Gale Harrison, a long-time educator in the University System of Georgia, died on Independence Day. She was 77 years old.
Dr. Harrison was a graduate of Selma High School in Alabama. She went on to graduate with honors from Agnes Scott College, a liberal arts college for women in Decatur, Georgia. She later was the second woman to earn a Ph.D. in political science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
Dr. Harrison began her teaching career at Floyd Junior College in Rome, Georgia, which is now Georgia Highlands College. There she taught American government to hundreds of students, many of whom were veterans returning from Vietnam. In the late 1980s, she joined the political science department at what is now Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, where her specialties were the European Union and women in politics.