Someone once said that “a good teacher is like a candle—it consumes itself to light the way for others.” For more than two centuries, professors in the Franklin College have been lighting the way in the arts and sciences, and the results have left an enduring glow across the state, the region, and the nation.

Brilliant teachers at all levels of education dedicate their working lives adding perspective to knowledge, in hopes that the end product will approach wisdom. But in a major research university there is a significant difference in how learning can happen.

Galileo said, “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” With due deference to that notable scientist, however, the world of accumulated fact has exploded since his era. Research has changed the way we examine our physical world and the ideas behind it.

And therein lies the difference in how students learn in major research universities: They are taught by professors who make major contributions to the world of knowledge.

Throughout all branches of the sciences and in the humanities and fine arts, our professors have earned national and international reputations. One of our anthropology professors this year was part of a team that discovered the first new African monkey species in decades. A microbiologist has shown for the first time (as the story in this issue reports) “that Salmonella—a widespread and often deadly bacterial pathogen—use molecular hydrogen to grow and become virulent. The discovery represents a way that diseases caused by Salmonella and other enteric infections could be lessened or even eliminated.”

The story on B. C. Wang makes clear that he is an international leader in the field of X-ray crystallography, a relative new scientific discipline that is revolutionizing our study of molecules and how they work. And another piece on Georgia Review editor and English professor T. R. Hummer reports on his amazing career as a poet and editor.

Several of the students in Hummer’s creative writing workshop from last Spring semester are doing very well indeed. Two are publishing books, several are publishing often in journals, two have their own online magazines, and one is starting his own press. A number of students have also served with him as assistant on The Georgia Review, one of America’s best literary journals.

The same is true of Wang. At least three of his undergraduate students from UGA have gone to graduate school, and two have obtained their doctoral degrees.

Babatunde Olubajo was a student in agriculture and environment sciences and participated in undergraduate research in Wang’s lab from 1996 to 1997. He graduated in 1997, joined the UGA College of Pharmacy as a graduate student in 1999, and obtained his doctoral degree in 2004.

Ryan Shanks was an undergraduate student in biochemistry and molecular biology and participated in undergraduate research in Wang’s lab also in 1996 and 1997. After graduation in 1997 he was accepted as a graduate student in the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Medical College of Georgia. He earned his Ph.D. degree in 2002 and took a postdoctoral position at the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

The point is that students in the Franklin College are learning from professors who are helping create the knowledge in their own fields, and who are among the very best scholars in the country.

In my first year as dean, I have learned astonishing things about the quality of our faculty throughout the Franklin College. Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl Buck said, “The secret of joy in work is contained in one word—excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.”

Our faculty embodies that aphorism. They know that if they do not continue to learn, what they teach will soon grow stale. The freshness—the joy, if you will—of our professors, is what makes coming to UGA special for all our students.