Atlanta — February 5, 1998

University System of Georgia Chancellor Stephen R. Portch has been named one of 21 “Leaders Inside Academe,” in the January/February 1998 issue of Change, The Magazine of Higher Learning.

Portch was profiled in a special section of the magazine’s report titled “Who’s Who - Higher Education’s Senior Leadership,” which was aimed at “identifying the most influential voices of the academy in 1997.” Portch was named to the “Leaders from Inside the Academic Community” list, among 20 others cited in the “senior leadership” section.

Portch was cited in the article as “the dynamic head” of the University System of Georgia. “With all the recent attention to Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship plan, and the general reinvigoration of higher education in Georgia, Portch has emerged as a visible spokesperson on national policy matters, including technology deployment and school-college linkage,” the article noted.

Published by the American Association for Higher Education in Washington, DC, Change is a highly recognized, peer-reviewed journal serving higher education. The publication named more than 80 people selected via the results of a nationwide survey as “the past, present and future leaders of higher education.” More than 600 names were considered as senior leaders.

The list was compiled by David W. Breneman, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, and Barry Munitz, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. The two identified the leaders from the results of 11,000 questionnaires distributed to the higher education community in early 1997, and from responses to a full-page advertisement in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and a Web site that was created to solicit responses. The criteria for narrowing the submissions also was shaped by a “Leadership Project Conference” of 21 participants tapped to “clarify academic leadership issues” and “the essential ingredients of leadership.”

The current Change issue updates two issues that were published in 1975 and 1978. In 1975, the magazine published a “Who’s Who” in American higher education that named 44 current influential leaders. In 1978, the publication followed with survey findings that identified the then “100 Young Leaders of the Academy.” Goals of the current project are to contrast the two issues, identify new leaders and assess the progress of those initially named to the young leaders list.

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