I. Welcome

Good morning and welcome to the 2026 Institute Address.

To our returning Yellow Jackets, welcome back. To all our new students, faculty, and staff — thank you for choosing Georgia Tech. We’re honored to have you on the team, and we’re grateful for everything you’ll do to develop leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition.

Our leadership team has some new faces, and I’d like to acknowledge them.

• Raheem Beyah became our provost last November, after serving since 2021 as dean of the College of Engineering and Southern Company Chair.
• Karin Elliott just started her new role on Sept. 1 as interim vice president and chief human resources officer. Karin comes to Tech after 14 years with the main office of the University System of Georgia.
• Michael Gazarik was named director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute and senior vice president in January. Gov. Kemp has since appointed him to the Georgia Joint Defense Commission. Mike came to us from a university in Boulder whose football team is going to lose to Georgia Tech tonight.
• Mitchell Walker, longtime faculty member and former chair of the School of Aerospace Engineering, is our new dean and Southern Company Chair of the College of Engineering.

We also recently said farewell to Nelson Baker, former dean of Professional Education and the inaugural interim dean of the College of Lifetime Learning, and to Mark Nolan, Tech’s first associate vice president of Corporate Engagement. We’ll miss them both. Additionally, Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences since 2019, will be stepping down on Nov. 1 and returning to the faculty. She and I began and will wrap up our service the very same day!

I want to welcome other leaders in this room who represent and lead some of our key constituencies: Monish Soniminde and Rosie Kim, our undergraduate and graduate SGA presidents; Adam Steinberg, secretary of the faculty; Angus Wilkinson, chair of the Faculty Executive Board; Cedric Trice, chair of the Staff Council; Dene Shehane, president of the Alumni Association; and Al Trujillo, president of the Georgia Tech Foundation. Thank you, all of you.

This is my seventh and last Institute Address. So, I’ve thought hard about what my last message to you should be, and I decided on three things.

One: The state of the Institute is strong — stronger than it’s ever been, actually, and in ways that respond to the issues that have led many Americans to lose confidence in higher education.

Two: We didn’t grow stronger because the wind was at our back. We beat the odds and grew stronger because of people, and I want to be precise about the indispensable roles that certain members of our community have played during an especially challenging time for American universities.

Three: Transitions are never easy, but this is the right time for us to go through one. And I want to explain why I believe that and why I will leave here with more confidence than I’ve ever had.

Let’s start with the state of the Institute.

II. The State of the Institute Is Strong

Ask an American what’s wrong with universities right now, and you’ll hear a fairly consistent litany of issues. They cost too much. They serve too few. Students take too long to finish or don’t finish at all — and even if they do, the degrees don’t pay off. University research is disconnected from anything that matters. They are not open to diverse ideas. And the whole enterprise takes far more from the public than it gives back.

These are serious indictments. And while I don’t think they are fair descriptions of Georgia Tech, I also don’t think we get to respond to these criticisms with press releases. We need to respond with results.

So, let me go through that list one item at a time. When we agreed to the goals in our strategic plan, we deliberately set out to measure ourselves against the exact things the public said it wanted from us. When it would have been easier to retreat into familiar measures of prestige and protect the status quo, we chose to double down on our impact.

Here’s what came of it.

1. “College costs too much.”

In 2019, an in-state undergraduate year at Georgia Tech already cost $14,500 less than the average of our peer institutions. As of 2025, that gap had grown to $19,600. While tuition elsewhere went up, ours went down.

Even with the increase that took effect this semester, in-state tuition and fees are $590 lower than they were in 2019 — a 4.7% decrease in nominal dollars, seven years later. If we adjust for inflation, attending Georgia Tech this year is nearly $4,400 cheaper for Georgia residents than it was in 2019. That’s a 27% cost reduction in real terms for a degree that has become worth considerably more during the same period of time.

2. “Students finish late or not at all — and even if they do, the degrees don’t pay off.”

