Georgia's HOPE: a system in transition - discussion with Juanita Baranco and Stephen R. Portch - Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally - Panel Discussion

Black Issues in Higher Education, Sept 19, 1996

When President Clinton three months ago proposed a

middle-class education tax credit -- called America's

HOPE Scholarship' -- key parts of the president's plan

were borrowed from Georgia's hugely successful HOPE

scholarship program.

Georgia's HOPE program, created in 1993, is

perhaps the most popular and widely known of the

initiatives that are intended to improve the state's

historically flagging education system.

HOPE (Helping Outstanding Pupils

Educationally) has provided financial reward to

more than 191,000 students enrolled in degree,

diploma, and certificate programs at Georgia's

public and private colleges, universities and

technical institutes. Students must maintain a "B"

average to meet eligibility.

More broadly, Georgia education reform has

brought, among other things: efforts to develop a

new core curriculum; tough new college

admissions standards set to begin in four

years; and mission review -- a reshaping of the

missions of the state's thirty-four public

institutions to reduce duplication, distinguish

individual institutions, and have mission

statements drive institutional programs and

activities.

Other initiatives reflect ambitious goals for

Georgia's higher education, including substantially

boosting opportunities for university system

faculty and students to travel internationally for

development opportunities and to participate in

study-abroad programs.

Georgia has set its sights on moving the

university system into the nation's top tier. Along

with Gov. Zell Miller, University

System Chancellor Dr. Stephen R. Portch and Regent

Juanita Baranco are recognized as the architects and

passionate champions of Georgia's push toward

excellence in education.

Miller has made education the centerpiece of his

administration. His championing of the state lottery as a

way to help fund education helped get him elected in

1990. The lottery's strong public association with the

HOPE program helped his re-election bid in 1994.

In 1991 he appointed Juanita Baranco, a highly

respected businesswoman, lawyer and civic leader, to

the Board of Regents. In July of 1995 she was elected

by her fellow board members to serve a one-year term

as chair. A no-nonsense leader in the mode of fellow

Georgians Andrew Young and Maynard Jackson,

Baranco has become a recognized force in both

Atlanta and the entire state of Georgia.

She served on the board that hired Portch who, in

his two years as chancellor, has charted an

aggressive, fast-paced course of reform for the

country's fourth largest university system. An ideas

man, Portch has proved deft at courting those who

might be wary of his breakneck pace for change and

of his being an "outsider" -- a native of England, he

came to Georgia following an eighteen-year career

with the University of Wisconsin System.

A number of reform initiatives have been approved

by the Board of Regents in the past two years.

Besides new admissions standards, effective in 2001,

which increase from fifteen to sixteen the number of

high school College Preparatory Curriculum units

required for student admission to all public institutions,

other companion initiatives were approved as a

way to prepare students early to meet the heightened

college requirements.

For example, the P-16 Initiative aims to align

secondary school curriculum requirements with

admissions standards for colleges and technical

schools. And the Pre-College Intervention Program

(PREP) will address the developmental needs of at-risk

seventh graders.

Georgia is among the top states in attracting

minority students to public colleges. The state's

profile in Black higher education also has been

heightened by the appointment last year of Dr.

Jacqueline Belcher as the first African-American

president of DeKalb Community College, the third

largest institution in the university system and the

election last year of Juanita Baranco as the first Black

woman to chair the Board of Regents.

Recently, Baranco and Portch came to the

headquarters of Block Issues In Higher Education. What

follows is part of the discussion that was held.

You have been dubbed "The

Dynamic Duo" for higher education

in Georgia. How do you work with

each other?

Baranco: Well, if you just start from

basics, we're both baby boomers. I guess

it is unusual to have both the chairman

of the board and the chancellor be

almost the exact same age. But aside

from being the same age ... we have

some of the same goals for the system.

Portch: Juanita pushes outside the box,

and she wants her CEO not to be

concerned with safe thinking, and not to

be pedestrian,

Do you consider this to be a very

activist board of regents? An

interventionist board?

Baranco: Oh, Lord, yes. I don't like the

word "interventionist"--that's too strong.

But we -- and this is something that I

have always understood and tried to

stress -- are really a policy-making

board. We do not have -- and I refuse to

have -- a hands-on relationship with the

staff. My job is to make sure that we

have a chancellor who is competent and

to make sure that he is

hiring competent people. Once that is

done. they're the experts. We're just

citizens.