College Leadership

Ben Ayers is Dean of the University of Georgia Terry College of Business and holds the Earl Davis Chair in Taxation. He came to UGA in 1996 and served as Director of the highly regarded J.M. Tull School of Accounting for nine years prior to his appointment as the college’s 12th Dean in 2014.

Under his leadership, the Terry College completed a successful Commit to Georgia campaign, raised $275 million to support faculty, programs, and facilities, and dedicated the new home of the Terry College of Business on the UGA campus, known as the Business Learning Community.

Terry’s undergraduate and graduate programs are ranked among the nation’s best, with nine of the college’s programs ranking among the top 10 public business schools in 2024. The college also dedicated the naming of the John Munro Godfrey, Sr. Department of Economics and the M. Douglas and V. Kay Ivester Institute for Business Analytics and Insights, following transformational gifts to endow the units.

Over the past 10 years of Dean Ayers’ tenure, the college has launched a new Online MBA, a master’s in business analytics, a campus-wide Entrepreneurship Program, sought-after executive and dual degree programs, an academic minor in business, and market-driven certificates, all while growing enrollment and achieving the highest percentage employment rates for graduating students in the college’s history.

Dean Ayers serves on the Board of Synovus Bank’s Northeast Georgia Division and the CFO Roundtable. He earned his Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Texas at Austin and has received many teaching awards at the school, college, and university levels and national research awards from the American Taxation Association and American Accounting Association. Prior to pursuing his Ph.D., he worked for KPMG in Atlanta and Tampa and Complete Health Inc. in Birmingham.

Benjamin C. Ayers

• Dean and Earl Davis Chair in Taxation, Office of the Dean
• Professor, J.M. Tull School of Accounting