Dr. E. Lynne Weisenbach, currently the dean of education and founding Executive Director of the Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning at the University of Indianapolis, has been appointed vice chancellor for P-16 Initiatives for the University System of Georgia (USG), effective Aug. 1.

Dr. Weisenbach will succeed Dr. Jan Kettlewell, who will retire on Sept. 30 after 13 years of leadership of the University System’s P-16 initiatives. With Dr. Kettlewell’s guidance, the USG began working in 1995 with a variety of other partners in education on statewide P-16 (pre-school through college) initiatives. The goal of the effort is to improve the ability of students to move from pre-school through post-secondary education and into the workforce. Key to the P-16 effort are improvements in teacher preparation and in K-12 classrooms.

Dr. Weisenbach has been dean of the College of Education and a professor at the University of Indianapolis since 1993. She has been affiliated with the university since 1988 and founded the Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning (CELL) in 2001. Over the past 10 years, she has served in leadership roles at the national, regional, state, and local levels for a variety of professional organizations across the P-16 spectrum, including the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, on whose board of directors she served from 2002 to 2005; the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, where she has been a board member since 2002; and the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, where she served as a member of the State Partnership Board (1998-2003).

Dr. Weisenbach has been directly responsible for securing more than $30 million in grants and contracts from major funding partners over the past 15 years, including $15 million from The Lilly Endowment in 2001 to create the center she founded and $11.3 million from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2003 to fund high-school reform efforts in Indianapolis.

Dr. Weisenbach earned her undergraduate degree and later a specialist in education degree from Butler University. She received her master and doctoral degrees in education from Ball State University. She also completed Harvard University’s Institute for Educational Management in 2005.

The study, conducted by the Selig Center for Economic Growth in the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, concluded that $7.3 billion (66 percent) of the total economic impact was due to initial spending by institutions for salaries and fringe benefits, operating supplies and expenses, and other budgeted expenditures, as well as spending by the students who attended the institutions in FY2007. The multiplier effect of those dollars as they were re-spent in the state accounted for another $3.8 billion (34 percent).

The figures do not include spending by people who visit System campuses to attend meetings and athletic events, retirees of the University System, or income earned by System employees through consulting and other activities

“All 35 of the University System’s institutions are economic engines in their communities and the state,” said Dr. Jeffrey M. Humphreys, director of economic forecasting for the Selig Center. He found that on average, for every dollar of initial spending in a community by a USG institution, an additional 52 cents was generated for the local economy.

The study also analyzed the employment impact of the 35 institutions on their host communities. It was determined that the University System is responsible for 106,267 full- and part-time jobs—2.6 percent of all the jobs in the state or about one job in 39, according to Dr. Humphreys. He estimated that approximately 42 percent of these positions are on-campus jobs and 58 percent are positions in the private or public sectors that exist because of the presence of the USG institution. For each job created on a campus, there are 1.4 jobs that exist off-campus because of spending related to the college or university, he said. The study reported that the Medical College of Georgia and Augusta State together produce 11,000 jobs in Augusta.

“Universities and colleges are major drivers in their local economies,” said Dr. Mark Thompson, Cree Walker Professor of Economics in the Hull College of Business at Augusta State University. “These reports are always good in showing the measurable impacts that universities have on their various regions. It shows what the community gets (or can get) by partnering with its university and leveraging the intellectual capital for economic growth and development.”

The study showed that the University of Georgia, the System’s largest institution with 33,405 students, had the greatest single economic impact: $2.1 billion on the Athens area economy or 19 percent of the System’s total statewide economic impact.

Seven institutions in the metro Atlanta area—Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia State University, Clayton State University, Kennesaw State University, Southern Polytechnic State University, Atlanta Metropolitan College, and Georgia Perimeter College—accounted for 40,700 jobs and almost $4.5 billion of the System’s total.

Georgia Southern University in Statesboro had a $470 million impact and an employment impact of 5,238 jobs.

“This study demonstrates the powerful impact that the University System has on the state,” said Dr. Thompson. “Not only does the University System impact the economy, its institutions, such as Augusta State University, provide long term benefits in the way of educating our future workforce, creating cultural opportunities for our citizens, and providing volunteers for our local community.”

It has been estimated that ASU faculty and staff volunteer in more than 250 schools, civic organizations, or nonprofit agencies.

The study, which analyzed data collected between July 1, 2006 and June 30, 2007, was commissioned by the Intellectual Capital Partnership Program (ICAPP), an initiative of the USG Board of Regents’ Office of Economic Development. It updates a previous study conducted on FY2004 data that placed the University’s System’s economic impact at $9.7 billion.

The full economic impact study can be found at http://www.icapp.org/pubs/usg_impact_fy2007.pdf.