By Mike Cavaliere

F ollowing a period of what Georgia College & State University President Cathy Cox called “pandemic instability,” the institution rebounded in the past few years with record-breaking enrollment numbers and historically high first-year student class sizes.

Expansion, however, is not the ultimate goal, Cox explained to a crowd of colleagues in her annual State of the University address, held Friday, Feb. 21, on the university’s campus in Milledgeville.

“There are strategic ways we can approach growth,” she said. “Dramatically growing our undergraduate enrollment is not our objective.”

The university welcomed its largest freshman class ever in fall 2023 — totaling 1,816 new students — then followed that with a new record-high total enrollment in fall 2024 of nearly 7,100 Bobcats. Applications also boomed for the 2024 entering class, growing by 44% over the those received just two years prior, in 2022.

These gains, Cox said, “reset” GCSU’s enrollment level, enabling “us to gain as much benefit as possible from the University System of Georgia’s funding formula, which drives our entire budget.”

That formula operates on a two-year lag, meaning that, due to enrollment levels steadily climbing after a period of pandemic-fueled decline, the institution expects to see a funding increase of an estimated $3 million in the coming fiscal year — gains that will help the university advance its mission “without changing the model in which we operate,” Cox added.

To that end, maintaining institutional differentiators — such a GCSU’s 16:1 student-to-faculty ratio, or its commitment to hands-on learning experiences — stands as priority No. 1.

“It’s vitally important that we maintain a high level of interest in our university and its distinctive manner of teaching because we can’t enroll every Georgia high school graduate, nor do we try,” she said. “We are in the enviable position of being able to control our own destiny right now.”

Cox also identified the university’s high-demand online graduate programs as a key growth opportunity for 2025, in order to address the workforce needs of the state.

Ensuring that the local and statewide communities are better off because of GCSU is also a top priority.

Bettering Baldwin County & Beyond

Georgia College recorded an economic impact in central Georgia of $308 million in 2024, which accounted for a 9% increase over its reported impact the three years prior.
Zoom in for a deeper perspective on the positive effects of the university’s community work.

The Mobile Health Unit, for example, which launched in 2024, provided 289 free health screenings to residents in underserved rural communities last year.

The Center for Health & Social Issues, housed within College of Health Sciences, also partnered with external groups to distribute 45,000 pounds of food in Baldwin County, helped raise over $85,000 for a community park in Oconee Heights and collaborated with the University of Georgia and other stakeholders to earn a $4.9 million federal grant to fund new local streetlights and other infrastructure in Baldwin County neighborhoods.

The university is also a leader in historical preservation.

One of the few paleontological exhibits in the state, and the only university museum of its kind in Georgia, the William P. Wall Museum of Natural History features more than 40,600 specimens spanning 500 million years. A free community resource, the museum hosted more than 6,680 visitors in 2024 and, since its opening in 2004, has welcomed 96,000 visitors, including more than 37,000 public school children and 33,000 state residents.

“We put a lot of our intellectual capital into our stellar museums, offering world-class educational experiences to our community,” Cox added, citing the two National Historic Landmarks owned by the university: Georgia’s Old Governor’s Mansion and Andalusia, each of which attracted about 10,000 visitors last fiscal year. The Andalusia Interpretive Center also recently earned recognition from the Georgia Association of Convention & Visitors Bureaus as a tourism site that boosts economic development.

Continuing its long tradition of stewardship over GCSU alumna/world-renowned author Flannery O’Connor’s work, the university will also unveil a newly discovered collection of visual artwork created by O’Connor on campus next month. The collection features oil paintings, a self-portrait, wood-burned illustrations and linoleum-block prints and will be open to free public viewing beginning March 26.

“It is a huge benefit for a community to have a state college or university in its midst,” Cox said. “The way we serve these communities is almost endless.”

Putting the Liberal Arts to Work

Hands-on learning experiences are also foundational to GCSU’s mission as Georgia’s designated public liberal arts university, Cox explained, and those opportunities are often created through faculty research projects.

“Our Teacher/Scholar Model asks faculty to pursue research in a different way than R-1 and R-2 institutions do,” Cox said. “We want our faculty to engage in research in which they engage our students directly in their research, as many do, or by research and scholarship that directly enhances what they are doing in the classroom.”

A total of $3.5 million in research funding was awarded to faculty to lead such projects in 2024. That investment led to 67% of all Georgia College graduates participating in undergraduate research during their time on campus, some as early as their freshman year.

Faculty projects involving mentored undergraduate research include:

• A major grant earned by GCSU faculty for continuing ongoing cancer research.
• Continued funding to train certified SANE nurses and bolster the number of nurse practitioners in Georgia.
• Collaborative, interdisciplinary projects funded by the National Science Foundation.

Cox cited other noteworthy faculty projects from 2024, including:

• Dr. Dana Gorzelany-Mostak analyzed how popular music impacted election communication in the 2024 presidential contest.
• English faculty Peter Selgin and Chika Unigwe were named finalists for the Townsend Prize for Fiction, Georgia’s highest literary fiction award.
• A poem by Dr. Kerry Neville was included in a much-lauded collection of poetry inspired by Taylor Swift.

“There are so many more great works and projects by our faculty that I would like to mention if we had more time,” Cox said. “You are using your expertise to enrich the intellectual curiosity of our students and contributing to the betterment of our larger world. In doing so, you are living out our Teacher/Scholar model.”

2024 Highlights

Georgia College’s banner year in 2024 also included the following milestones.

Rankings on the Rise: After moving into U.S. News & World Report's Top 20 for public schools in 2023, the university ranked sixth in the Regional Universities South category last year, as well as reaching No. 4 “Most Innovative Schools” among public and private regional universities in the South. The university’s graduate offerings were also ranked in the top 100 in the country and the top 5 in Georgia.

Nation’s Best Academic Success Rate: For the fourth consecutive year, Bobcat scholar-athletes scored the highest academic success rate in the country, among all schools competing in the NCAA Division II.

10-Year Re-Accreditation: GCSU met rigorous national standards set forth by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSOC) in 2024, which led to a 10-year reaffirmation of the university’s academic accreditation.

World-Class Pre-Med Program: For the past 15 years, the students in the Pre-Med Mentoring Program at GCSU have earned a 100% placement rate in medical schools.

Georgia’s Only Public Midwifery Program: The nurse midwifery concentration within GCSU’s Master of Science in Nursing degree program, which stands as the first and only public program of its kind in the state, is now fully accredited through the Accreditation Commission of Midwifery Education.

Looking Ahead

Citing the university’s ongoing improvement efforts — including the construction of a new music rehearsal hall, plans to hire more than 40 new faculty and upgrades to academic buildings and the baseball stadium, to name a few — Cox closed her presentation with a challenge to faculty and staff: Be proactive, and prioritize personal connections.

“I challenge you to consider these points in all that you do,” she told the crowd. “Most of our students chose a smaller university with a face-to-face learning environment like GCSU because they want to be a part of a community. … It is our responsibility to deliver the opportunities for meaningful personal connections and experiences in which students can learn and grow.”

Those opportunities, she stressed, are plentiful in the liberal arts, and they are what develop students into leaders.

“As the world becomes more complex, as its pace of change hastens, the ability to think, adapt, analyze and communicate becomes all the more important,” she said. “We have the momentum. And we have the caliber of students who deserve nothing less.”