If you come to Georgia Tech, you have a 94% chance of graduating within six years — that’s four points higher than it was in 2019 and one of the highest rates among public universities in the nation. It is true that, nationally, less than half of students graduate in four years. But, at Georgia Tech, three-quarters do, and that number keeps growing every year.

Then, 10 years after they walk across the stage, our alumni earn a median salary 73% above the national average for graduates of other four-year institutions.

A Georgia Tech education is one of the smartest investments a family can make. That’s not a marketing tagline. It’s math. And any media outlet that does the numbers reaches the same conclusion: Georgia Tech offers the best value among public universities in the nation — as The Princeton Review has stated for three years in a row, for example.

3. “Universities are elitist and exclusive — they measure themselves by how many they turn away.”

We are indeed a very selective university — one of the three most-selective public universities in the nation, to be precise. But that’s a byproduct of surging demand that has outpaced our capacity to grow, and not the result of a plan. Over the past eight years, our applications have doubled. 

We said our success would be measured not by how many students we reject, but by how many lives we change. And by that measure, we’ve never had a greater impact.

Since 2019, Georgia Tech has grown its annual enrollment by more than 20,000, or the equivalent of three to four average American colleges. Our entering first-year class alone has grown by more than 1,000 students, and we did that while improving our graduation rates and increasing the value we provide our students.

We expanded access. We closed achievement gaps. We grew financial aid while holding tuition down. We went to every corner of our state to teach computer science, to find talent, and to carry the message that exceptional students are welcome at Georgia Tech regardless of their circumstances.

We added more than 900 low-income Pell Grant recipients — an area where we have traditionally not done well — and delivered to them one of the best graduation rates in the nation.

We built programs that meet people where they are in their working lives and help them keep up with changing workplace demands and advance their careers. Our online master’s degrees are a global model in this space, and the College of Lifetime Learning is helping us scale our offerings to serve more learners in more ways.

Nationally leading growth with nationally leading quality. Value and impact instead of exclusivity. It turns out there was enormous unmet demand for universities to offer this combination, and we are nowhere near satisfying it.

4. “Universities are not open to diverse ideas.”

We have made free expression and viewpoint diversity an enforced commitment, not a slogan: clear, content-neutral rules that are consistently applied and a campus that’s open to speakers from across the political spectrum. We invite, welcome, and never cancel speakers, no matter their political affiliation — even when there is mounting pressure from either end of the political spectrum for us to do so. We have teamed up with independent watchdog organizations to improve our approach to campus speech and freedom of expression, and we have received top marks for our work. 

Coinciding with the 250th anniversary of our nation, we launched the  Tennenbaum Family Institute of Technology and Civic Leadership to ensure our students grow as productive, open-minded, and engaged leaders who are ready to work across ideological lines to get the job done. Yellow Jackets should be prepared to lead on critical issues affecting our society, and this new institute will help equip them to contribute to public debate with civil dialogue grounded in science-based, multidisciplinary, non-partisan perspectives.

And, while perhaps only an indirect metric, we have the highest first-year retention rate of any public university in the nation — more than 98%. Our students don’t seem to be rushing off to find other schools that might make them feel more welcome than Tech already does.

5. “University research is disconnected from real problems.”

A breath test that screens for cancer early and increases chances of survival. A custom, 3D-printed tracheal splint that enables children with collapsing windpipes to breathe and grow normally. Skin patches that deliver vaccines and medicines with no needle, no refrigeration, and no trip to a clinic. Satellites that are stronger, lighter, and more durable. Batteries that hold more energy, last longer, and can be recycled. Better, cheaper solar panels. Radar systems that keep our troops and our nation safe from enemy forces. Exoskeletons that support people with missing limbs or limited mobility. New ways to mine the rare earth minerals that modern technologies depend on. Vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that will one day transport people and cargo around cities and regions safely and sustainably.

The research we do improves lives. It saves lives. And we do a lot of it. More than most universities.

During this past fiscal year, we set another record: $1.54 billion in sponsored research awards, up 4.4% over FY2025, alongside $1.35 billion in expenditures — our second-highest total ever. For five straight years, we have run the largest research enterprise in the nation among institutions without a medical school. We are now No. 2 in federally sponsored research. In 2019, we were No. 9. Federal funding has increased 70% in that time.

