Georgia State University: A Century of Growth and Transformation

Georgia State University (GSU), a public research university located in the heart of Atlanta, Georgia, stands as a testament to the power of accessible education and strategic growth. From its humble beginnings as an evening school to its current status as one of the University System of Georgia's four research universities, Georgia State has continually evolved to meet the needs of its students and the surrounding community. With a motto of "Veritas valet et vincet" ("Truth shall overcome"), Georgia State has become the most comprehensive public institution in Georgia, offering over 250-degree programs across 10 academic colleges and schools.

Early Years: From Evening School to Autonomous College

The story of Georgia State begins in 1913 as the Evening School of the Georgia Institute of Technology's Commerce School. This initiative aimed to provide educational opportunities to working young adults in the expanding metropolitan area of Atlanta. At least half of the initial 44 students were "irregular," employed in local businesses. The Evening School opened in downtown Atlanta the following year.

Under the leadership of Dean Wayne Sailley Kell (1913-17), the first commerce class graduated in 1916, with all-male students employed full-time receiving three-year Bachelor of Commercial Science (B.C.S.) degrees. In 1917, with a decline in male students during World War I, Kell admitted women to the Evening School. During the economic boom of the 1920s, the Evening School thrived, with enrollment nearly doubling between 1920 and 1932.

Dean John Madison Watters (1917-25) introduced innovative programs in life insurance, real estate, and marketing, fostering ties with the business community. Directors Frederick Wenn (1925-27) and George M. Sparks further expanded the school, leading to multiple relocations to accommodate the growing student body.

In 1933, the Evening School was separated from Georgia Tech under the newly created University System of Georgia (USG), operating directly under the university system chancellor for fourteen years as the USG Evening School (USGES). Despite facing threats to its existence, the Evening School survived, largely due to the growing white population in Atlanta and Sparks' efforts to expand the curriculum and attract students.

After World War II enhanced the programs, and the GI Bill assured the Evening School’s survival. In 1947, the Board of Regents approved a merger with the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, so that the Evening School could be accredited as UGA’s Atlanta Division.

For its first four decades, the school was treated as an offsite department of its parent institution, Georgia Tech, until 1947, and UGA after 1947. Accordingly, its chief executive was called a director.

Independence and Expansion: Becoming Georgia State College

The merger with UGA contributed to the quality of the Atlanta Division. The Bachelor of Business Administration (B.B.A.) degree was approved. UGA administrators oversaw recruitment and dealt with such issues as class sizes, academic standards, probation and exclusion policies, and salary inequities. They also inaugurated art, music, and drama classes. With the chancellor’s strong support and improved state funding, accreditation came in 1952. By early 1955 enrollment in the Atlanta Division approached 8,000, and the division’s supporters were demanding new programs.

In 1955, the Board of Regents granted autonomy to the institution, renaming it Georgia State College of Business Administration. Walter Sparks, who had served as director since 1927, became the newly autonomous institution's first president.

Desegregation and University Status

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a federal mandate to desegregate the University System of Georgia caused a crisis throughout the system. Georgia State College’s enrollment began to decline, and the Georgia legislature passed a law authorizing the governor to close any public system with racially mixed schools, which could have threatened the existence of the state’s public colleges as well.

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Meanwhile, President Noah Langdale Jr. (1957-88) and Vice President William Suttles, bolstered by the accrediting agencies, deans, a growing faculty, and the Atlanta community, pushed for expanded functions. Langdale also established the Georgia State College Foundation (later the GSU Foundation) in 1958 to garner private and public financial support.

By 1969 the Ph.D. degree was available in many business school departments and in psychology, English, history, and political science. New schools and programs opened in education, the health sciences, and urban and general studies. In 1969, when the college’s fall enrollment reached 13,000, Chancellor George Simpson recommended university status. He urged GSU, as an urban university, to emphasize both academic excellence and service, and a new School of Special Studies was established to offer developmental courses to students who were poorly prepared for college work.

Growth and Development: Facilities and Academics

Over its 100-plus-year history, Georgia State's growth has required the acquisition and construction of more space to suit its needs. Georgia State continued this growth into the 1990s, with the expansion of Alumni Hall in 1991, the opening of the Natural Science Center in 1992, and the acquisition of the former C&S Bank Building on Marietta Street in 1993, which is now the home of the Robinson College of Business.

Georgia State's first move into the Fairlie-Poplar district was the acquisition and renovation of the Standard Building, the Haas-Howell Building, and the Rialto Theater in 1996. The Standard and Haas-Howell buildings house classrooms, offices, and practice spaces for the School of Music, and the Rialto is home to Georgia State's Jazz Studies program and an 833-seat theater.

In 1998, the Student Center was expanded toward Gilmer Street and provided a new 400-seat auditorium and space for exhibitions and offices for student clubs. A new Student Recreation Center opened on the corner of Piedmont Avenue and Gilmer Street in 2001. In 2002, the five-story Helen M.

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After the release of the 2006 master plan update, a host of new building activities occurred on campus. A $20 million refurbishment to the Pullen Library complex was completed during the 2006-07 school year. Multiple new units of on-campus housing were built, including the 2,000 bed University Commons in 2007, a new dormitory named Freshman Hall (later renamed Patton Hall) in 2009 and a conversion of a former Wyndham Garden Hotel and a Baymont Inn & Suites into a new 1,100 occupancy dormitory named Piedmont North. New Greek housing was built in 2010 along Edgewood Avenue. The Citizens Trust Building on Piedmont Avenue was purchased by the university to make room for offices and student services in 2007. The Parker H. Petit Science Center was completed in 2010, opening up state-of-the-art science laboratories and teaching space. In 2013, Georgia State started operating from the original home of the Trust Company of Georgia and the SunTrust Bank, the 25 Park Place Building, a 26-floor skyscraper located adjacent to Woodruff Park in the heart of downtown Atlanta. The building currently houses many academic units of the College of Arts and Sciences, including the Dean's Office, the University Advisement Center, and facilities of the School of Public Health.

The newest incarnation of the university's strategic plan gives an outline of the university's growth from 2011 until 2016 and a brief overview that will be amended for up to 2021. In 2016, an extension to the Petit Science Center was completed.

On May 31, 2012, the athletics department released a new facilities master plan. The plan includes upgrades and renovations to the GSU Sports Arena including new outdoor sand volleyball courts (which have since been completed) as well as plans to build new baseball, softball, and soccer stadiums. These would replace the current stadiums in Panthersville. In May 2014, the university announced its intentions to pursue the 77-acre (312,000 m2) Turner Field site once the Atlanta Braves Major League Baseball club moves into Truist Park in 2017. The university intends to retrofit Turner Field into a 30,000-seat open-air football stadium and build a new baseball field on the site of the former Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, incorporating the wall where Hank Aaron hit his record-breaking 715th home run.

In November 2024, Georgia State University secured $107 million to initiate significant upgrades to its downtown campus as part of a transformative plan featuring nine projects aimed at revitalizing and reimagining the campus experience. The effort was bolstered by an $80 million donation from the Robert W.

Merger with Georgia Perimeter College

On January 5, 2015, news broke that Georgia State and Georgia Perimeter College would merge. Over a year later, the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia approved the merger of Georgia State University and Georgia Perimeter College, a 2-year college with five campuses. The new school kept the Georgia State University name, and its main campus remained downtown. Georgia Perimeter became its own college within the university, renamed Perimeter College, and all its metropolitan campuses remained open. Unlike the other colleges that make up the university, students accepted to Perimeter College only have access to the five suburban campuses associated with that college and not the main campus. Perimeter College consists of five different campuses around the Metro Atlanta region. Campuses in Alpharetta, Clarkston, Decatur, Dunwoody, and Newton County each offer different amenities.

Campus and Facilities

From Georgia State's days as a single-building night school into the university it is today, Georgia State has built itself into the heart of urban Downtown Atlanta.

Key Buildings and Facilities:

25 Park Place: A mixed-use classroom and office building that houses several departments at Georgia State University. The building was previously the Trust Company of Georgia Building, and before Georgia State University acquiring the building was the SunTrust Bank Building.
Sparks Hall: The first building designed and built specifically for the school. It was designed by the Atlanta architectural firm of Cooper, Barrett, Skinner, Woodbury, and Cooper. Construction took place between 1952 and 1955 and cost about $2 million. The first classes were held in the building on April 21, 1955. On June 8, 1960, the building was named for George McIntosh Sparks, former president of the college. Currently, the building houses Undergraduate Admissions and the Financial Management Center.
University Commons: On August 10, 2007, Georgia State opened the University Commons, a US$165 million complex housing 1,992 students, occupying a city block bounded by Ellis Street, Piedmont Avenue, John Wesley Dobbs Avenue and Jesse Hill Jr.
Freshman Hall (Patton Hall): In the fall of 2009, Georgia State opened a 325-bed residence hall exclusively for freshman students, originally named Freshman Hall.
Perimeter College Campuses: Campuses in Alpharetta, Clarkston, Decatur, Dunwoody, and Newton County each offer different amenities.

Libraries:

Georgia State houses three university libraries. Additionally, many academic departments provide libraries for their students. The University Library (formerly known as the William Russell Pullen Library), housed in Library North and Library South, contains more than 1.4 million volumes, including 8,000 active serials and nearly 22,000 media materials. The library provides access to numerous electronic periodical and resource indexes (many with full text), more than 14,000 electronic journals, and about 30,000 electronic books.

