Charles B. Knapp, the twentieth president of the University of Georgia, announced in early 1997 that he would be leaving in the summer to head the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit specializing in leadership development. An economist, Knapp earned his PhD at the University of Wisconsin and then taught at the University of Texas before joining Jimmy Carter in Washington in 1976. Only four years out of graduate school, Knapp served in the Carter administration with his UT colleague Ray Marshall, who was Carter’s Secretary of Labor; Knapp was Marshall’s special assistant for two years, then Deputy Assistant Secretary for two more years, before exiting with Marshall at the beginning of the Ronald Reagan administration in 1981. Knapp then taught public policy at George Washington University for a year before transferring to Tulane University in 1982. At Tulane, he taught economics and gradually moved into administration, as senior and executive vice president. Then in 1987, he was named president at Georgia.
At the time of his appointment, Knapp was said to be the youngest president of a major U.S. research university. Despite his youth, he had solid academic credentials and experience in public policy, politics, and major-college administration. He was a popular choice for the UGA presidency, and if there were any anomalies or behind-the-scenes maneuvering around his selection, no one has said so.
Aside from a winning football team, what the power brokers who selected Knapp wanted from his tenure was more respect: they wanted Georgia’s standing in academia moved up several notches. They wanted Georgia positioned for a “leadership role in national and global research, service, and higher education.” They wanted higher test scores. They wanted more prestigious faculty. They wanted more of the state’s best and brightest high school graduates to choose Georgia instead of the Vanderbilts, Dukes, Yales, and Penns. They wanted an upgraded and expanded campus and a larger endowment. They wanted an academic reputation to match the ones the university already had for athletics and partying.
Knapp himself said his goal was that the nation’s oldest chartered public university should also be one of the nation’s best public universities. Over the next decade, he arguably delivered.
His good-bye resolution in the Georgia state senate noted that he had “emphasized the importance of teaching . . . encouraged senior faculty to teach core undergraduate courses, and . . . supported the recognition of teaching excellence” by establishing honors such as “the Meigs Teaching Award and the Russell Undergraduate Teaching Award” and through an office of instructional development to provide more resources to faculty. The senate resolution praised Knapp for sharply increasing competition for admission, higher test and grade point averages for both undergraduate and graduate students, and significantly increased research activity. “Total research expenditures rose to more than $200 million in fiscal year 1995 . . . According to the latest data, the University now ranks thirty-second in the nation in total research expenditures and first in the nation among universities that have neither medical nor engineering colleges. The University is recognized as a Research Institution I by the Carnegie Foundation,” the senate said. Knapp also helped design Governor Zell Miller’s HOPE scholarship program and was a founding member of the Georgia Research Alliance, “a highly successful partnership among private corporations and the state’s six major research universities that was created to foster technological innovation and economic growth in the state.”
In fundraising, Knapp and an alumni steering committee led the Third Century Campaign—at that time the largest capital campaign in UGA history—to raise $150 million for scholarships, academics, and new buildings. The campaign reached its goal a year ahead of schedule, and even after the end of the campaign private gifts were running more than $30 million a year. The increased financial strength allowed Knapp to preside over the opening of a a new East Campus in the run-up to the 1996 Olympics, with UGA hosting competition in gymnastics, soccer, and volleyball. New construction during the Knapp decade included the Biological Sciences Complex (1992); Ramsey Center (1995); Music Department (1996); Hodgson Hall (1996); Georgia Museum of Art (1996); Rusk Center for Legal Research (1996); and the UGA Welcome Center (1996).
Knapp was praised by those he worked with in Athens and Atlanta for building coalitions between alumni, business and corporate leaders and benefactors, private donors, and state politicians. These good working relationships included, significantly, those with the UGA Foundation. Meanwhile, Knapp also held a faculty position as a professor of economics, chaired the board of directors of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, and served on the National School-to-Work Advisory Council and the NCAA President’s Commission.
As he departed for the Aspen Institute in the summer of 1997, Knapp was leaving behind a land-grant university that on his watch had grown to more than 30,000 students, with 8,500 employees and an annual operating budget of more than $600 million. It was an institution said to be “poised on the edge of greatness as it moves with confidence into a new century and a new millenium.”
After Knapp let it be known that he planned to move on, the powers that be at Georgia began talking amongst themselves about finding his successor. An outside observer would assume such a search would be for someone similar to Knapp—a solid academic with broad experience who had been steadily climbing the leadership ladder at major universities.
There was no shortage of such potential candidates spread across the American higher education landscape, although Savannah lawyer Frank W. “Sonny” Seiler said the search committee was ultimately disappointed that no sitting president of a large research university applied for the job. “Maybe we’re too proud but we thought the job was attractive enough to get someone of that stature,” he said. Nevertheless, some 130 hopefuls did seek the position. Seiler described the search as excruciatingly thorough. Some candidates sent the committee multiple boxes of supporting documents. “It was awful,” he recalled. “I almost got hemorrhoids.”
Seiler served on the search committee by virtue of his role as president of the alumni association. UGA business professor Betty Whitten was the chairwoman. Others on the committee included Columbus liquor dealer Donald Leebern; AFLAC insurance CEO Dan Amos; federal judge Julie Carnes; Athens businessman Howard “Ed” Benson; and Albany businesswoman Henrietta McArthur Singletary. The sixteen-member search committee also included six members of the UGA faculty and staff, and the student government association president.
The committee was reasonably diverse, if skewed toward influence, power, and wealth. One thing all the members had in common was that they bled red and black. Seiler himself is a good example of the lifelong loyalty many Georgians hold for their flagship university. He is also well-known in legal circles for his successful defense of a prominent Savannah antiques and art dealer in the shooting death of a local hustler, a murder made famous by the best-selling book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Seiler was a prominent character in the book and even had a role in the movie, directed by Clint Eastwood. Seiler, seventy-five, a friendly and outgoing man, has also had roles in Gingerbread Man (1998) and The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000). But Seiler’s favorite role is as the breeder and owner of UGA’s English bulldog mascot. As a second-year law student in 1956 the newly married Seiler bought a white English bulldog puppy as a gift for his new bride. An avid UGA football fan, he took the puppy, which he named Uga, to the opening game at Sanford Stadium against Florida State. The Bulldogs won 3–0 and athletics department officials were so taken by the puppy they asked Seiler to bring the mutt to subsequent games, and a tradition was born. Uga became the official Georgia mascot and a succession of Ugas have followed (the current one is Uga VI), making Seiler’s bulldogs among the most recognizable of college mascots. Uga V’s mug made the cover of the April 28, 1997, Sports Illustrated, which named him the country’s very best college mascot.
Seiler said he thought the presidential search committee was well-balanced. He recalls lively debates over the candidates, with members of the faculty generally on one side and businessmen on the other.
“The faculty wanted an agenda that would promote multi-cultural classes,” Seiler said. “That was the first time I heard that term . . . Then tenure was a big issue. They didn’t want anything to affect tenure. And when I tell you the faculty was 100 percent this way, it’s true. We kind of felt like we were shopping for an energetic president and they were shopping for someone