Replacement sought for Zinkhan's $183,000-a-year job

ATHENS, Ga. -- University of Georgia administrators will begin searching this summer for someone to replace former UGA marketing professor George Zinkhan III, but in the meantime, professors and graduate students in UGA's department of marketing and distribution will teach the notorious professor's courses.

The day after the April 25 murders, UGA President Michael Adams ordered Zinkhan fired from his $183,000-a-year post as the Coca-Cola Co. Chair of Marketing.

"Our marketing department is committed to offering all the courses needed by our students. In the short term, we will revise the assignments within the department to cover the courses that George Zinkhan would have been assigned to teach," UGA Terry College of Business Dean Robert Sumichrast said in a written statement. "This summer, we will begin the search process for a faculty member to replace his position in marketing and will fill it as soon as we are able."

Law enforcement agents found Zinkhan's body Saturday, exactly two weeks after he gunned down his wife, Marie Bruce, and two others at a gathering of the Athens Town & Gown Players.

Zinkhan had been the subject of a nationwide manhunt but was found, dead of an apparent suicide, just a few miles from the Bogart home he had shared with Bruce.

Zinkhan, 57, taught two UGA courses this spring, a graduate seminar in marketing theory and an undergraduate course all UGA marketing majors must take called "Consumer Buying Behavior."

The course is supposed to give students an overview of what marketers need to know about consumers.

Zinkhan taught three courses per academic year, a normal course load for a chaired professor, said David Dodson, a spokesman for the UGA business school.

Zinkhan's résumé listed nine teaching areas, including marketing administration, marketing research, marketing management, marketing theory and consumer behavior.

Zinkhan came to UGA in 1994 from the University of Houston as head of the marketing department and holder of the prestigious Coca-Cola Co. Chair in Marketing.

Before Zinkhan arrived, Al Niemi, at that time dean of the business school, proposed to pay Zinkhan a salary of $120,000 a year, according to a letter Niemi wrote to former UGA Vice President for Academic Affairs William Prokasy.

Zinkhan's salary was set at $110,000 a year when he first began work at UGA, however.