Q&A: Georgia College president Cathy Cox talks goals, past and remembering Sandra Deal

Almost a year into her tenure at Georgia College and State University, university president Cathy Cox’s new strategic plan is taking form. Cox, the former dean of Mercer’s law school and Georgia secretary of state, says the university has plans to focus on skills for Georgia’s workforce and teach students underrated skills they need to succeed in jobs. In a conversation with the Telegraph in her Milledgeville office, Cox talked about these goals, her own education’s impact and the life of the late Sandra Deal. The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

You’ve been at GCSU for less than a year. What were your first impressions here? What stood out to you?

Until you get here, you don’t necessarily feel and see exactly what the school’s reputation means on the ground. Until you really understand the culture here, it’s hard to really appreciate that.

I loved this past spring going around and talking to our graduating seniors right before commencement, asking them if they felt like they had changed during their four years at Georgia College. They said, ‘Absolutely… I’ve presented my research at a conference and things I never would have thought I could handle when I came here as a first-year student.’

What new things are you looking forward to on the horizon for Georgia College?

We’re about to start in a new strategic planning process this fall that I think will help us refine a lot of ideas that are circling around the campus, but I think a lot of those things will come out of some key concepts that revolve around innovation and entrepreneurship and really focusing on the workforce needs of Georgia and the workforce goals of our students.

What are some of the values of that plan for students? The community?

Regardless of what a student is majoring in, we’re going to be preparing them with critical thinking skills, analytical skills… Those are the skills that employers say they want in someone they hire, and those are the things they don’t want to take the time to teach somebody.

Those are the things that we think we do very well through all of the high impact practices we offer in a liberal arts education. So we’re very proud of the way that we develop that in students.

We’ve talked about all these experiences for students. How have your experiences with journalism school, law school and other things helped you in your current role?

I feel like I use some of those skill sets every single day. Last night, for example, I was using my journalism skills to write and edit a statement. So I draw on those writing skills that I really worked on as a journalist and as a lawyer for a number of years…

I love to get to know people. I love to know students here and why they chose Georgia College. So that’s really the fun part of the job in addition to drawing on all of these other skills that I’ve assembled over the years.

What is one achievement you’ve had so far at GCSU that you’re most proud of?

We just had our annual GC Gives Day where we ask all of our entering first year students, on the Saturday before they start classes, to get up at 8:30 on a Saturday morning and get out and volunteer. A thousand plus of those students dispersed all over Milledgeville and Baldwin County to help in all kinds of community organizations and nonprofit places, to really do some manual labor.

I was out with them pulling weeds in a community garden. They had a great time and they really served to show the community we care about what’s happening in your neighborhood, not just on our campus. It’s truthfully the biggest service project of the year in Milledgeville in Baldwin County, but that’s just a one little illustration of the way that we want to be outside of the walls of our campus impacting our community.

Sandra Deal unfortunately passed away recently. We’ve talked about all these goals, accomplishments and experiences, along with GCSU’s reputation, and I know she played a role in those things. How did Sandra Deal impact GCSU and the people around it?

She was just a people person, you know, she never entered a room when she was wearing a smile and just embracing everyone in the room. She was the essence of all of these skills that we try to imbue in all of our Georgia College students because she cared about people.

She cared about how everyone in the room felt, she wanted everybody to be comfortable when she was in the room. She was just humbled in every aspect of her life…Just the best of the best you could ever have hoped to have come out of this University.