President George W. Bush announced his intention recently to nominate Gale A. Buchanan, dean and director emeritus of UGA’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, to be the nation’s new under secretary of agriculture for research, education and economics.
In the position, Buchanan will oversee the Agricultural Research Service, the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, the Economic Research Service and the National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Buchanan served as CAES dean and director of Cooperative Extension, Agricultural Experiment Stations and academic affairs from March 1995 until December 2004, when he returned to the classroom. He retired from UGA this past April.
Before that, he was associate director of the Georgia Agricultural Experiment Stations and resident director of the CAES Coastal Plain -Experiment Station in Tifton.
He also spent 21 years with Auburn University in the department of agronomy and soils, with primary teaching and research responsibilities in weed science.