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George H. Emert became Utah State University's thirteenth president on 1 July 1992. Prior to his appointment as president, Emert served as executive vice president at Auburn University. Emert was born in Tennessee. He came west after being struck with wanderlust during his sophomore year at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate. Intent on traveling to New Orleans, Emert instead hopped the wrong freight train and found himself heading for Denver. "It took me 20 years to get out of Colorado," he later told Outlook editor Cliff Cahoon. Emert received his undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado, and his MA from Colorado State University , before earning his doctorate in biochemistry from Virginia Polytechnical Institute.

A veteran of the Vietnam War, Emert met his wife Billie Bush while on furlough in Okinawa, where she was visiting family. Two years later they married, following her graduation from the University of Wyoming.

George Emert began his college teaching career at the University of Arkansas after having worked for Gulf Oil Corporation, where he rose to the position of director of biochemical technology. In college Emert became convinced that the best teachers were those who had experience in the private sector. The "logical thing for me to do," he later related, "was to get the terminal degree and then work…in industry so I would have that experience." Emert said that he took a fifty percent pay cut when he returned to teaching, but that "he was serious about wanting to teach."

At the University of Arkansas, Emert credited President Jim Martin with pulling him into administration. Upon Martin's appointment as president of Auburn University, Emert accompanied his mentor to Alabama's land grant institution as executive vice president.

Emert began his presidency with a single typewritten page of forty tasks he wanted to accomplish during his tenure. In November 2000, Emert's list included checkmarks in the margins along side all but one of those tasks – "the completion of a university-wide fund-raising campaign." During his presidency scholarships rose from $6 to $29 million, while the endowment increased from $7 to $80 million. Contracts and grants to the University also increased $89 to over $140 million.

Emert also promoted intercollegiate athletics, while lobbying the State Legislature for greater resources to attract and retain exceptional faculty. During his tenure additional chapters of the Alumni Association were established in all 29 Utah counties, five additional western states and four foreign countries. President Emert retired from administration in December 1992, and after a year- long sabbatical returned to his first love, teaching, where he taught classes in the College of Science for an additional year, before leaving the campus and Cache Valley in 1994.