SUNY acting president appointed new USG chief academic officer
Chancellor Erroll B. Davis Jr. announced the appointment of Susan Herbst as executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer for the University System of Georgia. The selection of Herbst concludes a national search launched last May.

Herbst currently serves as the acting president of the University at Albany, State University of New York. She will assume her new role at the USG on Nov. 1.

In her new position, Herbst will be responsible for meeting the academic needs of more than 260,000 students and approximately 10,000 University System faculty members. The position also provides leadership to the system’s comprehensive universities and to a division at the University System Office that includes academic programs and planning, faculty affairs, student affairs, international programs, teacher-education initiatives, strategic research and analysis, and information and instructional technology.

The presidents of the 15 institutions in the system’s comprehensive university sector will report to her. These institutions mostly consist of Carnegie masters universities, but the sector also includes four institutions with limited doctoral programs: Georgia Southern University, Kennesaw State University, the University of West Georgia and Valdosta State University.

Football player Kelin Johnson is named to 2007 AFCS Good Works Team
Football player Kelin Johnson is one of 11 players nationwide named to the American Football Coaches Association 2007 Good Works Team. Johnson is the 11th UGA student-athlete selected for the honor since the program’s inception in 1992, tying UGA with Nebraska for the most Football Bowl subdivision (formerly Division I-A) honorees.

The Good Works Team honors players for their dedication and commitment to community service. Highlights of Johnson’s lengthy community service résumé include volunteering for HERO for a Day, a field day event sponsored by HERO for Children, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the quality of life of children infected with HIV/AIDS; assisting with Camp Well Springs, a camp for children with disabilities; assisting with a home building project in Athens with Habitat for Humanity; and speaking to numerous elementary, junior and high schools in the Athens area about the importance of education.

A strong safety, Johnson started all 13 games for UGA last year and finished third on the team with 60 tackles. He also recorded 5.5 tackles for losses totaling -32 yards, posted 2.5 sacks for -23 yards, recovered two fumbles and intercepted two passes.

Multi-panel landscape painting series installed at Georgia Museum of Art
The Georgia Museum of Art recently installed Landscape Series 1-12, an arrangement of 12 paintings by Frances de La Rosa, in the museum’s main stairway.

De La Rosa’s work focuses on abstractions of the Southern landscape in which she was raised. Her childhood need to seek solace in the outdoors of Alabama’s Black Belt region guided her vibrant interpretations of nature from a young age. She also cites artists Rufino Tamayo and Georgia O’Keeffe as influences.

“Frances de La Rosa created this multi-panel series specifically for our stairway at the Georgia Museum of Art. Her wonderfully colorful and abstracted landscape images provide a great presence to that space,” said Paul Manoguerra, curator of American art at the Georgia Museum of Art.

De La Rosa was born in Selma, Ala., and attained her B.F.A. in studio art from the University of Alabama in 1980 and her M.F.A. in painting from Tulane University in 1984. She is currently a Comer Professor of painting at Wesleyan College in Macon.