Seeking to Improve Conditions of Women and Families for All of Georgia

Dr. Betty Siegel

Advisory Board/Council

Dr. Betty Siegel, of Kennesaw, is Distinguished Chair of the Siegel Institute for Leadership, Ethics & Character and President Emeritus at Kennesaw State University. Dr. Siegel was the first woman to head an institution in the 35‐unit University System of Georgia and was the longest serving woman president of a public university in the nation. She was President of Kennesaw State from 1981‐2006. Under her administration Kennesaw State grew from 4000 students with 15 baccalaureate‐degree programs to an 18,000 student University with 55 baccalaureate and graduate degree programs. Dr. Siegel is a long‐time member and former chair of the Board of Directors of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU). She serves on the Commission on Women in Higher Education as well as numerous corporate and community Boards. Dr. Betty Siegel and her husband Joel have two sons who are professors and two grandsons.

Since her retirement from Kennesaw State, Dr. Siegel has implemented many global initiatives that have taken her worldwide to spread the message of leadership, ethics and character. The signature program of Dr. Betty Siegel is The Oxford Conclave on Global Ethics, an initiative in higher education launched in 2005. The Conclave serves as a catalyst for a movement to renew higher education's commitment to the development of ethical leadership, and to explore its role as a change agent for social responsibility. As a visiting scholar, Dr. Siegel spent three months in 2007 at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, developing new programs for leadership development and expansion. Distinguished speaker Frances Hesselbein, Chairman of the Board of Leader to Leader Institute and Founding President and CEO of The Peter Drucker Foundation, comments on the Oxford Conclaves she attended in 2005 and 2006:

The depth and integrity of the examination and dialogue‐‐not to mention the level of courage required to tackle the toughest issues before the university and the society‐‐were beyond our highest expectations. The vision of the planners, led by Dr. Betty Siegel, resulted in the mission that we all worked to further, and inspired us once again, moving the Conclave from "'good to great."

The report from the Conclave will...demonstrate the wisdom of meeting in a medieval college, founded over 700 years ago, where a sense of history permeated our every deliberation, underscoring the indispensable place of the university in society‐‐medieval or in our own times.

I remembered William Butler Yeats: "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." The Oxford Conclave lights a fire that leads the way. ‐‐ Frances Hesselbein

One of these initiatives, the Stellenbosch Seboka on Higher Education and Ethical Leadership: Global Perspectives in a Southern African Context is planned to be the focus of a conference of university presidents, rectors and vice chancellors from throughout southern Africa April 23‐25, 2008. Speakers at the Seboka include Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and former South Africa Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson.

The event will focus on the practical contributions universities can make towards developing ethical and socially responsible leaders for Africa. The Seboka (a Sesotho word meaning a group of people meeting for a common cause) is a joint effort with The Center for Ethics and Corporate Responsibility from Georgia State University.