W. Joseph King

W. Joseph King, Ph.D. is president of Presbyterian Pan American School. Previously, he served as the 18th president of Lyon College. He also served as senior advisor to the president of Emory & Henry College. As executive director of the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education, he helped 138 liberal arts colleges integrate inquiry, pedagogy, and technology to become more strategic and innovative. Similarly, as vice president of innovation at Southwestern University, he focused on strategic opportunities. As executive director of Connexions (now OpenStax) at Rice University, he led the first large-scale open education initiative and the free textbook movement.

In addition to his work in academe, Dr. King is a serial entrepreneur and research scientist. He was president of Zama Networks. He was also chief scientist of F5 Networks. He served as the 2007 entrepreneur-in-residence at Tech Fort Worth. Formerly, he was a research scientist at the Human Interface Technology Laboratory at the University of Washington. He has also conducted research at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute and Hughes Research Laboratories.

Dr. King serves on the advisory council of Stanford University Libraries. Formerly, he served on the boards of Southwestern University, Lyon College, Rice University Press, Council on Library and Information Resources, Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, Teachers Without Borders, Benaroya Research Institute, and the Pacific Northwest Ballet.

He holds a Ph.D. in human-computer interaction from the University of Washington. He holds a B.A. in computer science and in experimental psychology from Southwestern University.