By ERIN McCLAM
Staff Writer

University President Michael Adams and a panel of speakers stressed the place of staff workers at the University and urged them to be flexible to a fast-changing workplace in the next century.

A symposium Thursday at Seney-Stovall Chapel kicked off a weekend of festivities leading up to Adams’ formal inauguration.

"You’re the ones who do the work," Gordon Maner, a public service assistant at the Vinson Institute of Government, told the more than 100 University staff who attended. "We tend to forget those who really run this place."

The afternoon’s most prominent theme was flexibility to change.

The invited panelists – Ramona Hasan, chair of the state Staff Council, and Arthur Dunning, a University System senior vice chancellor – said adapting to changing work environments will be crucial in the next century.

"Complexity has a bright future," Dunning said.

"I don’t see an organization now where resistance to change is going to be an appropriate behavior," he said.

A prepared slide presentation hailed the achievements of the five-year-old Staff Council and focused on its upcoming challenges, including safety concerns, parking and benefits.

Staff Council made statewide headlines earlier this year when it killed a proposal to extend benefits to domestic partners, both same-sex and opposite-sex, of University employees.

Adams spoke briefly after the panel discussion, assuring the staff that the work they do – such as working to make the campus more physically attractive to prospective students – doesn’t go unnoticed.

"I do think we make a mistake when we think the only thing we do here is put people in classes," Adams said.

The inaugural festivities continue this morning at 10 in the University Chapel. Robert Connor, president of the National Humanities Center, will deliver a keynote address titled "Moral Knowledge."

Today at 2 p.m. in the Chapel, University faculty will have their own symposium, also looking to the 21st century. Adams will speak at the faculty symposium.

He will be sworn in Monday morning at 10 in the Ramsey Student Center’s volleyball arena in a ceremony to be attended by Georgia dignitaries and more than 100 delegates from other universities.

Adams will take questions from students Monday afternoon at a Q-and-A session at Tate Student Center.