We did all this during what may be the most turbulent period American research universities have ever faced.

6. “Universities take more than they give back.”

Georgia Tech’s research, innovation, and community programs put $6.3 billion into Georgia’s economy every year — up 61% from 2019 and more than a quarter of the combined economic impact of the entire University System of Georgia.

Tech Square, Science Square, and the Creative Quarter — the products of two decades of deliberate work with public and private partners — have created an impressive innovation hub where entrepreneurship thrives. We built an end-to-end innovation cycle — lab to classroom to incubator to accelerator to market — and the engine is humming. Talent attracts capital. Capital attracts companies. Companies attract talent.

We have moved from No. 48 to No. 19 in the world in patents issued to our faculty. Last year, our faculty and students launched 179 startups, compared to 57 in 2019. Those aren’t academic papers on a library shelf — which we’re proud to produce, too. Those are payrolls. Those are marketable innovations that drive further growth — all right here in Georgia.

Then there are the companies we didn’t start that come to Atlanta and set up shop around our campus — and sometimes, as in Tech Square, right in the middle of it! — so they can get access to the unmatched talent and innovation coming out of Georgia Tech. 

That’s not a university extracting value from the public. That’s a university working with the state to grow a globally competitive economy and help its city become one of the top five innovation hubs in this country.

Demand for a Georgia Tech degree is at an all-time high because the value of a Georgia Tech degree has never been greater. State and philanthropic support are at all-time highs because our quality, scale, and impact have never been greater. Our research enterprise has never been stronger because our research has never done more to make this state and this nation safer, healthier, and more competitive.

The public’s confidence in higher education is not something we can lecture our way back into. It must be earned. Georgia Tech is earning it. Every day. 

III. Why We’re Doing Well (And Why It Isn’t Luck)

Now, I want to be very clear about something because it would be easy to hear those numbers and conclude that we simply caught a good wave.

We didn’t. 

I had been in this job barely six months when Covid hit, and we had to figure out how to run a research university amid the worst public health crisis of our lifetimes. We went through periods of intense social and political upheaval. We absorbed landmark legal rulings and policy changes that forced us to rethink how we recruit and serve students. Nationally, enrollment was declining while the public openly questioned whether a degree was worth buying at all.

And our research took hard hits. Litigation. Federal investigations. Terminated contracts. Threats of changes to cost-sharing models that would shift substantial expenses onto institutions. Barriers for international students and researchers. Broad funding cuts. And underneath all of it, an artificial intelligence–driven disruption of how people learn and work that no university has fully reckoned with yet.

Not one of these things was a tailwind. We weren’t cruising with the wind behind our sails. We found ways to sail right up against it.

So, if it wasn’t favorable conditions, why Georgia Tech did so well?

First: the people of this Institute.

Our faculty, our staff, our researchers, and our students. Resilient. Resourceful. Gritty. Creative. Collaborative. Genuinely, obnoxiously smart. Deeply committed to our mission.

I have worked at several institutions. I have never seen a community that responds to being told something is impossible the way Georgia Tech does. When the pandemic hit, nobody waited for instructions. When federal funding got cut, nobody sat back. When we were told you couldn’t serve more students without sacrificing quality, we begged to disagree. That instinct — to get in a room, think big, set an audacious goal, and then go do the unglamorous work to get it done — is the fuel this place runs on. Everything I’ve described this morning is downstream of it.

Second: a state that invests in higher education.

Georgia has made a choice that other states have not. Georgia Tech’s state appropriations now stand at $641 million a year — that’s nearly double what we received in 2019. To generate that kind of financial support from an endowment, we would need $14 billion in unrestricted funds.

That’s not an accident of politics; it’s a deliberate strategy proven by results. Our leaders at the Gold Dome invest in us because we have demonstrated, year after year, what the public gets in return for their tax dollars. But I want to be clear that Georgia’s approach to higher education is a genuine advantage, and it’s one many of our peers do not have.

