we are willing to do the work of seeking it and applying for it,” he said. “In what is a very competitive grant environment, we simply have to do more and do better.”

Increase salaries with tuition hike

“We must raise tuition at least to the mid-range of Southern Regional Education Board flagships,” Adams said, noting the University has some of the lowest tuition on the list.

He said University tuition is below our comparable Southern institutions with the amount of $80 below Alabama, $300 below Tennessee, $2,700 below South Carolina and $1,500 below Kentucky.

“To pay faculty and staff adequately we will have to move tuition over time to the middle of the [Southern Regional Education Board],” he said.

Fund academics with auxiliaries

Adams said he will recommend to the Cabinet that the University assess a percentage of auxiliary revenues to support the academic mission of the University. Auxiliary units include athletics, housing, student activities, food services, transportation and parking.

“The University provides central administrative and leadership support to the auxiliaries, and they all ultimately rise and fall on the strength of the academic program,” he said. “Nobody comes to UGA, after all, for our parking.”

Increase credit hour production

Credit hour production and enrollment have remained flat for the past five years, and the University must produce more credit hours, Adams said.

“Call me biased, but I believe a credit hour at the University of Georgia is the very best credit hour in the system,” he said.

“With new facilities in Gwinnett and new facilities in Griffin and Tifton, we have some substantial potential for enhancing the University’s bottom line.”

Adams urged the audience to “remember that the only end of this resource acquisition is to better serve students and faculty.”