About the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences

The University of Georgia we know today got underway in 1801 in the humblest of circumstances in a log cabin on the edge of the wilderness. The town of Athens grew up around it. In admiration for Benjamin Franklin, the leading man of intellect in the infant United States, the institution came to be known as the Franklin College. It remained so until 1859 when the College of Law was added to begin the enlargement of the University that now has grown to comprise thirteen Schools and Colleges, and a number of Institutes, Centers, Museums, Laboratories and Programs as befits a major research university in the first years of the twenty-first century. Our Franklin College of Arts and Sciences thus served as the root from which not only the rest of the University, but the entire University System of Georgia sprang. It is still the largest and most complex College in the State.

Teaching is the primary function of the Franklin College, which strives to achieve excellence in three broad areas of instruction. We begin by enrolling freshman and sophomore students in the General Studies Division. That permits the faculty to provide valuable instruction in basic, liberal studies and the Core Curriculum. An outstanding corps of Academic Advisors guide the students through this period of study, whatever their academic objectives may be, and no matter whether or not they are mature academically. Without the resources and values accruing from such basic studies, progress in professional and other higher educational pursuits falls short of attaining the optimal state of learning for the students.

With a faculty organized into Departments and Schools in five Divisions, the Franklin College provides instruction leading to bachelors' degrees in twenty-nine basic disciplines. The desire to turn out graduates with sound values and well founded self confidence motivates our faculty members, who live to see their former charges go on to high attainment and enjoyment of life in the large world community. Records show that those of our graduates pursuing professional or graduate degrees or further training succeed at an impressive rate, as do those who enter the business and industrial worlds. The resources and values of a liberal education are the best foundations for growth in every enterprise students are likely to undertake during their post-collegial years.

Many faculty members in the Franklin College also achieve highly in artistry, scholarship or scientific research. In doing so, they offer graduate students an impressive array of opportunities to join with them as they explore the frontiers of knowledge and learn how to use systemic enquiry to help add to the fund of information central to our civilization. Graduate students work with faculty in all the basic areas in the Franklin College—in fine arts, language and literature, social sciences and biological, and physical and mathematical sciences. It is here in postgraduate studies that research and teaching mesh to facilitate attainment of the best education outcome the College can hope to provide.

The rawest undecided freshman, the committed major and the intensely engaged postgraduate—all find the best of opportunity and challenge in the Franklin College, and a talented and a dedicated faculty with whom they can work.

W. J. Payne, Franklin College Dean (1977-1988)