About interim president monga

University System of Georgia (USG) executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer, Dr. Ashwani Monga, was appointed as interim president of the University of West Georgia, effective August 19, 2024.  

As USG’s chief academic officer, Dr. Monga leads the academic enterprise of a system of 26 public institutions and about 345,000 students. He oversees student and faculty initiatives across the system, including approvals of academic programs, student success efforts, collaborative programs through distance education, academic innovation, enrollment management, student affairs, and academic library services. His unit also oversees statewide entities that extend beyond the 26 institutions, including the Georgia Film Academy, the Georgia Public Library Service, the Georgia Archives, and Galileo, which is the state’s virtual library. Dr. Monga also holds a faculty appointment in the Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech. 

In his role at the system office, Dr. Monga has played an integral role in the progress of UWG on many critical fronts, including the approval of new academic programs and the transition to becoming an NCAA Division I athletics member. As interim president, he now directly oversees UWG, a comprehensive university that was founded in 1906, is home to over 13,000 students, boasts more than 100 undergraduate and graduate programs, and has locations in Carrollton, Newnan, and Douglasville.

In over two decades of service in higher education, Dr. Monga has also had other significant roles, including as provost and executive vice chancellor at Rutgers University—Newark, where he was the university’s chief academic officer. He was a faculty member at Rutgers Business School and before that, at the University of Texas, San Antonio, and the University of South Carolina. 

Dr. Monga has published in leading marketing journals and has co-authored a book, “Becoming a Consumer Psychologist.” His research on consumers’ decision-making is focused on the psychology of time and money: how consumers value their time, how they spend time differently from money, and how time influences consumers’ patience and self-control. He has held journal appointments as an Associate Editor (Journal of Consumer Psychology; Journal of Consumer Research; Journal of Marketing Research) and Editorial Review Board member (Journal of Marketing; International Journal of Research in Marketing).  

Dr. Monga’s teaching spans undergraduate, MBA, Ph.D., and executive education programs. He has received several awards for his teaching and has been commended for his research excellence. In 2018, he was named a Marketing Science Institute Scholar, one of only 34 faculty selected from around the world. In addition, he has been honored with outstanding reviewer awards from the Journal of Consumer Psychology, the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Marketing.  He is also a recipient of the Young Alumni Achievers Award from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, where he earned his MBA. His other degrees include a Bachelor of Technology degree from the National Dairy Research Institute in Karnal, India, and a Ph.D. in business administration with a major in marketing, and minors in psychology and statistics, from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. 

He is married to Dr. Sonia Monga, who is a marketing professor at Georgia State University. Their daughter, Nirayka, is a student at Brown University, double majoring in music and computer science. 

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