Georgia Southern President Brooks Keel delivered his annual State of the University address to faculty and staff on Wednesday morning at the Nessmith-Lane Conference Center during the annual fall convocation.

With the theme of “Success in Motion,” Keel pointed out the dozens of accomplishments and honors achieved by the university in the last year, which include construction of Dining Commons, a new Biological Sciences Building, being ranked as one of the top 10 most popular universities in the country by U.S. News and World Report for the third year in a row and establishing a new institute for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education and research.

“As we get ready for students to return to campus and start classes on Monday, I can’t think of a better time for us to look at where we’ve been and where we are going,” explained Keel. “Our faculty are prepared, our staff are supportive and our students have never been  more qualified. A lot of exciting opportunities are ahead this year at Georgia Southern.”

Keel told the faculty and  staff that for the first time since 2008, Georgia Southern is not expecting any cuts to next year’s university’s budget.

“As this institution makes the transition to the Football Bowl Subdivision and the Sun Belt Conference, we are going to use athletics to market the accomplished academics and research being done by the faculty and staff at Georgia Southern and let others  know about our success,” he said.

Also during the convocation, Keel and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Jean Bartels presented the Faculty Awards for Excellence. The winners were:

Award for Excellence in Contributions in Service
Yasar Bodur, College of Education
Julie Maudlin, College of Education

Award for Excellence in Contributions to Instruction
Scott Beck, College of Education
Lisa Yocco, College of Science and Mathematics

Award for Excellence in Contributions to Research/Creative Scholarly Activity
John Luque, Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health
K. Bryant Smalley, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences