CAMDEN — By Adam Tamburin,
The Tennessean
Camden native Dr. James E.K. Hildreth has been named as the next president of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn., according to a news item in The Tennessean newpaper.
Hildreth will succeed sitting president A. Cherrie Epps, a longtime Meharry professor and administrator who stepped into the school’s top spot in 2013. She will remain at the helm through the end of June.
The 58-year-old worked as a professor and researcher at Meharry from 2005 to 2011 and was the founding director of the school’s Center for AIDS Health Disparities Research.
Hildreth was born and raised in Camden and is the son of Camden resident Lucy Hildreth. He became Arkansas’s first African American Rhodes Scholar in 1978, and graduated magna cum laude in chemistry from Harvard in 1979. He was also the first African-American graduate of Oxford University in England, where he earned his Ph.D in immunology.
He earned his M.D. and graduated magna cum laude in chemistry at Johns Hoplins Medical School in Baltimore, and in 2012, he became the first African American in the 125-year history of Johns Hopkins to earn full professorship with tenure in the basic sciences.
He was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2009.
Hildreth currently serves as dean of the University of California Davis’ College of Biological Sciences, where he oversaw fund-raising efforts and research projects, according to the newspaper article. He was drawn to return to Meharry as president because of the college’s mission to offer care to Nashville’s most vulnerable citizens.
“That’s why I came in the first place, and that’s why I’ve come back,” he said in an interview in The Tennessean on Friday. Meharry’s “mission, its history, the people, everything about it resonates with who I am and what I’d like to achieve with my life and my work.”
The article states that Hildreth’s hire, which was announced to a crowd of hundreds Friday afternoon at Meharry, caps off a year-long search that included more than 90 candidates from across the country. But a series of in-person interviews confirmed that Hildreth was the right choice for the top spot, said Dr. Frank S. Royal Sr., chairman of Meharry’s board of trustees.
Royal, himself a Meharry alumnus, sat in on Hildreth’s final interview with the presidential search committee, the paper states. Hildreth spoke of Meharry’s mission and his personal history with such eloquence, Royal said, that the committee members leaped to their feet and applauded.
“It was the most touching experience I have had,” said Royal. “It was a very, very spiritual and emotional moment. It was meant to be.”
The board voted unanimously to hire Hildreth last week.
In the interview Friday, he repeatedly mentioned the rapidly evolving healthcare industry, from training for physicians to pay models. Hildreth said his entrepreneurial spirit, combined with existing “wisdom circles” at Meharry, would help the institution forge new ground.
At the same time, Hildreth was mindful of Meharry’s existing connections. He said he looked forward to nurturing the ongoing relationship with Nashville General Hospital at Meharry, although he added that it would take time to identify his specific goals, states The Tennessean.
Hildreth journey was spurred on by a childhood tragedy that also guided his commitment to Meharry, one of the nation’s oldest and largest historically black health science centers, according to the newspaper article. When Hildreth was 11 years old and growing up in Camden, his father died of cancer.
“Even though there was a hospital there and doctors there, my father didn’t get very much care for two reasons: Because we were black and we were poor,” he said. “Coming to a place whose whole history and founding was to take care of people who are disadvantaged and poor was very powerful for me.”
When he begins his tenure on July 1, Hildreth will become Meharry’s 12th president. It’s a position he hopes to hold for the rest of his professional life and through the college’s 150th birthday in 2026.
“All the trips I’ve made my whole life, the best part of every one of them was coming home,” he told the crowd gathered Friday. “That’s what this feels like.”
Hildreth will return to Meharry after a stint as dean the University of California Davis’ College of Biological Sciences. Hildreth’s wife, Phyllis D.K. Hildreth, began work as an associate professor and academic director of the Institute for College Management at Lipscomb University a few years ago while he was working as a researcher at Meharry.
The Hildreths have two adult children.
(Tammy Frazier, news editor at the Camden News, contributed to this article.)