Gov. Kemp believed in us. Leaders of both parties in the legislature believed in us. Chancellor Perdue believed in us. I thank them all.

Third: alumni who show up.

We launched the most ambitious fundraising campaign in the history of this Institute, and we exceeded our goal of more than $2 billion 18 months ahead of schedule. And, with your help, we’d love to shatter that goal and set even more records!

Donors have given us their money, their business judgment, their political savvy, and — in some cases — their entire estates (thank you again, Mr. Durstine!). Time and again, when we needed something, when we needed to get somewhere, a Yellow Jacket opened the door.

There’s a reason for that, and it’s worth naming: People who went here believe this place changed the direction of their lives. They’re not making a donation. They’re investing in a school that they know will change the lives of many, many others.

Fourth: a leadership team that is genuinely in lockstep.

No plan, however ingenious, produces this kind of momentum without the right people running it. At Georgia Tech, we don’t just have a set of impressive individuals leading this place, but a truly high-performing team.

Provost Raheem Beyah — a product of Atlanta Public Schools who came here as a graduate student and rose from faculty to research administrator to dean to provost — is leading us through this period of major growth and helping us navigate the world of AI. AI is changing how we live, teach, learn, and work. And we’re leaning in and trying to lead this disruption. Georgia Tech has a proud history of staying ahead of major technological shifts, and Raheem intends to keep us there.

Tim Lieuwen — another Georgia Tech alumnus who joined the faculty, then became the director of the Strategic Energy Institute, and now leads our entire research enterprise — has helped us navigate the most difficult period for research universities that any of us can remember and is fully engaged in national efforts to improve our science and technology systems. 

Together with the Georgia Tech Research Institute’s new director, Mike Gazarik (yet another alumnus), Tim has led the Institute to another record in research awards even as he finds creative ways to address the areas threatened by the recent changes and challenges at the federal level. We are building new industry partnerships, finding new sources of funding, and connecting faculty and graduate students who have been affected by lost funding with other research needs on campus. Our research enterprise is larger, more impactful, and nimbler today than it has ever been.

Tricia Chastain, our executive vice president for Administration and Finance, and her team run the machinery that makes everything else possible. A university of 59,000 students with a $1.5 billion research enterprise requires people, places, and money going to the right things at the right time. She may be a proud University of Georgia bulldog, but I could not dream of anyone more dedicated to Georgia Tech’s success. 

State appropriations reached an all-time high on her watch because her shop earned that trust and proved that Georgia Tech delivers on its promises and the investments the public makes in us. You can see the tangible impact of her leadership across the Institute. Last month, we opened the Bud and Val Peterson Residence Hall, reopened Brittain Dining Hall after a complete renovation, added new dining services in the John Lewis Student Center, got the new George Tower and Scheller Tower ready for business, and welcomed the largest first-year class in our history. 

Ron Johnson, senior vice president for Strategic Initiatives and chief of staff (and yet another alumnus), oversees this team of expert executive leaders. As chief of staff, Ron supports the team’s decision-making and execution — somewhat like an orchestra conductor. He brings the leaders together, finds creative ways to reach consensus in support of the Institute’s overall strategic goals, ensures everything is accounted for, and then keeps the ship sailing in the right direction. 

Before he came back to Tech, he spent 32 years in the U.S. Army, rising to major general and chief operating officer of the Army Corps of Engineers. He led the $18 billion reconstruction effort in Iraq and commanded the Army Installation Management Agency — an $8 billion annual budget and more than 80,000 people. Ron has, quite literally, seen it all. He is unflappable, and he brings people together to address complicated issues and pursue complex initiatives that would otherwise stall.

Behind them and alongside them, there’s an exceptional team of leaders. Our amazing deans, the staff in Raheem’s and Tim’s offices, Institute Communications, Institute Relations, Legal Affairs, Development, Student Engagement and Well-Being, Athletics — add the teams at the Alumni Association and the Foundation. We simply couldn’t be in better hands.  

IV. The Right Time to Pass the Baton

All this brings me to my third and final message for this morning.