Supercomputing:

On August 31, 2006, Georgia State announced that it would be participating in a supercomputing grid with the installation of an IBM P575 Supercomputer in its Network Operations Center. Through an initiative known as SURAGrid, eventually, 24 universities in 15 states throughout the Southeast United States will form the research backbone and at its peak, the network will be able to perform over 10 trillion calculations per second.

Academics and Research

GSU is one of four research universities in the University System of Georgia. News & World Report ranked GSU the No.

Research Areas:

Physics and Astronomy: Physics at Georgia State is split between physics and astronomy. Areas of research range from atomic physics, biophysics, condensed matter physics, neurophysics, nuclear physics, and physics education and innovative instruction. The astronomy program uses many observatories.
Biological Research: Biological research at Georgia State is divided into four categories; applied and environmental microbiology (AEM), cellular molecular biology and physiology (CMBP), molecular genetics and biochemistry, and neurobiology and behavior. Georgia State is currently the only university in the United States operating a BSL-4 lab (the highest bio-safety level) at level 4 conditions.
Language Research Center: The Language Research Center specializes in language research, with bonobos and chimpanzees.
Center for Behavioral Neuroscience: The Center for Behavioral Neuroscience is composed of more than 60 researchers from seven other Atlanta institutions, including Emory University and Georgia Tech. The institute was originally established in 1998 by a grant from the Robert W.
Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy: The Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy at Georgia State University hosts one of the world's most powerful optical stellar interferometers, the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy, atop Mt. Wilson, California; in 2007, this telescope array became the firually obtain an image the surface of another sunlike star. The array is composed of multiple telescopes, each containing a light-collecting mirror 1 m in diameter.

Student Life

Georgia State University offers a vibrant student life with a wide range of activities and organizations.

Student Government:

The representative body of Georgia State students is the Student Government Association (SGA). The SGA is composed of a president, executive vice president, campus-specific vice presidents, a speaker, a senate made up of representatives from each college, a judicial branch, and an election commission.

Greek Life:

Georgia State University is home to 31 fraternities and sororities: seven of the North American Interfraternity Conference (IFC), five of the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC), seven of the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC), and 12 multicultural organizations operating as the Multicultural Greek Council (MGC).

Arts and Culture:

Georgia State University makes notable contributions to the cultural vitality of the downtown Atlanta community.

Rialto Center for the Arts: A prominent cultural stage is the Rialto Center for the Arts, an 833-seat performing arts venue located in the heart of the Fairlie-Poplar district in downtown Atlanta. The venue is home to the Rialto Series, presenting the best of national and international jazz, world music, and dance; School of Music performances; the Atlanta Film Festival, and many others.
School of Music: The School of Music holds concerts featuring faculty, students, and guest performers in the Kopleff Recital Hall throughout the year.
Art Galleries: In addition, the Art Galleries, based in the Ernest G.
Digital Arts and Entertainment Laboratory (DAEL): The Digital Arts and Entertainment Laboratory (DAEL), housed in the Department of Communication, offers equipment and facilities for digital media research and production.
Cinefest Film Theater: Georgia State University operates Cinefest Film Theater, a student-run movie theater in the school's University Center. Cinefest exhibits a wide array of motion pictures including international cinema, art house films, revival house movies, and second-run Hollywood fare.

Recreation:

The on-campus Recreation Center features racquetball courts, a squash court, a 7,000-square-foot free-weight area, an aquatic center, a 35-foot climbing wall, game rooms, exercise rooms, aerobics, dance, and martial arts studios, and a gymnasium containing four basketball/volleyball courts.

Transportation:

The university provides shuttles circulating campus following four different routes. The blue route circulates from the parking lots of Turner Field to the heart of campus with stops at Langdale Hall and Sparks Hall, and is active on weekdays from 7:00 am to 2:00 am. The red route circulates between the main campus and the Aderhold Learning Center with stops at the Arts and Humanities buildinnd at the Rialto Center/Aderhold. In December 2014, streetcars returned to Atlanta for the first time in 60 years. The Atlanta Streetcar's current route transverses the campus along Edgewood and Auburn Avenues. Georgia State students are allowed access to the Georgia State Stadium parking lots just south of campus at the former site of Turner Field, although access to those lots is limited to weekdays between 7:00 am and 11:00 pm.

Athletics

The 16 Georgia State varsity athletic teams compete in the NCAA's Division I, with their football program being in FBS. They are founding members of the Sun Belt Conference. Georgia State's beach volleyball team, competes in Conference USA. The university has won conference championships in basketball (men's and women's), baseball, golf (men's and women's), softball, soccer (men's and women's), women's tennis, and beach volleyball.

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