Eby elected chair of state school board

Posted at 7:57 am February 12, 2023
By John Huotari Leave a Comment

Bob Eby, left, has been elected chair of the Tennessee State Board of Education. Also pictured second from left are former chair Lillian Hartgrove, Vice Chair Darrell Cobbins, and Executive Director Sara Heyburn Morrison. (Photo courtesy Bob Eby/Tennessee State Board of Education)

Bob Eby, a former chair and vice chair of the Oak Ridge school board, has been elected chair of the Tennessee State Board of Education. He will serve a two-year term.

Eby was appointed to the state school board by former Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam in April 2018. He was elected vice chair the following year. Eby represents Tennessee’s Third Congressional District, which includes Oak Ridge.

He will replace Lillian Hartgrove, who represents District 6, as chair of the 11-member board. Hartgrove has served as chair for five years.

The state school board’s vice chair is Darrell Cobbins, and the executive director is Sara Heyburn Morrison. She has served since 2015.

Before being appointed to the state school board, Eby was elected to the Oak Ridge Board of Education four times. He was chair from 1991-1995 and vice chair from 2009-2018.

Eby has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Tennessee, and he served as site manager of the 4,000-employee K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant and as a director for Centrus Energy Corporation in Oak Ridge, among other employment. With three patents in radiochemical processing, he is currently a senior consultant to Navarro Research and Engineering in Oak Ridge and is a community volunteer who serves on two boards for local economic development.

More information will be added as it becomes available.

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