ATHENS, Ga. (AP) -- A new strategic plan for the University of Georgia calls for more spending on research, but funding is uncertain.

The plan aims to hire star researchers.

It also calls for new and renovated buildings, increased graduate enrollment and more compensation for graduate workers.

But funding is a question.

Georgia will get about $389 million this year in state funding, or $53 million less than a decade ago. Increases in tuition and fees are making up the lost revenue to help pay for a budget that's increasing.

The associate provost for academic planning, Jerome Legge, says the strategic plan is a blueprint for where the school wants to go.

Legge says a committee that developed the plan is trying to set goals and be optimistic.

ATHENS, Ga. -- Meghan McNeeley grew up listening to stories about D-Day from her grandfather, a World War II veteran.

"I was doing a report on D-Day, and he saw me with the encyclopedia," McNeeley said of her grandfather. "He takes the encyclopedia and starts telling me about D-Day to me like it was a story."

Despite her love of history as a child, McNeeley went to college and majored in math. After college, she became an English teacher at Clarke Middle School in Athens.

Then, in 2006, her love of history led to her applying and receiving a fellowship to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

She and three other teachers developed a curriculum called "Road to Auschwitz" which is now taught to eighth graders throughout the Southeast.

ATHENS, Ga. -- Anissa Johnson, principal of Fowler Drive Elementary School in Athens, is serious about getting her students to read.

In fact, she's so serious that she is willing to climb onto the school's roof, if it means the children will pick up books on Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) Day.

DEAR Day is Friday, Nov. 16 and caps off National Young Readers Week, an event co-sponsored by Pizza Hut and the Library of Congress.

"On Friday, everyone is participating in Drop Everything and Read Day, and to highlight the importance of reading, I will be staying on the roof the entire day until they read me down," Johnson said in a statement.

Fowler Drive Elementary students will keep in touch with Johnson through FaceTime, while the school PTO will make sure she is supplied with lunch and hot chocolate. Even the Athens-Clarke County Fire Department is getting in on the action; it will help Johnson get on and off the roof.