Last month, when the Mercer University Board of Trustees unanimously voted to approve Penny Elkins as the 19th — and first female — president in the institution’s 192-year history, they did more than make history. They selected someone whose life story and career path personify Mercer’s commitment to servant leadership.
Rising from what she described as a “working poor” household in Columbus to become the first member of her family to earn a four-year college degree, let alone a doctorate, Elkins gushes gratitude for the opportunity and trust from her alma mater.
“To be able to lead the institution that has given me so much in my life is really just unbelievably and overwhelmingly humbling,” Elkins told the Ledger-Enquirer.
She is scheduled to succeed William Underwood on Jan. 1. Underwood told the board in April he is resigning after 20 years as president to return to teaching at Mercer Law School.
Elkins has been a member of Mercer’s faculty and senior administration for more than 25 years, including as executive vice president since 2023 and as interim provost since February. She is a tenured professor in Mercer’s Tift College of Education and serves as the university’s Fred L. Miles Endowed Chair of Educational Leadership.
During the 12 years Elkins worked as Mercer’s senior vice president for enrollment management, the university’s student population had record-breaking growth, by 80% among freshmen and by 47% in total residential undergraduates, according to Mercer’s news release. During that same period, Mercer notes, the entering classes had the university’s highest academic qualifications.
Mercer, a private university based in Macon with campuses in Columbus, Atlanta and Savannah, lists its current enrollment as 9,232 students from 38 countries, as well as 2,109 faculty and staff members.
As of April, Mercer said its total assets exceeded $1 billion, with an operating budget of more than $350 million and an endowment over $500 million.
Elkins leads Mercer’s Center for Leadership, Ethics and Service and the McDonald Center for the Advancement of Global Education on campus.
Other positions for Elkins at Mercer have been senior vice provost for strategic initiatives, vice president for the Cecil B. Day Graduate and Professional Campus in Atlanta, and associate dean and department chair for teacher education and educational leadership in the Tift College of Education. She led the establishment of the Department of Educational Leadership and the first doctoral program in the College of Education, the Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Higher Education Leadership.
Elkins began her education career as a third-grade teacher and elementary school administrator.
After earning two degrees from Mercer, a bachelor’s in Christianity and education and a master’s in education, Elkins earned a specialist’s degree in education, administration and supervision from Georgia College & State University and a doctorate in educational leadership from Georgia State University.
Her areas of academic research interest include cognition theory in leadership, transformational leadership, birth-to-five education and early learning development, women in leadership and community partnership development.
This year, she became the first woman appointed to the Lettie Pate Whitehead Foundation Board of Trustees. The Atlanta-based foundation helps fund the education of female Christian students and the care of elderly women in nine Southeastern states.
Elkins is a past president of Georgia Women of Achievement, which honors accomplished women and supports educational initiatives in the state. She has been a consultant for schools, chambers of commerce, businesses and financial institutions in the areas of leadership development and curriculum planning.
In 2009, then-Gov. Sonny Perdue appointed Elkins to the Georgia Professional Standards Commission, which oversees the state’s educator certification and professional education programs. She chaired the commission for the last four years of her six-year term.
No wonder Underwood told the Ledger-Enquirer he considers Elkins to be the “best-prepared new president Mercer has ever had.”
Elkins talked with the L-E in a conference room at the Mercer School of Medicine’s Columbus campus, less than two miles from where she grew up on 23rd Street in the Rose Hill neighborhood.
She is the youngest of three daughters born to Mavis and James Hamm. Her sisters, Teddie Ussery and Angela Grissett, still live in Columbus.
James was a proud World War II veteran and a long-haul truck driver. Mavis was a self-taught bookkeeper who co-owned and operated Bibb City Cafe on 38th Street.
“My parents were amazing parents who loved us very much, and they were hard workers, but we didn’t have a lot of money in my family,” Elkins said.
Neither parent finished high school, but both instilled in Elkins a work ethic and conviction that education was the path to a better life.
“Dad would be gone two, three, sometimes a month at a time, so Mom was it,” she said. “And so, she taught us all, I think, to be courageous, to not live life with fear.”
Elkins also credits Ussery for being like a second mother because they were born 13 years apart.
“She’s always been my absolute greatest cheerleader,” Elkins said. “She is my champion.”
Ussery, a Columbus State University Foundation Board of Trustees member and former chair, retired from Synovus as a senior vice president and founded Family Office Matters. She recalled her sister always having an intrepid attitude.
“She would follow her heart and follow her dream,” Ussery told the Ledger-Enquirer. “She’s been that way from when she was a little girl on up. That’s how she’s lived her life. She’s not afraid. She will parasail, she will skydive, she will do whatever. I mean, she’s got great courage to step out there.”
