Dr. Susan Herbst
Executive Vice Chancellor & Chief Academic Officer
Susan Herbst is Executive Vice Chancellor for the University System of Georgia, and Professor of Public Policy. Her research focuses on public opinion, mass media, and the nature of the policy-making process in the United States. Before moving to Atlanta in 2007, she was Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University. She became Dean of Liberal Arts at Temple University, then Provost at The University of Albany/SUNY. She served as Acting President at Albany from 2006-2007. Professor Herbst is editor of a book series on American politics, public opinion and political behavior with the University of Chicago Press. Her current work focuses on the nature of public opinion in the United States, and most recently, the ways that media shape presidential political speeches and rhetoric.
Dr. Herbst earned her bachelor’s degree with honors in political science from Duke University, Durham, N.C., and a doctorate in communication theory and research from the University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communications, Los Angeles. She also has pursued additional profession education at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education’s Institute for Educational Management, as well as advanced Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Selected publications (Books):
Glynn, C., S. Herbst, G. O’Keefe, R. Shapiro (2004). Public Opinion. New York: Perseus Group/Westview. Second Edition.
Herbst, S. (1998). Reading Public Opinion: Political Actors View the Democratic Process. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
Herbst, S. (1994). Politics at the Margin: Historical Studies of Public Expression Outside the Mainstream. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Herbst, S. (1993). Numbered Voices: How Opinion Polling Has Shaped American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Winner of the 1994 Diamond Anniversary Book Award, SCA.
Book Chapters and Journal Articles:
Herbst, S. (in press). The Rhetorical Presidency and the Contemporary Media Environment. Critical Review.
Herbst, S. (2004). Illustrator, American Icon and Public Opinion Theorist: Norman Rockwell in Democracy, Political Communication (21): 1-26.
Herbst, S. (2003). Surveying and influencing the public: Polling in politics and industry. In Ted Porter and Dorothy Ross (eds.), The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 7: The Modern Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Herbst, S. (2003). Political Authority in a Mediated Age, Theory and Society (32):481-503.