Nine colleges, schools and departments offer 141 degree programs at the bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral levels on three campuses – Statesboro, Savannah and Hinesville.
Currently, Georgia Southern University’s total enrollment stands at more than 26,000 students from all 50 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and 102 nations.
Georgia Southern is partnering with the U.S. Air Force to help active-duty, National Guard and reserve personnel pursue education through the General Education Mobile (GEM) program. GEM is a landmark partnership between Air University, the Community College of the Air Force, and civilian academic institutions. Georgia Southern’s participation in the partnership makes the University one of only 96 institutions of higher learning where airmen are approved to take classes remotely.
Members of the Air Force, especially those serving in the Georgia Air National Guard, who want to pursue a civilian education in a traditional setting will be able to attend classes at Georgia Southern’s campuses located in Savannah, Statesboro and Hinesville.
The consolidation of Georgia Southern University and Armstrong State University went into effect Jan. 1, 2018, a year after the University System of Georgia Board of Regents announced the plan to consolidate Georgia Southern and Armstrong State. Georgia Southern is now the fifth largest public university in Georgia and the largest south of Atlanta.
Georgia Southern ranked in the top 5 percent of schools for gender diversity according to College Factual. In the 2019 rankings for gender diversity at colleges and universities nationwide, Georgia Southern University ranked No. 82 out of 2,486, with a gender diversity of 49.1 percent male and 50.9 percent female.
College Factual analyzed the age, gender, race and location of origin of enrolled students to rank colleges based on diversity. Georgia Southern ranked above the national average in all measures.
In 2017, Georgia Southern University established its first permanent scientific field station known as the Effingham Wetlands. The property of about 1,400 acres, is located in Effingham and Chatham counties.
Georgia Southern University’s Department of Biology is the largest center for biology research and education in southern Georgia.
Georgia Southern’s Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Computing opened the state of Georgia’s first undergraduate Manufacturing Engineering program in August 2015.
Georgia Southern University has been named a top four-year university on the Phi Theta Kappa’s 2018 Transfer Honor Roll for creating pathways to support transfer students. It was recognized on a list of only 112 colleges and universities in the U.S.
The Georgia Southern University Armstrong Campus in Savannah is a designated National Center of Digital Forensics Academic Excellence. The University is one of only 14 institutions in the country to earn this designation from the U.S. Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center.
The Armstrong Campus in Savannah was designated as the first college campus in the country to have a collegiate chapter of the National Latina Organization MANA, which represents the interests of Latina women, youth and families in the areas of education, health and well-being, financial literacy, equal and civil rights and immigration reform.
The Eagle Battalion is proud to have the largest Army ROTC Nursing program in the nation. Georgia Southern’s School of Nursing is consistently ranked among the top in the country. The strong relationship between these elite programs has ensured that our Nurse Cadets receive top quality education and experience while being held to high academic and ethical standards, preparing them for becoming both Army Officers and leaders in the field of medicine.
The Betty Foy Sanders Georgia Artists Collection, one of Georgia Southern University’s largest permanent collections, recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. The collection was established in 1967 by former Georgia first lady Betty Foy Sanders, a Statesboro native.
Georgia Southern University’s accreditation has been reaffirmed by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) through the year 2025. The reaffirmation demonstrates the University’s commitment to the highest educational standards.
Georgia Southern University received an honorable mention designation for the 2017 Climate Leadership Awards from Second Nature and the U.S. Green Building Council. The Climate Leadership Awards recognize advanced leadership in sustainability, climate change mitigation and resilience at college and university campuses. The honorable member designation is the second highest an institution can receive. The finalists included only nine four-year institutions, among them, Furman University, Duke University, two Ivy League schools and three universities from California, all widely known and supported for their commitment to sustainability. Second Nature is a national nonprofit that works to accelerate climate action in, and through, higher education.
Georgia Southern sponsors 17 NCAA Division I varsity athletics programs, 15 of which compete in the Sun Belt Conference. Rifle competes in the Southern Conference while women’s swimming and diving competes in the Coastal Collegiate Sports Association (CCSA).
The Georgia Southern men’s basketball program has finished in the top three of the Sun Belt Conference in three of their four seasons in the league. In spring 2019, the Eagles advanced to the semifinals for the third straight season in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament before the season was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic.
Georgia Southern’s football program has a rich history, winning six NCAA Division I-AA National Championships before moving up to the FBS in 2014. In that first year, the Eagles won the Sun Belt Conference with a perfect league mark and won their first bowl game in school history a year later, trouncing Bowling Green 58-27 in the GoDaddy Bowl in Mobile, Alabama. The Eagles have made three appearances in an NCAA postseason bowl game since joining the Sun Belt Conference.