Ussery also admires Elkins for her dedication to serving others.
“She cares deeply for the Mercer family but also just for people,” Ussery said. “She follows the students, even after they’re gone. … She’s thoughtful, caring, loving, and she’s in there for the right reasons. I think she’ll always be successful at what she takes on.”
Elkins attended Waverly Terrace Elementary School, Arnold Junior High School and Jordan Vocational High School in Columbus. She excelled in school — valedictorian, president of eight clubs and STAR Student at Jordan — but her success came with sacrifice.
To receive a scholarship from the Daughters of the American Revolution, she had to attend a conference on Jekyll Island.
“I’ll never forget this,” Elkins said. “My mom and dad really couldn’t afford the hotel room and gas, but they did it, and they were so proud that they did that for me to get that scholarship.”
Although she was accepted to Princeton University, Elkins pursued an alternative, prompted by a conversation with Jim Morgan, who then was music minister at Oates Avenue Baptist Church.
“He said you need to go look at Mercer before you go off,” she recalled.
And when she did, Elkins was hooked.
“I experienced what our students still do to this day, and that is something that feels different,” she said. “… ‘These folks really believe in me.’ I met amazing faculty, other students. This sounds like such a cliche, but they were happy students. They loved being there. … So I knew, from the moment I stepped onto Mercer’s campus, that Mercer was different… and it changed the very course of my life.”
Elkins intended to become a lawyer, but one of the “knee-to-knee” conversations she had with mentors at Mercer switched her career path to education.
Originally a political science major, Elkins took an education course as an elective — mostly because it fit her schedule — during the spring semester of her sophomore year. The professor, Bobby Jones, told her after class one day, “I clearly see this light in your eyes when you’re talking about education.”
“Oh, no,” Elkins replied. “I’m going to be a lawyer.”
He asked why. Because she wants to help people, she said.
“So,” the professor wondered aloud, “why don’t you be an educator?”
Reflecting on that exchange, Elkins said, “Not that he told me what to do, … but it was a moment of, ‘Who are you?’ … It was so revelatory. Then I just knew there was no question in my mind that I was going to be an educator.”
Elkins began her education career as a third-grade teacher at Jessie Rice Elementary School in Macon. She was thrilled and fulfilled in that position and didn’t aspire to be an administrator. But three years later, the school district’s curriculum director at the time, Kathy Reese, saw her leadership potential and asked her to become the assistant principal at L.H. Williams Elementary School.
“It was not about me,” Elkins said. “This was about equipping these children, doing everything I can to improve their educational experience.”
Opportunities followed. She was recruited to help develop an innovative teacher preparation program at Georgia College and State University, then she was invited back to Mercer, despite her doubts, by persistent colleagues.
“[Associate dean] Allison Gilmore was just tenacious,” Elkins said, “and, my goodness, I’m so grateful to her for that.”
And so is Underwood.
“Every step of the way, she has produced positive results,” he said. “She’s incredibly talented. She’s a great problem solver. She has a tremendous commitment to the university, and she’s a gifted people person.”
The Rev. Jimmy Elder of First Baptist Church in Columbus, a Mercer board member, considers Elkins to be “the architect of what we call the Mercer experience, where everything at the university works toward giving the student who comes here the best education, the best experience and making them like family. I will always credit her vision. … That’s part of the success of Mercer with students right now.”
Elder sees Elkins’ commitment to servant leadership at Mercer as personal, not just professional.
“She always has a sense of humility and grace,” he said, “and I think it’s all bound up in the fact that she feels very called to what she’s doing.”
Elder shared what Elkins told the board when she agreed to be Mercer’s next president: “I’m not accepting a position. I am fulfilling a call. This is a calling I’ve had for a long time, and only God could have written this story.”
Elkins shared what the Mercer board told her when they selected her as president: “Penny, we are choosing you because you are the most competent leader. You have the skills. You are the person for this — irrespective of race, ethnicity, gender.”
Elder, who served on the selection committee, said Elkins being the university’s first female president “is nice because it reminds us of our diversity, but that does not need to cloud the truth that she was the best candidate for the presidency of Mercer, and we could not have done better.”
Still, Elkins acknowledges the significance of her appointment.
“The response from other women and young women at the university, our students, has really been overwhelming,” she said. “They’re very proud that I am the first female. If I am indeed a role model, … that you too can do this, then I embrace it.”
And it’s at Mercer where Elkins wants to embrace it — because Mercer has embraced her.
“I could have chosen to do a lot of different things over the years,” she said, “but I made a decision long ago that there was no way that I could pay Mercer back for all that Mercer has done for me, but I would live out my life’s calling paying it forward. … For me to now go full circle and get to lead this institution, it’s just unbelievable.”
This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Columbus Ledger-Enquirer
