Atlanta — November 13, 2007

University System of Georgia Chief of Staff Rob Watts announced today that the Board of Regents has approved the permanent appointment of Dr. Gary Allen McGaha Sr. as president of Atlanta Metropolitan College (AMC). He has served as the college’s interim president since Jan. 1, 2007.

Former AMC President Harold E. Wade retired late last year after 12 years of leadership at the college.

McGaha was AMC’s vice president for academic affairs when he was called on to serve as interim president. Although he had been appointed to the vice president’s position just four months earlier, his association with AMC dates back to 1993, when he was appointed as a professor and chair of the Social Sciences Division. In 1996, he also became the site coordinator for the Post-Secondary Readiness Enrichment Program (PREP) for metropolitan Atlanta. In this capacity he coordinated PREP for Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Georgia Perimeter and Atlanta Metropolitan. Before his appointment as vice president for academic affairs at AMC, McGaha served as dean of academic services for the Dunwoody campus of Georgia Perimeter College (2002-2006).

Prior to his arrival at Atlanta Metro, McGaha served as assistant to the president and assistant professor of community health and preventive medicine at the Morehouse School of Medicine from 1983 to 1993. Before this, McGaha’s administrative experience in higher education was at Kentucky State University in Frankfort, Ky., where he served as associate vice president for academic affairs from 1980 to 1983, chair of the Department of History and Political Science from 1977 to 1979, and administrative assistant to the president and assistant professor of political science from 1976 to 1980. “I have every confidence that Gary McGaha will make an excellent president. We are extremely fortunate to have someone with his level of experience and mastery of the Atlanta Metro culture available to serve as its president,” Watts said. “I know he will do a fine job of guiding Atlanta Metropolitan College.”

McGaha was the first African American to obtain a doctor of philosophy degree in political science from the University of Mississippi, earned in 1976. He also holds a master’s degree from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, earned in 1973, and a bachelor’s degree from Mississippi Valley State University, earned in 1972. Both of the latter degrees also were in political science.

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