After serving for more than a year with the University System of Georgia, Dr. Beheruz Sethna will return as the University of West Georgia’s president in August - just in time to for the 2007-08 academic year. Sethna said while his time working with the system was “very educational and very demanding,” he was excited about returning to UWG.

“Given that this was our centennial year, I have come to university and community events as often as I could,” Sethna wrote in an e-mail interview. “And I taught a course in the fall, so that helped to stay connected to what I love. Yet I have missed (the) student interaction and (the) interaction with my faculty and staff colleagues.”

In June 2006, Sethna was named interim executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer for the system. He was responsible for meeting the academic needs of approximately 260,000 students and serving about 11,000 faculty members. Sethna also provided leadership to the system’s 15 comprehensive universities and to a division at the University System Office, which includes academic programs and planning, faculty affairs, student affairs and international programs.

While serving in his interim position, Sethna obtained systemwide consensus on a plan for offering student health insurance during the 2008 fiscal year and assisted with policy manual changes. His leadership also helped shape the improvements made to the Regents’ Test and several high-level appointments, including naming a new vice chancellor for academic planning and programs earlier this year, according to Chancellor Erroll B. Davis.

“Dr. Sethna has served the University System in an outstanding manner,” he said in a statement. “We are extremely appreciative of Dr. Sethna’s diligent work on behalf of the University System this past year, but it is time we let him return to his primary responsibilities to the students, faculty and staff of the University of West Georgia.”

In May, Sethna received a Center for Student Leadership Student Empowerment Award at Kennesaw State University for his contributions in empowering students to become strong and ethical leaders.

“I certainly thank the Chancellor and the Board of Regents for this wonderful opportunity and, equally importantly, must emphasize that the credit for the accomplishments are shared with my colleagues,” Sethna wrote. “They not only helped, but they helped (to) make these work well, and they made it a pleasure, as well.”

Sethna wrote that his time serving as the acting executive vice chancellor was extremely satisfying, as well as the opportunity to impact universities in many positive ways. His position required a variety of responsibilities, including program approvals, student issues and research reports, but Sethna hoped that all his duties were done well and “done at an increasingly rapid rate - faster, friendlier, and easier.”

The experience was enriching, according to Sethna, who wrote he was confident that these skills will serve him well when he returns to UWG.

“Most significant among these are the style, preferences and knowledge base of Chancellor Davis,” he wrote. “He brings a fresh perspective of the corporate world, and though I have worked for a few years in that world in the 1970s and early 80s, that experience is now decades-old, so I needed a refresher. (And) I have learned much about our sister institutions - all of them with different strengths, so I have learned from all these experiences. We can use some of those ideas that work for them.”

While working in Atlanta, Sethna had to live in a dormitory - along with students - on the campuses of Georgia State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

He said the only other option was driving back to Carrollton every night when he left his office - usually around 11 p.m. or midnight.

According to Sethna, when GSU sold the housing unit that he was living in to Georgia Tech, officials shut off the air conditioning and the hot water, so sleeping at night was difficult and taking a shower was unbearable. However, now he has the unique distinction of being the last resident of GSU University Village apartments.

“The Chancellor was kidding about me a couple of days ago by saying, ‘I know where Beheruz lives,’” Sethna wrote. “I responded by saying, ‘Well, you’re a better man than I, because Beheruz doesn’t know where Beheruz lives It’s been a nomadic 13 months!’”

Throughout the summer, Sethna will meet with small groups of administrators, faculty and staff members. And on Aug. 13 at the fall general Faculty meeting, he will officially become the president of UWG again, and Dr. Tim Hynes, who had served as the interim president, will return to his position as vice president for academic affairs.

Sethna was first named president of UWG in 1994.

Sethna praised Hynes, saying he has done an exceptional job as president and has “moved the university forward in many positive ways.”

“Neither of us believe in a ‘treading water’ philosophy, and I am very glad that UWG has a person as capable as he is to lead it,” Sethna wrote.