History of Georgia Tech/to Do - Research Expansion

Research Expansion

Includes the administrations of Joseph M. Pettit (1972–1986) and Henry C. Bourne, Jr. (interim, 1986–1987)

Joseph M. Pettit became president of the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1972. During his 14-year tenure as president, Pettit was credited with turning Georgia Tech into a top-flight research institution. Pettit has also received credit for shifting Georgia Tech back to its roots with regards to providing assistance with economic development within the state of Georgia. In the decades known for the Vietnam War and the launch of Sputnik, research at Georgia Tech and the Georgia Tech Research Institute had become so tied with NASA and the Department of Defense that local industrial development had been largely forgotten.

During Pettit's tenure, the Institute progressed into the top tier of technological education institutions. Under his leadership, Tech's research budget surpassed the $100 million mark for the first time in its history. Thomas E. Stelson was Georgia Tech's Vice President for Research from 1974 to 1988. Faced with a longstanding cultural war over the relative merits of basic research versus applied research, Stelson emphasized the importance of both. An increased focus on research activities allowed more funding for academics, which allowed the school's ranking to start a long and continuing rise from that of the 20s. Stelson simultaneously served as the interim director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute from 1975 to 1976, during which time he reorganized the station into eight semi-autonomous laboratories in order to allow each to develop a specialization and clientele—a model that GTRI retains (with slight modifications) to this day.

In the aftermath of the launch of Scientific Atlanta and the subsequent disputes, Georgia Tech's culture encouraged hard work, but did not encourage start-ups. This changed during Pettit's administration; Pettit was at Stanford during the development of the Silicon Valley and worked to change the culture to inspire something similar in Atlanta. "That was when Tech began actively encouraging faculty, staff and students to be entrepreneurial ... In some ways it was a shift back to our roots, with Tech beginning to reconnect with the state through the Advanced Technology Development Center, the Economic Development Institute and the Georgia Research Alliance", according to Bob McMath.

Pettit also oversaw Georgia Tech's application and admittance into the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), an athletic league founded in 1953 which included seven charter members. Georgia Tech had withdrawn from the Southeastern Conference in January 1964 and had operated as an Independent until 1975 when Georgia Tech joined the Metro Conference. Georgia Tech was admitted to the ACC on April 3, 1978. The ACC has expanded from 8 to 12 members since that time.

The Institute celebrated its centennial in 1985. Pettit and J. Erskine Love, Jr. spearheaded Tech's $100 million Centennial Campaign. A total of $202.7 million was raised during the Centennial Campaign, which was Georgia Tech's largest single fundraising effort to that date. Among other centennial observances, a time capsule was placed in the Student Center, and a team of historians wrote a comprehensive guide to Georgia Tech's history, Engineering the New South: Georgia Tech 1885–1985. In 1986, Pettit died of cancer, and Henry C. Bourne, Jr. served as interim president.