Mercer names Columbus native, former teacher its first female president
MACON — Mercer University on Friday named its next president, Penny L. Elkins, who in January will become the first female to lead the Macon-based private university in its nearly two-century history.
Elkins, a Mercer graduate and a former elementary school teacher here, will succeed President William D. “Bill” Underwood, whose tenure began in 2006. She will be the university’s 19th president, and just its fourth since 1960.
She has been Mercer’s executive vice president for the past two years and currently serves as the school’s interim provost. Previously, Elkins was for more than a decade Mercer’s senior vice president of enrollment management, where she oversaw record-breaking growth that included a 44% increase in freshman enrollment.
At an afternoon ceremony in the school’s University Center, where her appointment was made public, a crowd of a few hundred cheered the announcement that a familiar face and beloved figure on campus would be the college’s next leader.
“Most of you know me. I think almost every person in this room knows me,” Elkins, 57, said. “You also know how much I love Mercer. I am fiercely protective of this place. And I love you, and I am fiercely protective of you all as well. … This institution has shaped every part of who I am, and what I believe about education, about opportunity, about leadership and about purpose.”
She assumes office at a time when Mercer is helping extend health care services to rural Georgians and spearheading redevelopment across Macon. For much of this century, the school has been a catalyst for reshaping stretches of this Middle Georgia city.
The 9,232-student university recently broke ground on an $80 million-plus medical school complex. The facility will overlook I-16 along the Ocmulgee River, part of an estimated $1 billion in public-private ventures in a section of Macon that will soon be home to a pair of new hotels, a convention center and an arena to replace the aging Macon Coliseum, which opened in 1968.
“I am overjoyed for Mercer,” Underwood said in a statement. “She will be an amazing president, given her exceptional and demonstrated leadership, relational and problem-solving talents.”
Elkins, a Columbus native, was valedictorian at Jordan Vocational High School. She began teaching third grade in Macon in the early 1990s.
As a student at Mercer, she earned a bachelor’s degree, majoring in education and Christianity. She also has a master’s degree in education from Mercer and a doctorate in educational leadership from Georgia State University.
In 2009, she was appointed to and later served as chairperson for the Georgia Professional Standards Commission, which handles certification of educators and approval of educational programs statewide.
Elkins said her roots in early childhood education laid the groundwork for the higher-education administrator she has become.
After Friday’s ceremony, she spoke privately of how an influential Mercer professor taught her to be “a bridge builder.”
“He said, ‘There are always people who are out to tear down connections,’” Elkins recalled, “‘and your job is to build them.’”
About the Author
Joe Kovac Jr. is Macon bureau chief covering Middle Georgia for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
