William E. Troutt, PhD

William E. Troutt, PhD, joined the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences Board of Trustees in 2015.  Dr. Trout served as president of Rhodes College in Memphis, TN from 1999-2017. Prior to joining Rhodes, he served as President of Belmont University in Nashville from 1982-1999. During his tenure at Rhodes, Dr. Troutt established a strategic vision for the liberal arts college focusing on excellence both in the classroom and beyond the campus through student research, service, internship, and study-abroad opportunities. In 2001, Dr. Troutt and former St. Jude CEO Dr. William E. Evans established an academic partnership culminating in establishment of the St. Jude Summer Plus Fellowship and over 200 Rhodes students conducting intensive research with St Jude over the past two decades.  Dr. Troutt led the establishment of the Turley Memphis Center at Rhodes in 2012 focusing on the human experience and creating social change in Memphis and the Mid-South region. A nationally recognized leader in education, Dr. Troutt has chaired the American Council on Education, the National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship program, and has served on the Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Commission, which made recommendations to Congress to dramatically increase the number of American undergraduates studying abroad. He has been named one of America's most effective college presidents, and in 2009 he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Vanderbilt University's Peabody College.