The Georgia Southern men’s golf squad hosts one of the top college golf tournaments in the country each March in the Schenkel Invitational. Teams from around the country have descended upon Forest Heights Country Club in Statesboro for 40 years for the competition. In spring 2020, the Eagles entered the 41st edition of the tournament as the defending champions before it was postponed due to the pandemic.
Georgia Southern hosted the 2019 Southern Conference Rifle Championships at the ultramodern $5.8 million Shooting Sports Education Center in Statesboro. The 30,000-square-foot facility features indoor archery and firing ranges, as well as an outdoor archery range.
Student-athletes continue to earn top honors in the classroom, as the nearly 400 student-athletes who make up the Georgia Southern Athletics Department earned a 3.08 GPA for the 2019-2020 academic year. This mark surpasses the previous high of 3.01 set in 2015-16 and matched in 2016-17. It marks just the third time in department history the Eagles have posted a 3.00 or higher for an academic year. Additionally, the department’s 3.21 spring GPA is the highest semester GPA in Georgia Southern Athletics history.
Georgia Southern University’s new Center for Engineering and Research building is set to open in fall 2020. Located on the Statesboro Campus at the corner of Akins Boulevard and Forest Drive, the three-story, 132,000-square-foot building will be the new home for the Manufacturing Engineering program. The new building will house state-of-the-art applied research facilities where faculty and students will conduct research to strengthen existing companies and attract new companies to the region.It also will provide collaborative spaces for interdisciplinary research projects.
The new building housing the Waters College of Health Professions opened in the 2018-19 academic year on the Armstrong Campus. The $22 million state-of-the-art facility is being used by faculty to teach and train students in health-related fields ranging from nursing to radiology and sonography. Designed to simulate the environment of a hospital or medical facility, it serves as a model for health care training to help meet regional workforce development needs.
Georgia Southern University’s new $33.6 million Interdisciplinary Academic Building opened in the 2018-19 academic year on the Statesboro Campus. The 110,000-square-foot building houses teaching space for a variety of academic disciplines including interior design, fashion merchandising and apparel design, history, foreign languages, writing and linguistics, and international studies.
Georgia Southern University is currently working with East Georgia State College on a project to renovate a portion of the East Georgia State College – Statesboro Campus Building, located on Highway 301 South, and renovate a portion of the Nessmith-Lane Building located on the Statesboro Campus. The project is currently in the design selection phase and the design should be complete by winter 2020 in preparation for the construction phase.
What began as a simple project to repaint the Georgia Southern Museum turned into a two-year undertaking to renovate the entire building. Built in 1937 as the original library in the Rosenwald building, the Museum now is a state-of-the art exhibit space. There are now two permanent galleries. One side of the rotunda displays the ever popular mosasaur skeleton and related natural history. The other side exhibits the cultural history of Georgia’s Coastal Plain. Visitors will see a more complete natural and cultural history from 75 million years ago.
A new third gallery displays the changing exhibit. The first to be displayed is “Saints and Sinners: Salvation and Damnation in Latin American Folk Art”. The presentation examines how Europeans, Americans, Africans and their descendants wrestled with existential questions of life, death and afterlife in a uniquely Latin American way.
More than 1,500 square feet of space has been renovated in coordination with Eagle Dining Services. The renovated space offers a new Starbucks to the campus community.
A project to upgrade and expand the Health Center on the Armstrong Campus is complete. The project added a new reception area, one new exam room and addressed ADA access issues.
Plans to renovate the old Pirate Athletic Center and Volleyball Gymnasium are underway and in the design firm selection phase. The project will transform the space into a new student support area and is anticipated to provide a one-stop shop area for students to receive the support services presently provided by the Academic Success Center, Academic Advisement Center, TRIO Student Support Services, First Year Experience, Major/Career Exploration Center and the Office of Testing Services.
Bright from the Start has awarded Georgia Southern University’s Child Development Center (CDC) the highest possible accolade, a three-star rating, on its quality assessment report, Quality Rated.
Quality Rated is a system to determine, improve and communicate the quality of child care programs in Georgia. The system assigns a quality rating to early and school-age care and education programs that meet a set of defined program standards. Institutions volunteer to be observed by Quality Rated.
Georgia Southern is partnering with the U.S. Air Force to help active-duty, National Guard and reserve personnel pursue education through the General Education Mobile (GEM) program. GEM is a landmark partnership between Air University, the Community College of the Air Force, and civilian academic institutions. Georgia Southern’s participation in the partnership makes the University one of only 96 institutions of higher learning where airmen are approved to take classes remotely.
