E. Gordon Gee

Moral & Ethical Leadership

Dr. E. Gordon Gee is one of America’s most prominent higher education leaders, having helmed universities for more than three decades. In 2009, Time magazine named him one of the top 10 university presidents in the United States. Recently, the website Great Value Colleges named him the nation’s top university president.

In 2014, Gee returned to West Virginia University, where his career as a university president began. His leadership goals include putting students first, advancing the university’s research agenda, partnering with West Virginia communities and making sure that 1.8 million West Virginians know in their hearts and minds that West Virginia University is their university.

Born in Vernal, Utah, Gee graduated from the University of Utah with an honors degree in history and earned his J.D. and Ed.D. degrees from Columbia University. He clerked under Chief Justice David T. Lewis of the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals before being named a judicial fellow and staff assistant to the U.S. Supreme Court. In this role, he worked for Chief Justice Warren Burger on administrative and legal problems of the Court and federal judiciary. Gee returned to Utah as an associate professor and associate dean in the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University and was granted full professorship in 1978.

One year later, he became dean of the West Virginia University College of Law, and, in 1980, was named West Virginia University president. He served in that role until 1985.

He went on to lead the University of Colorado (1985-1990), Brown University (1998-2000) and Vanderbilt University (2001-2007). He served as president of The Ohio State University from 1990 to 1997 and again from 2007 to 2013.