Bryan F. Coker, PhD serves as the 12th President of Maryville College, a 205-year-old liberal arts institution of 1,200 undergraduate students, located in East Tennessee. Coker has served as Maryville’s president since July 2020 and has focused heavily on connections between the college and surrounding region, especially the Great Smoky Mountains. During Coker’s time as president, the college has experienced a 15 percent increase in student enrollment, addition of its first graduate program, opening of a new alumni center, construction of a new track and field facility, substantial increases in major gifts, and creation of the Maryville College Downtown Center. Several new academic and athletic programs have been introduced or are in progress.
Coker is the founding chair of the Collegiate Conference of the South athletic conference and a member of the NCAA Division III Presidents Council. He serves on the boards of the Appalachian College Association and the Association of Presbyterian Colleges and Universities. He is an affiliated faculty member at UT and previously taught at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. Prior to Maryville, Coker was vice president and dean of students, as well as acting president, for Goucher College in Maryland. He previously served for 10 years as dean of students at Jacksonville University and as director of student judicial affairs for UT. He has also served as an accreditation evaluator for both the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. Coker is a graduate of both Leadership Tennessee and Leadership Knoxville. He is an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church USA and has served in various church leadership roles.
Originally from North Carolina, Coker received his BA from Rhodes College, is a member of the college’s Hall of Fame and was previously recognized as Rhodes’s first-ever Young Alumnus of the Year. He holds an MEd from the University of South Carolina, and a PhD from UT (’10). Coker is married to Rhodes classmate Sara Barnette Coker, and they have four children.
