Former Secretary of State, Cathy Cox, to lead Georgia college

The University System of Georgia Board of Regents officially named Cathy Cox the president of Georgia College and State University on Thursday. Georgia College is located in Milledgeville and is the University System’s primary liberal arts university. “Thank you to the Board and Acting Chancellor MacCartney for this tremendous opportunity,” Cox said. “I am excited to work with an already amazing faculty and staff as we enhance Georgia College as a destination for students seeking a preeminent liberal arts education. I can’t wait to get started.”

Cox is coming from Mercer University School of Law, where she served as Dean. She assumed that position in 2017 after serving 10 years as president of Young Harris College, a private liberal arts college in the north Georgia mountains. Cox led its transition from a two-year college to a four-year institution and oversaw unprecedented growth.

Prior to assuming the Young Harris presidency, Cox served two terms as Georgia’s secretary of state, and was the first woman in the state’s history to be elected to the post, first in 1998 and again in 2002. In the spring of 2007, she held the Carl E. Sanders Political Leadership Chair at the University of Georgia School of Law. Cox also served two terms in the Georgia House of Representatives.

Cox earned a degree in journalism from the University of Georgia and is a 2013 inductee to the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication’s Grady Fellowship. Cox was a magna cum laude graduate of Mercer Law School, where she was editor-in-chief of the Mercer Law Review. She practiced law full-time for 10 years in Atlanta and Bainbridge following her graduation.

According to a release from the school, Cox’s term will begin on October 1, 2021.