Members of the Air Force, especially those serving in the Georgia Air National Guard, who want to pursue a civilian education in a traditional setting will be able to attend classes at Georgia Southern’s campuses located in Savannah, Statesboro and Hinesville,
Georgia Southern University students performed 46,415 community service hours for the year ending July 31, 2019. The hours had an estimated monetary impact of $932,104. The Office of Leadership and Community Engagement (OLCE) hosts 17 volunteer trips every week on the Statesboro and Savannah campuses through Serve912, the office’s local service initiative. OLCE ‘s bigger community service events include the Alternative Break Program and Treasure Savannah, a biannual day of service for students, faculty and staff on the Armstrong and Liberty campuses.
City of Statesboro employees are improving their health and wellness thanks to the help of Georgia Southern University faculty and students who have customized a worksite wellness program that meets the needs of the city’s diverse workforce. The mutually-benefiting partnership not only allows for learning experiences for undergraduate and graduate exercise science students, but it also provides wellness education and programming to city employees.
Georgia Southern and Nine Line Foundation have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to promote veteran education with the help of the Armstrong Campus’ Sustainable Aquaponics Research Center (SARC). Aquaponics, or soilless farming, mixes aquaculture, the farming of fish, and hydroponics to fuel the growth of plants in water. Through the program with Nine Line Foundation, homeless veterans can enroll in the Georgia Southern aquaponics training program to learn new skills and reengage in society. The SARC, a 4,100 square-foot greenhouse, has four independent recirculating systems, each containing 900-gallon tanks capable of holding more than 100 mature tilapia.
The Department of Biology at Georgia Southern University and The Orianne Society, a nonprofit organization devoted to the conservation of amphibians and reptiles, have announced a partnership. The memorandum of understanding between the University and The Orianne Society is designed to enhance cooperation and further the mission of research and education by both partners.
Georgia Southern University’s Department of Biology is the largest center for biology research and education in southern Georgia. Thus, for its part, the department will provide access to state-of-the-art laboratory space and equipment for scientists from The Orianne Society. Access to laboratory facilities will significantly increase the research infrastructure available to The Orianne Society and will facilitate mutually beneficial collaborations with the University’s faculty and students. Scientists from The Orianne Society will have the opportunity to work as visiting scholars in the Department of Biology.
Scientists from The Orianne Society will also continue to contribute regularly to the Georgia Southern University herpetology collection, strengthening one of the largest collections of amphibians and reptiles in the Southeast.
The Georgia Southern School of Nursing has received a $1.6 million grant to help better prepare students to work in the psychiatric/mental health care field through the new Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training (BHWET) Program. The BHWET Program supports students in the Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) specialty track of the BSN-DNP program, and aims to develop and expand the behavioral health workforce for rural and medically underserved populations in South Georgia.
Jose Sanchez, a graduate student in the Georgia Southern Department of Biology, received a highly competitive National Science Foundation (NSF) fellowship to conduct ecological research at the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve in southern Chile. Sanchez was one of only three students selected to participate after a nationwide search. The fellowship was funded by a NSF International Research Experience for Students grant. The grant, administered by the University of North Texas, is designed to fund interdisciplinary research and biocultural conservation in the world’s southernmost forests.
Georgia Southern University’s School of Nursing received a $1.3 million federal grant for an Advanced Nursing Education Workforce (ANEW) project that will create innovative academic-practice partnerships to prepare nurse practitioners for service in rural and underserved communities in Southeast Georgia. The grant will create partnerships between the School of Nursing and five federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) in order to increase the number and readiness of family nurse practitioner (FNP) and psychiatric/mental health nurse practitioner (PMHNP) students in Georgia.
Georgia Southern’s College of Science and Mathematics has signed a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to allow University biology students and faculty to use the Bo Ginn Fish Hatchery as a resource to better understand the future of ecosystems in the southeastern U.S. Most of the experiments at the hatchery will explore the ways rainfall changes due to climate change will affect ephemeral ponds, which are vital habitats for many aquatic species in the region.
Georgia Southern Waters College of Health Professions Assistant Professor Tamerah Hunt, Ph.D., has teamed up with researchers from the Seattle Pediatric Concussion Research Collaborative and Seattle Children’s Center for Childhood Health, Behavior and Development to develop the program, One Team, which addresses safety and concussion awareness in youth sports. The researchers received a $1.6 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop and implement the program in ages 9-13 youth football and soccer leagues in Puget Sound and southern Georgia.
Last updated: 9/16/2020
