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Bonita Jacobs is President of the University of North Georgia, which serves about 20,000 students across five campuses and offers a range of degree programs from the associate to doctoral levels.
In 2011, Jacobs took office as the 17th president of North Georgia College & State University, becoming the University’s first female president and only the second woman to lead one of the country’s six Senior Military Colleges. Jacobs oversaw the consolidation between North Georgia and Gainesville State College to officially become the University of North Georgia in 2013.
She has been named by Georgia Trend magazine one of the "100 Most Influential Georgians" and by the Atlanta Business Chronicle as one of the "Top Education Leaders in Atlanta" and to its list of “Women Who Mean Business.” She received the 2020 Distinguished Citizen Award from the Northeast Georgia Council of the Boy Scouts of America, and the NODA 2020 Circle of Excellence Award.
Jacobs currently serves on the BB&T Georgia Regional Advisory Board, the American Council on Education (ACE) National Task Force on the Transfer and Award of Credit, and is a mentor in the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) Millennium Leadership Initiative. Recently, Jacobs served on the AASCU Board of Directors and on the Board of Trustees for the Georgia Council on Economic Education.
Jacobs is the founder and first executive director of the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students. Before coming to the University of North Georgia, Jacobs was Vice President for Student Development and a tenured professor of counseling and higher education at the University of North Texas. She previously served as Assistant Vice Chancellor and as Interim Vice Chancellor for Student Development at Western Carolina University and in student development positions at Stephen F. Austin State University.
Jacobs received bachelor’s degrees in Spanish and history and a master’s degree in counseling from Stephen F. Austin State University. She earned her doctorate in educational administration from Texas A&M University.
A recipient of multiple awards for leadership in higher education and student development, Jacobs is a frequent speaker on transfer and student success issues. Jacobs has conducted a significant amount of externally funded grant research. She is the former editor of The Journal of College Orientation and Transition and served on three other editorial boards. Her publications include The College Transfer Student in America: The Forgotten Student and Starting From Scratch: Your First-Year Experience, as well as numerous chapters, journal articles and reviews. Her most recent publications include two books, Strategic Mergers in Higher Education, (Johns Hopkins University Press) and UNG The Gold I See: The Legacy of UNG’s Dahlonega Campus.
Jacobs is originally from Huntington, Texas, and she and her husband, Glenn, live in Dahlonega.