You’ve heard me compare this job to a relay race.

We are not running a solo race here. We’re on a multigenerational team carrying a shared mission — and the runner’s job is not to win an isolated race. It’s to take the baton cleanly, run their leg as hard as they can, and hand it off well.

I took the baton in a good position. So much of what earns us recognition today grew from the work and ideas started by the two presidents before me. G. Wayne Clough and Bud Peterson are icons in the recent history of American higher education, and Georgia Tech would look nothing like it does today without them. I didn’t inherit a turnaround. I inherited momentum, and my job was to add to it.

Here’s what I’ve learned about relays: The best handoffs happen at full speed. Not when a team is limping and not when it’s regrouping, but rather when the momentum is strong, the baton is secure, and the next runner is already moving.

Look at where we are. Enrollment, research, state support, philanthropy, and economic impact are all at record levels. We are several years into a strategic plan that is working and that our community believes in. Our newest leaders are in place and past the learning curve. The executive leadership team is in lockstep. Students want to come here. Companies want to move here to work with us and hire from us. Government agencies bring us their hardest problems. Donors want in on all the amazing work being done here every day.

That is what a team running at full speed looks like. Transitions are never easy. But the timing for one could hardly be any better.

I’m not leaving because the work is done. The work is never done, and the next president will face challenges none of us can see from here. I’m leaving because this Institute is in a strong position and in very good hands — and because a relay is not about any one runner. It’s about the team.

You’re going to be fine. You’re going to be better than fine. 

V. Closing

Let me finish with something personal, and then I’ll get out of the way.

I first came to Georgia Tech in 1991 as a graduate student. I was a first-generation college graduate from Madrid — a computer and electrical engineer who had gotten it into his head that he wanted to study cognitive science. Georgia Tech gave me that chance. That chance changed my life. Everything I’ve done in the 35 years since traces back to a decision that someone in an admission office made about a kid from Spain.

And then, in 2019, I got something almost nobody gets: the chance to come back and lead the place that made me.

Serving as your 12th president has been the honor of my career. I don’t say that as a formality. I’ve had the enormously good fortune to spend seven years working alongside some of the best people in higher education anywhere — to do work that truly matters and makes a huge difference in the lives of countless thousands — at the institution that set the course of my own life. There isn’t a version of my career that beats that.

I want to say a word about Beth.

When Georgia Tech hired me, it got quite a bit more than it paid for. Beth has served this place with a passion and a generosity that has nothing to do with any title and never did. She’s the one who remembered the alum’s name and asked about their sick parent. The one who never turned down an invitation to volunteer her time and speak about well-being at a staff retreat. She’s the one who hosted dinners, who showed up at the events big and small, who noticed the person standing by themselves at the edge of the room and went over. A lot of what people describe as the warmth of this community, or my own, has come from Beth. She’s poured more of herself into Georgia Tech than most people will ever know, and she did it with great joy, without expecting anything in return.

And to this community — students, faculty, staff, researchers, service personnel, entrepreneurs and inventors, donors, our partners in government and industry, everyone in this room and everyone who couldn’t be here today — thank you. Thank you for letting me do this. Thank you for what you did with these seven years. What we built, we built together, and none of it was inevitable or easy.

Beth and I will always be part of this family. We will be cheering for this place, supporting this place, and telling anyone who’ll listen what happens when a great public institution decides to serve.

Take care of Georgia Tech. It’ll take care of you — I’m proof. 

OK, one last, last thing before we go, I promise. It’s very important. 

Today is game day! And I hope you’ll be there to cheer on the mighty Yellow Jackets!

Our athletic teams are our absolute best ambassadors, and I am proud of how well they represent us. Before people learn about our research or our amazing degree programs, millions of viewers across the country will watch our students play football tonight, and for three hours, the words “Georgia Tech” will mean something to people who might otherwise never think about us at all.

To our student-athletes, our coaches, and our athletics staff: Thank you. You carry our name further than almost anything else we do. And you’ve got a job to do tonight.

Thank you. Go Jackets. And let’s sting some Buffs.