Dr. Bill Estes
Dr. William “Bill” Estes was promoted to Distinguished Professor of Education by the Lee University board of directors. This title is the highest honor that can be bestowed on a member of Lee’s faculty.
Dr. Estes is one of only 10 professors in Lee’s history to be awarded the title of Distinguished Professor.
Dr. Estes currently serves as dean of Lee’s Helen DeVos College of Education.
He came to Lee in 1998 as an assistant professor of education and served as chair of the Department of Health, Exercise Science and Secondary Education from 2004 to 2013.
Prior to Lee, Dr. Estes served as a principal, an assistant principal, and a classroom teacher over nine years in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. While at the University of North Carolina, Dr. Estes worked as a Paideia seminar trainer, a teaching assistant, a research assistant, and as a Carolina Teaching Fellows program assistant.
Locally, Dr. Estes is a member of Cleveland’s City Council and serves on the boards of United Way and City Fields. He is a committee member of the Greenway Advisory Board and served on the State Task Force for Minority Teacher Recruitment and Retention during the Bredesen administration.
He earned a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a master of science in Education from the University of Central Arkansas, and a bachelor of arts from Wheaton College.