UConn Building To Be Renamed For Former President Herbst

STORRS, CT — The University of Connecticut's Oak Hall is being named after President Emeritus Susan Herbst.

The UConn Board of Trustees Wednesday endorsed President Radenka Maric's recommendation to rename Oak Hall Susan V. Herbst Hall. Oak Hall opened in August 2012 and houses many of UConn's social sciences and humanities departments along with 30 classrooms and nearly 100 faculty offices.

Herbst tenure marked "one of the most transformational periods in the University’s history," according to the recommendation. Herbst becomes one of just a few with the distinction. Others having an academic building named in their honor during their lifetimes, are President Emeritus Philip E. Austin and former UConn Board of Trustees chairmen Larry McHugh and John W. Rowe.

Herbst was UConn's first female president and served in the role from 2011 to 2019 and then returned to the faculty to teach in her specialty area of political science. She has authored five books in the field.

Maric told trustees that, during Herbst's tenure as president, UConn experienced "growing academic and research strength, investments in faculty and student support, ever-increasing rates of student success, a rising national reputation, and dramatic increases in applications and student enrollment."

She added, "It also experienced increased diversity within the student body, philanthropic success, investments in campus facilities and the opening of important new facilities, major revenue growth at UConn Health."

Also during that time UConn established its new Downtown Hartford campus, "managed monumental investments" in UConn by the State of Connecticut through NextGen Connecticut and Bioscience Connecticut, and "overall modernized of the university and many of its operations," Maric said.

"Hers was one of the most eventful and consequential presidencies in the University’s history,” Maric wrote in her recommendation to trustees.