October 1, 2024 Dear Friends of the McBee Institute, This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education. I am proud to report that our 60th year has been every bit as active, productive, and engaging as those that preceded it. The past year has also been marked by several transitions in faculty and staff, most notably the retirement of Jim Hearn who we honored earlier this summer for his remarkable service to the McBee Institute and for his distinguished scholarly career. You will read more about these transitions in the pages that follow as we recognize the contributions of our faculty, staff, and students who are the heart of the Institute and who are responsible for all that we do to advance the core missions of higher education: teaching, research, and service. We continue to fulfill the teaching mission of the McBee Institute through three graduate degree programs. This year we celebrated the graduation of 23 doctoral students including a 100% completion rate for the 7th cohort of the Executive Ed.D. program. This year, the Institute’s faculty and spent considerable developing a new asynchronous online master’s program, including outlining learning outcomes, designing a curriculum, and building online courses. In August, we received formal approval to launch the program next fall. We look forward to sharing more information about this exciting development that will allow even more students to join the McBee community and we hope that you will point prospective students to this new online program. Our faculty, students, and graduates continue to produce rigorous research. Their work is shared at professional conferences, published in high-impact scholarly journals, reported in other media outlets to inform policy and practice, and generously supported by foundation and federal government grants and contracts. In fact, our faculty led projects over the past year that collectively received more than $4 million in external funding support. These projects are sure to bring scholarly and practical advancements to postsecondary education. The public service and outreach mission of the Institute remains vibrant. The Governor’s Teaching Fellows program continues to help faculty from public and private colleges across the state develop their teaching skills and strategies. During the one-week May symposium, 16 fellows participated in activities related to artificial intelligence in the holistic classroom. The Georgia College Advising Corps (GCAC) continues to work in high schools throughout the state to increase college access for low-income, first-generation students. This past year GCAC advisers reached more than 5,700 high school seniors in one-on-one or small group sessions. These public service programs continue to advance students’ access to and experience in higher education. I would like to end on a personal note to say how honored I am to follow in Jim Hearn’s and Libby Morris’s footsteps as director. They have led the Institute for the 15 years that I have been part of the McBee community and we are all the better for it. I am committed to build upon their efforts to promote the spirit of McBee. One of the Institute’s enduring strengths is our sense of community. We experience this on a daily basis in Meigs Hall. I have also heard from many of you that we experience it at the ASHE conference, AIR Forum, SHEEO Policy Conference, University of Twente in The Netherlands, and many more places where we gather. Thank you for being a friend and supporter of the McBee Institute. We are excited to share the stories within about our activities and accomplishments and look forward to promoting the spirit of McBee in the coming year. All the best,Erik NessProfessor and Director
