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E. Gordon Gee
Elwood Gordon Gee (born February 2, 1944) is an American academic administrator. From 2014 to 2025, he served his second term as president of West Virginia University; his first term there was from 1981 to 1985. Gee is said to have held more university presidencies (or their equivalent titles) than any other American. He was head of University of Colorado Boulder from 1985 to 1990, of Ohio State University from 1990 to 1997, of Brown University from 1998 to 2000, of Vanderbilt University from 2000 to 2007, and of Ohio State University for a second time from 2007 to 2013.
Gee stepped down from the Ohio State presidency in 2013 after controversies about anti-Catholic comments allegedly made in jest about the University of Notre Dame. He headed an Ohio State-based think tank before returning to West Virginia University.
Gee was born in Vernal, Utah which is southeast of Salt Lake City, the son of an oil company employee and a school teacher. Growing up a Mormon in Vernal, he served a mission in Germany and Italy. He is an Eagle Scout and a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. He attended the University of Utah and graduated with a B.A. in history in 1968. After earning a J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1971 and an Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1972, Gee was named a judicial fellow and staff assistant to the Supreme Court for one year.
After clerking for Chief Justice Warren Burger, Gee accepted a position as professor and associate dean at Brigham Young University. He became dean and professor at West Virginia University's law school in 1979, and president of the university two years later. As president of a university at age 37, he was one of the youngest chief executives in academia at the time.
Gee was president of Brown for only two years, and his tenure was mired in controversy. According to The Village Voice and The College Hill Independent, one of the university's campus newspapers, Gee was criticized by students and faculty for treating the school like a Wall Street corporation rather than an Ivy League university.
Critics pointed to his decisions to sign off on an ambitious brain science program without consulting the faculty, to sell $80 million in bonds for the construction of a biomedical sciences building, and to cut the university's extremely popular Charleston String Quartet, which many saw as part of Gee's effort to lead the school away from its close but unprofitable relationship with the arts.
Gee left under a storm of criticism in 2000, as members of the Brown community widely accused him of departing from the school after an uncommonly short tenure because of Vanderbilt University's offer of a corporate-level salary and a tenured teaching position for his wife. According to a 2003 article by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Gee was the second highest paid university chief executive in the country with a purported total compensation package of more than $1.3 million.
Gee's tumultuous tenure at Brown is commemorated annually with the "E. Gordon Gee Lavatory Complex," a collection of portable toilets that appears during Spring Weekend.
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E. Gordon Gee
Elwood Gordon Gee (born February 2, 1944) is an American academic administrator. From 2014 to 2025, he served his second term as president of West Virginia University; his first term there was from 1981 to 1985. Gee is said to have held more university presidencies (or their equivalent titles) than any other American. He was head of University of Colorado Boulder from 1985 to 1990, of Ohio State University from 1990 to 1997, of Brown University from 1998 to 2000, of Vanderbilt University from 2000 to 2007, and of Ohio State University for a second time from 2007 to 2013.
Gee stepped down from the Ohio State presidency in 2013 after controversies about anti-Catholic comments allegedly made in jest about the University of Notre Dame. He headed an Ohio State-based think tank before returning to West Virginia University.
Gee was born in Vernal, Utah which is southeast of Salt Lake City, the son of an oil company employee and a school teacher. Growing up a Mormon in Vernal, he served a mission in Germany and Italy. He is an Eagle Scout and a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. He attended the University of Utah and graduated with a B.A. in history in 1968. After earning a J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1971 and an Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1972, Gee was named a judicial fellow and staff assistant to the Supreme Court for one year.
After clerking for Chief Justice Warren Burger, Gee accepted a position as professor and associate dean at Brigham Young University. He became dean and professor at West Virginia University's law school in 1979, and president of the university two years later. As president of a university at age 37, he was one of the youngest chief executives in academia at the time.
Gee was president of Brown for only two years, and his tenure was mired in controversy. According to The Village Voice and The College Hill Independent, one of the university's campus newspapers, Gee was criticized by students and faculty for treating the school like a Wall Street corporation rather than an Ivy League university.
Critics pointed to his decisions to sign off on an ambitious brain science program without consulting the faculty, to sell $80 million in bonds for the construction of a biomedical sciences building, and to cut the university's extremely popular Charleston String Quartet, which many saw as part of Gee's effort to lead the school away from its close but unprofitable relationship with the arts.
Gee left under a storm of criticism in 2000, as members of the Brown community widely accused him of departing from the school after an uncommonly short tenure because of Vanderbilt University's offer of a corporate-level salary and a tenured teaching position for his wife. According to a 2003 article by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Gee was the second highest paid university chief executive in the country with a purported total compensation package of more than $1.3 million.
Gee's tumultuous tenure at Brown is commemorated annually with the "E. Gordon Gee Lavatory Complex," a collection of portable toilets that appears during Spring Weekend.