The University of Connecticut appointed Susan Herbst president of the University of Connecticut, the first woman to hold the post in the university”™s nearly 130-year history.
Herbst, 48, replaces Michael Hogan, who left the job after just three years to become president of the University of Illinois.
Herbst is executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer for the University System of Georgia, overseeing 35 public universities in Georgia. The system has more than 311,000 students, roughly 10,000 faculty members, and a budget of more than $6 billion a year. She has been with the Georgia system since 2007. In addition to teaching public policy at Georgia Tech, she is author of several books including a treatise on incivility in American politics titled “Rude Democracy,” published in September.
Herbst assumes the UConn job in July, but said she will travel frequently to the state beginning in January to meet with interim president Philip Austin.
“UConn is prospering as an institution and is on a strong upward trajectory; yet our future is not without challenges and obstacles, particularly as we head into a very difficult budget year, in which the state must overcome a large deficit,” said Larry McHugh, chairman of the UConn board of trustees and head of the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce, in a statement released by UConn. “Knowing that, we sought a president who would be able to navigate through these challenging times and ensure that UConn remained on our path of excellence. We wanted our next president to be someone who could not only lead the university in the coming months and years, but who could also help lay the groundwork for the decades ahead.”
There were more than 100 applications for the position; Herbst was one of three finalists considered by the 40-member search committee.
“I”™m very pleased with the choice,” said Dan Malloy, Connecticut”™s incoming governor. “The university is a critical engine for the state”™s economy and our work force. An invigorated UConn goes a long way to creating a more economically healthy Connecticut.”
Herbst was previously provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at SUNY Albany from 2005 to 2007, and also led the school for a year following the death of its president. She was a longtime professor at Northwestern University before becoming liberal arts dean at Temple University from 2003 to 2005.
She received her bachelor”™s in political science from Duke University in 1984 and her Ph.D. in communication theory and research from the University of Southern California in 1989.
Herbst was born in New York City and raised in the mid-Hudson Valley town of Peekskill, N.Y.
At UConn she will be paid an annual salary of $500,000 a year, $145,000 of which will be paid by the UConn Foundation. UConn stated Herbst”™s salary is less than Hogan”™s 2007 starting salary of $550,000, in light of Connecticut”™s troubled economy and the financial challenges on the horizon for both the state and the university.
Herbst and her family will live in a home on the Storrs campus known as Oak Hill, which was built in 1940 to be the president”™s residence on campus. She and her husband, Doug Hughes, have two children: Daniel Hughes, 16, and Becky Hughes, 15.
