E Gordon Gee, among the most highly experienced and respected university presidents in the nation, returned to The Ohio State University after having served as Chancellor of Vanderbilt University for seven years. Prior to his tenure at Vanderbilt, he was president of Brown University (1998-2000), The Ohio State University (1990-97), the University of Colorado (1985-90), and West Virginia University (1981-85).
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, where 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, eventually achieving the rank of full professor. In 1979 he was named dean of the West Virginia University Law School, and in 1981 was appointed to that university’s presidency.

Active in a number of national professional and service organizations, Gee served as a Trustee for the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation and as chairman of the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities. He is a member of the National Commission on Writing for America's Families, Schools, and Colleges, founded by the College Board to improve the teaching and learning of writing. He also serves as co-chair of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities’ Energy Advisory Committee.

Gee is a member of the Board of Governors of the National Hospice Foundation, the Advisory Board of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, and a Trustee Emeritus of the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation, an independent Federal government agency established to “encourage and support research, study and labor designed to produce new discoveries in all fields of endeavor for the benefit of mankind.” He also is a member of the Business-Higher Education Forum.

Gee has received a number of honorary degrees, awards, and recognitions. He was a Mellon Fellow for the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies and a W.K. Kellogg Fellow. In 1994, he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Utah as well as from Teachers College of Columbia University. He is the co-author of eight books and the author of numerous papers and articles on law and education.

Gee’s daughter, Rebekah, is an Assistant Professor of Public Health and Medicine in the School of Public Health at Louisiana State University and a Norman F. Gant/American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology/IOM Anniversary Fellow.