Lamar Alexander

On January 22, 1991, President Bush nominated Lamar Alexander as Secretary of Education. He was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on March 14, 1991.

Immediately before taking office, Secretary Alexander was president of The University of Tennessee, a position he had held since July 1988. He served as governor of Tennessee from 1979 to 1987. As chairman of the National Governor’s Association, he led the fifty-state education survey, Time for Results. In 1988, the Education Commission of the States gave him the James B. Conant Award for “distinguished national leadership in education.”

He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Vanderbilt University and was a law review editor at New York University. He was born on July 3, 1940. He and his wife, Honey, have four children: Drew, Leslee, Kathryn, and Will.