GRU head vows to work with Augusta

University needs community’s help too, president says.

Georgia Regents University and Augusta are on a “two-way street” where they should work together to become great, new GRU President Brooks Keel said.

Speaking last week before the Rotary Club of Augusta, Keel touted his deep roots in Augusta education, which extend back to first grade at Monte Sano Elementary School and continue through the two schools that were later consolidated to create GRU — Augusta State and Georgia Health Sciences universities.

“You don’t get much more Augusta-educated than me,” he said. Although he was just in his second week in the job, he is already excited about the potential of that consolidated school, calling it “one unbelievable opportunity we have here in Augusta.”

It is going to need some help, though, Keel added.

“We are on a two-way street here,” he said. “That street goes both from GRU into the community and it goes from the community into GRU.”

That interdependence could benefit both, Keel said.

“If this university is going to be everything I know it can be, it can- not do it without the help of this community,” he said. At the same time, “we have an obligation as a university to help this community grow and strengthen, and we have an obligation to help the economic development of this community.” That is what it will take for both to succeed, Keel said.

“My pledge to you is that if you will work with me, I will work with you so that together we can make this one of the greatest universities around and we can also make this one of the greatest communities around,” he said.

The consolidation already has seen some benefit, said Neil Pruitt, the chairman of the University System of Georgia Board of Regents.

The consolidation de- creased administrative expenses “by some 10 percent,” he said, and the system invested “over $15.3 million” during the past three fiscal years into the university.

The actual reduction in expenses is 9.1 percent, according to figures provided by the university system. The university has done an eight-year strategic plan, but Keel will be free to suggest his own changes to it so long as the Regents approve and it is in keeping with what is best and the best use of taxpayer money, Pruitt said.

“I can tell you, from the Board of Regents’ standpoint, we are very open to what it takes to have this university go to the next level,” he said.

It won’t, however, be revisiting the naming of the university, which riled many in Augusta when it was proposed; Pruitt said there was no “appetite” on the board to take up that decision again.

The Board of Regents won’t, however, be revisiting the naming of the university.

Georgia Regents University president Brooks Keel spoke of his deep roots in Augusta.