James E.K. Hildreth was named the next president of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. The medical school enrolls about 800 students, with Blacks making up a large majority of the student body. Dr. Hildreth will assume his new duties in July.
Currently, Dr. Hildreth is dean of the College of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Davis. He joined the faculty there in 2011. From 2005 to 2011, Dr. Hildreth was director of the Center for AIDS Health Disparities Research at Meharry Medical College. Earlier in his career, he was associate dean for Graduate Studies and a professor of pharmacology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Dr. Hildreth is a graduate of Harvard University and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. As the first Black Rhodes Scholar from the state of Arkansas, he earned a doctorate in immunology at Oxford University.
