Current Initiatives

About the Initiatives

The Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Outreach’s (OVPPSO) primary strategy for redefining the university’s service and outreach mission has been to adopt an initiative-based approach to university outreach. The goal is to encourage teaching, research, and outreach activities that address five interconnected initiatives. Current initiatives include:

  • The Community Economic Development Initiative
  • The Changing Demographics in Georgia Initiative
  • The Internationalization Initiative
  • The Civic Engagement Initiative
  • The Academic Pre-Collegiate Initiative

Community Economic Development

A major focus of the University of Georgia’s outreach activity is to offer programs that foster economic development of businesses and communities throughout Georgia and globally. Since 2000, the Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Outreach has been realigning resources to strengthen collaboration among university units to better meet the economic and community development needs of the state.

Activities that fall under this initiative include:

  • The Archway Partnership Project - a pilot project in Moultrie, Ga., where University and community partners are addressing community issues;
  • Partners for a Prosperous Athens - a community project to end persistent poverty in Athens-Clarke County;
  • The Poverty and the Economy Initiative, which also administers a poverty research grants program in collaboration with the UGA Research Foundation.
  • Georgia Women Entrepreneurs (GWEN) began offering technical assistance to help female-owned businesses grow and prosper.
  • The Office of Minority Business Development provides assistance to minority entrepreneurs by identifying procurement opportunities, finding sources of capital, and providing support for outreach efforts of minority business people in Georgia.

Internationalization Initiative

The OVPPSO supports programs and activities related to service-learning, applied research, policy analysis, technical assistance, governmental training, and community economic development in countries around the globe, particularly in Africa; China and Southeast Asia; Mexico and Central and South America; and Eastern Europe. The goal is to connect UGA faculty members and students, as well as Georgia citizens, to global issues

Two Public Service and Outreach Units have as their core missions a focus on global outreach: The Office of International Public Service and Outreach, and the International Center for Democratic Governance, a division of the Carl Vinson Institute of Government.

In addition to these two units, each of the public service and outreach units has programs and activities that reach out to international communities.

Changing Demographics in Georgia

UGA’s focus on Georgia’s demographic profile: Georgia has a large, growing, diverse population. This is one of ten characteristics identified by Doug Bachtel, professor in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Georgia, that makes Georgia a unique state. The ten characteristics include size, growth, diversity, distribution of diversity, age, health, education, economics, agriculture, and water resources.
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Activities that fall under this initiative include:

  • UGA’s Latino Initiative - In Georgia, the Latino population has increased by 474 percent since 1990. Beginning in July 2001, UGA’s Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Outreach has supported efforts to identify and address issues facing Georgia’s Latino population such as education, wellness, leadership, and community economic development.

Civic Engagement Initiative

The Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Outreach supports programs and activities that strengthen the connections of teaching, research, and outreach to society’s needs by encouraging the scholarship of engagement by faculty members, and by providing service-learning opportunities for students.

During the 2002-2003 academic year, the Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Outreach partnered with the Office of the Vice President for Instruction to create the Office of Service-Learning.

The goal of the Office of Service-Learning is to provide campus-wide support to faculty members who wish to develop academic service-learning opportunities for University of Georgia students. Special attention is being given to form or strengthen collaborations among the public service units and academic units related to service-learning and civic engagement, and to create student and faculty opportunities for academically-grounded, service-learning experiences in developing countries.

Academic Pre-Collegiate Initiative

The OVPPSO is exploring strategies for enhancing institution-wide support for academically-based, pre-collegiate programming provided by a variety of units on campus.