ATLANTA – Ricardo Azziz attended his last meeting of the Board of Regents Tuesday as president of Georgia Regents University where he got praise for the changes he brought to higher education in Augusta.
The controversial administrator is stepping down July 1, and a committee is searching for his replacement. University System of Georgia officials offered no details on how the search is progressing, keeping the spotlight on Azziz for the moment.
“I want to thank him and recognize him for all he has done, all of his leadership and accomplishments in the last five years,” said system Chancellor Hank Huckaby. “…He has led the institution through a period of unprecedented transformation.”
Huckaby rattled off a list of accomplishments: merging Augusta State University and Georgia Health Sciences University (which is the name he gave to the Medical College of Georgia) to create Georgia Regents University, raised graduation rates more than 6 percent, tripled fundraising including the largest gift in the University System, and he increased research funding to a record level for the school.
“Dr. Azziz’s contributions will have a lasting impact to the benefit of the students and to the benefit of the state of Georgia and the Augusta community,” Huckaby said.
The board gave him a standing ovation, and Azziz said he was proud of what he had done.
“I want to thank the team, the staff, the faculty at GRU and the many university leaders and so on because they believed in the greater university, and truly I am honored to have helped lead that institution,” he said.
To his list, he included the governors and chancellors he served under as well as the regents.
“I will tell you that taking risks in higher education, taking risks in healthcare, is not something that comes easy to public institutions,” he told the board. “You’ve been willing to actually experiment. You’ve been willing to take risks.”
Many people in Augusta will be glad to see him leave the presidency. They were displeased with his management style, with his support for a medical-school campus in Athens, but above all for his refusal to include “Augusta” in the name of the combined university.
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