President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Beth Harwell and Brian Noland to be members of the Board of Directors of TVA.
Ms. Harwell has served as a member of the TVA Board of Directors since 2021. She represented Tennessee’s 56th District in the state’s House of Representatives for nearly 30 years, including seven years as Speaker of the House, a position to which she was elected with bipartisan support. Previously, Ms. Harwell chaired the Tennessee Republican Party and served as an assistant professor of Political Science at Belmont University. Ms. Harwell moved to Nashville to attend David Lipscomb University, and subsequently completed her graduate work at Vanderbilt University. She is married to Sam Harwell, with whom she has three children.
Mr. Noland became the ninth president of East Tennessee State University in January 2012. During his tenure, ETSU has achieved its highest graduation, retention and employee satisfaction rates in history and secured record-breaking levels of research funding. Mr. Noland has secured resources for and overseen some of the institution’s largest and most transformative capital projects, including the complete renovations of the D.P. Culp Student Center, Brown Hall, and Lamb Hall, as well as the construction of Greene Stadium, the Martin Center for the Arts, Bishop Hall, a new humanities building, and a new integrated health services center.
Sustaining ETSU’s focus on regional stewardship, Mr. Noland has partnered with civic and corporate entities to position the university as a national leader in interprofessional health care and rural health. Under his leadership, ETSU has launched several health research and care centers, including the Ballad Health Strong BRAIN Institute, a first-of-its-kind institute dedicated to promoting the awareness and study of adverse childhood experiences; the Center for Applied Research and Evaluation in Women’s Health; the Addiction Science Center; the Center for Rural Health and Research; the ETSU/NORC Rural Health Equity Research Center; the Center for Cardiovascular Risk Research; and the Tennessee Center for Nursing Advancement. Mr. Noland has guided ongoing innovations within ETSU’s academic portfolio and curricula. This includes the launch of the BlueSky Institute, a 27-month computer science program developed hand-in-hand with BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee through which students receive training and mentoring onsite at BCBS’s headquarters and earn job offers immediately following graduation.
Mr. Noland has served as a board member for the American Council on Education, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors, Ballad Health, Bank of Tennessee, and TVA.