Office of the President

W. Andrew Tooley, Ph.D., 24th President of King University

Andy Tooley, Ph.D., began his tenure as King’s twenty-fourth president on August 1, 2024.

Throughout his nearly 20-year career in higher education, Tooley has served both as a faculty member and in positions of executive leadership. He taught courses at his alma mater, the University of Stirling in Stirling, Scotland, and at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, where he served as a professor in the School of Biblical and Theological Studies and senior director at the Marion E. Wade Center.  While at Wheaton he also worked as director of principal gifts, providing essential guidance on strategic engagement for the president’s fundraising portfolio.

In his role at Belmont, he contributed to the development and implementation of one of the largest comprehensive fundraising campaigns in the university’s history, and worked with the president and the board of trustees to guide Belmont on its Strategic Path to 2030 initiative. He also collaborated with academic units across the university to identify areas of strategic growth and opportunity.

Tooley earned his bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln; his master’s in divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois; and his doctorate in history from the University of Stirling, Scotland. He has completed further post-doctoral fellowships at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. Tooley and his wife, Christa Tooley, Ph.D., have three children, Teddy, Penny, and Josie.

“I am thrilled and honored to serve King University as its twenty-fourth president,” Tooley said. “I am consistently impressed by the institution’s rich history and the many expressions of its ongoing commitments to the Christian faith and academic excellence in the liberal arts and graduate professions. My family and I are excited to collaborate with faculty, staff, and students to advance King’s legacy in service of God’s redemptive work in the world.”