Reporting directly to Brenau President Ed Schrader, the Watkinsville resident and Smyrna native assumes the duties of Wayne Dempsey, who retired in 2012.
" Those Dempsey shoes are big ones to fill", said Schrader, who brought Dempsey, the now-retired executive vice president and chief financial officer, to Brenau with him from Shorter University in 2005. "But David Barnett is an accomplished administrator and academic leader who has spearheaded some of the university's greatest growth and accomplishments of the last decade. He has full confidence of the faculty and staff, the board of trustees and the president."
Barnett came to Brenau in the same year as Schrader and Dempsey after a wide variety of higher education administrative roles.
His first job at Brenau was director of the university's North Atlanta campus in Norcross, and his work at Brenau has coincided with the wave of growth for nonresidential programs and nontraditional students.
As a result of his work in Atlanta, the university promoted Barnett to an associate vice president post to oversee, academically and administratively, all nonresidential programs in Gainesville, Norcross, Augusta, Fairburn and Kings Bay. He also had responsibility for online studies, which serve students around the world and helped drive the development of the Quality Enhancement Program, which was part of Brenau's highly successful performance in the decennial accreditation review by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
In his new job, Barnett immediately will oversee the $6.5 million expansion in Gainesville that involves converting the former Georgia Mountains Center into Brenau Downtown Center, the home of graduate studies in physical therapy and other health care professional programs, as well as other big-ticket contracts for expanding all Brenau academic programs.
"The Brenau strategy and vision provides some unique opportunities and exciting challenges, said Barnett. I am not at all worried about finding things to do to fill up my day. "
David Barnett (photo by Billy Howard)
http://accesswdun.com/article/2013/2/257865