Georgia College & State University to spotlight Coverdell
GC&SU to spotlight Coverdell
The Union-Recorder
Milledgeville, Ga.
March 19, 2005
"Paul Douglas Coverdell: His Life and Legacy," a symposium and exhibit at Georgia College & State University, will celebrate the life and career of the late U.S. Sen. Paul Coverdell with a number of activities from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. March 31.
The symposium, hosted by the Coverdell Institute at GC&SU, will be held at 2 p.m. in the Arts and Sciences Auditorium and will include two guest panels: Coverdell's Life and Public Service, addressing the late senator's accomplishments as a public servant in Georgia and the U.S. Senate; and Coverdell's Peace Corps Legacy, focusing on his years as director of the U.S. Peace Corps and as founder of the World Wise Schools.
"The symposium will reunite former Coverdell staff members and friends and reveal insights into a remarkable Georgia public servant," said Gregg Kaufman, director of the Coverdell Institute.
The exhibit titled "Coverdell: The Peace Corps Years," will open at 4:30 p.m. in the GC&SU Library. It will offer insights into a period of national and international history in which the Peace Corps served Eastern European countries, and will describe the development of the World Wise Schools Program, an outcome of a Paul Coverdell goal dedicated to educating American school children about world cultures.
An original jazz composition on the theme of liberty, by Marshall Coats, a GC&SU senior majoring in music, will be performed by a jazz ensemble after the first panel discussion. A reception will follow the symposium at 4:30 p.m.
The symposium is the first of annual spring symposiums to be hosted by the Coverdell Institute, said Kaufman. Future symposiums will examine how democracy functions in the United States and the 21st Century world, he said.
"Public servants and staff people at state, federal, and international levels will be invited to participate," he said.
Peace Corps Regional Office Manager John Eaves and his staff will be on campus to accompany Deputy Director Jody Olsen and provide recruitment information. The Peace Corps recruiters will be on campus all day, remain for the symposium and exhibit, and hold an hour-long orientation session from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the Bobcat Dining Room at Maxwell Student Union.
Other activities on campus that day include an African school room with a "living exhibit," including a teacher and students, located on the lawn in front of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences building.
Georgia College & State University received a $794,000 Congressionally-directed award in April 2003 to begin the Paul Coverdell Institute and Archives honoring Coverdell, who died in July 2000.
"The Coverdell Institute and the Archives provide Georgia College & State University with the opportunity to advance our mission to teach as if the world depends on it," said Dr. Anne Gormly, vice president of academic affairs and dean of faculties at GC&SU. "The university is committed to exploring exemplary models that foster an ethic of civic responsibility and community engagement on the part of every student, faculty, and staff member. The late Sen. Paul Coverdell offers a quintessential example of such public service."
A relationship between GC&SU and Coverdell, began in the 1990 when GC&SU launched its Peace Corps USA/Fellows program in which the university trained former Peace Corps volunteers to become teachers in rural Georgia school systems. In 1993 Coverdell helped GC&SU obtain a grant that enabled the university to expand the program.
When Coverdell left the Peace Corps to run for a seat in the U.S. Senate, he discussed donating his Peace Corps papers with then-GC&SU President Edwin Speir, a former Peace Corps volunteer. In the fall of 1996 he signed the deed of gift donating the papers to the library and in March 1997 he officially donated the papers in a special ceremony.
Coverdell received a bachelor of arts in journalism from the University of Missouri and was awarded two honorary degrees a doctor of laws from Mercer University and a doctor of business administration from Piedmont College. After serving in the U.S. Army in Okinawa, Korea and the Republic of China, he returned to Georgia to help his parents turn a small family business into a successful nationwide financial product marketing company.
In 1970, he was elected to the Georgia State Senate and was chosen by his peers to serve as Senate Minority Leader, a post he held for 15 years. In 1989, he stepped down as president of Coverdell & Co. to accept President George Bush's appointment as director of the U.S. Peace Corps, where he redefined the agency's mission to serve the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe.
Coverdell joined the U.S. Senate in 1993, where he was elected to a Senate majority leadership post. He served as chairman of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee, chairman of the Senate Republican Task Force on Education, a member of the Small Business Committee and chairman of the Agriculture Subcommittee on Marketing, Inspection, and Product Promotion.
