The State Board of Education picked a Georgia educator Friday to become chancellor of Alabama`s two-year college system and help lead it back from a financial scandal that brought down a former chancellor. Freida Hill, deputy commissioner of the Technical College System of Georgia, was unanimously chosen by the nine-member board. Women have served as interim chancellors in the past but Hill is the first female to hold the position on a permanent basis. The board`s chairman,

Gov. Bob Riley, said he talked to Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue before deciding to support Hill. The other finalists for the job were John Osborn, the director of academic programs and policy for the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Rose Johnson, the president of Haywood Community College in Clyde, N.C. Hill, who holds a doctorate in adult education from the University of Georgia, has spent most of her career in education, beginning as a high school English teacher in Maryville, Tenn., in 1973.

She became deputy commissioner of the Technical College System of Georgia in February 2008. Prior to that, she served as assistant commissioner and as president of Southwest Georgia Technical College in Thomasville.

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