Dr. Jaimie L. Hebert, provost of Sam Houston State University, visits Georgia Southern University for three days beginning Wednesday, concluding a series of five candidates who have come to Statesboro over the past two weeks as part of the search for the next GSU president.
Like the four previous contenders invited to campus by the Presidential Search and Screen Committee, Hebert has been given a busy schedule, including a campus and community tour, meetings and meals with Georgia Southern’s interim President Dr. Jean Bartels, with interim Provost Dr. Diana Cone and the other vice presidents, with student leaders and academic deans. The public’s best opportunity to hear from Hebert will be a 4 p.m. until 5:30 p.m. Thursday forum in the Carol A. Carter Recital Hall, inside the Foy Building on the Georgia Southern campus.
Provost and vice president for academic affairs at Sam Houston State, in Huntsville, Texas, since 2011, Hebert has been a faculty member there for 21 years. He taught statistics at Sam Houston State first as an assistant professor, and then an associate professor, from 1995 until 1999, then was promoted to full professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, remaining in that role until 2005. From 2005 until 2011, Hebert was dean of SHSU’s College of Arts and Sciences.
Sam Houston State, incidentally, is similar to Georgia Southern in size. Both have between 20,000 and 21,000 students. Georgia Southern has eight component colleges, while Sam Houston State has seven.
Hebert’s bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctorate are all in statistics, and he received all three at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.
The five visiting candidates were invited by the campus-based search committee after interviews with eight to 12 selected applicants at the Atlanta airport. The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia will do the hiring after the committee supplies three to five semifinalists.
The process is intended to put a new president in place by July 1 after Dr. Brooks Keel’s departure last July as the 12th president of Georgia Southern and its predecessor colleges.