July 13, 2005
Hartley receives the first GC&SU Foundation Column Award
Georgia College & State University Foundation Trustee William L. (Bill) Hartley received the first GC&SU Foundation Column Award at a ceremony Tuesday in the Magnolia Room of the Student Activities Center at the university.
The Column Award acknowledges a trustee who has demonstrated exemplary service with significant impact on behalf of the Foundation and, consequently GC&SU. At the ceremony, Hartley received an original watercolor rendering by Milledgeville artist Joan Lavigueur of the former First United Methodist Church, which is now the GC&SU Student Center.
“Georgia College will be forever indebted to Bill Hartley for his innovation, his passion, and his commitment to our university,” said GC&SU President Dorothy Leland. “Thanks to Bill and the Foundation, Georgia College was able to create a residential learning community for our students, an important part of our efforts to become one of the nation’s top liberal arts universities.”
Hartley graduated from Georgia College in 1974 with a Master of Business Administration degree. He was cited as being one who “has continually shown a commitment to his alma mater, demonstrated by his service on the Foundation Board of Trustees since the mid-1980s. He has punctuated the tenure with a number of prominent leadership roles, always serving in excess of the expectations of others.”
Under his leadership as president of the GC&SU Foundation Property Limited Liability Company, Inc., a university housing project unprecedented in Georgia will be successfully completed in August of 2006.
“Bill used his significant business acumen to complete the GC&SU housing projects which would have never happened without his dogged determination,” said J. Russell Lipford Jr., chairman of the GC&SU Foundation Board of Trustees.
Hartley was born in Columbus, Ga., and spent his childhood in Macon. He entered his professional life in the kaolin mining industry at an early age while studying at Georgia Tech for his Bachelor of Science in Industrial Management degree. He spent 40 years in the Georgia kaolin mining industry and served repeatedly as president of the Georgia Mining Association. At the time of his retirement in 1999, he was president and CEO of Dry Branch Kaolin Co.
Hartley and his wife, Nancy, live in Milledgeville. They are the parents of Bryan and Michael, both physicians and graduates of GC&SU, and the grandparents of Tanner William Hartley.