About the Headmaster

Dr. Bill and Sue Stacy

The start of the 2004-05 school year marked a milestone for Baylor leadership with the arrival of Dr. Bill Stacy, the eighth headmaster in the school’s 111-year history.

Before assuming the helm at Baylor, Bill served a seven-year stint as chancellor of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Bill personifies the characteristics Baylor sought in a headmaster – energy and enthusiasm, a love for working with young people, a commitment to academic excellence and building the all-round person, and the ability to develop and fulfill a mission, build a sense of community, and develop character and leadership. And according to Jon Kinsey ’72, chairman of the Baylor Board of Trustees, “Being a college preparatory school, we will certainly benefit from Bill’s deep experience with institutions of higher learning.”

During his tenure at UTC, Bill oversaw the largest capital growth in the institution’s history – $200 million worth of projects that included a new Engineering, Math, and Science Building, an expanded university center, and new residence halls – as well as the creation of three Ph.D. programs.

Before coming to Chattanooga in 1997, he was the founding president of California State University, San Marcos. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Southeast Missouri State University and a Masters of Science, Speech Communication and a Doctorate of Philosophy, Contemporary Public Address and Communication Theory, from Southern Illinois University. Bill said the appointment at Baylor brings his career full circle, in that he started his career as a teacher in secondary education. “One of the great things about Baylor is that everyone is a teacher,” he says. “What happens here after three o’clock is as important as what happens before three o’clock.”

Bill and his wife, Dr. Sue Stacy, a computer application professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, reside in Johnston House, the headmaster’s residence, on the Baylor campus. They enjoy five grandchildren and two sons and a daughter living in North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin.