Faculty

Timothy Trainor, PhD, MBA, BS

Brigadier General (Retired, U.S. Army)
U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Class of 1983
Areas of Expertise

Building teams, strategic planning, crisis leadership, leading change

Experience

Tim most recently served as the president and CEO of Mount St. Mary’s, a private nonprofit university in Emmitsburg, Maryland from 2016 – 2024. In the competitive, tough environment for higher education, Tim successfully led the university through two destabilizing crises. The first was a leadership crisis caused by the short contentious tenure of the previous president that resulted in a significant drop in first-year enrollment, a damaged institutional reputation, and a crisis in confidence. The second crisis was the Covid pandemic. During Tim’s tenure, the university grew enrollment by 12%, significantly improved their financials and expanded facilities.

Prior to this, Tim served a 33-year career in the Army with his last position as Dean and Chief Academic Officer at West Point for six years. During his tenure, Tim led the faculty through the first major curricular change effort in a dozen years to keep pace with an Army that changed considerably during a long period of war. Tim also served as head of the Department of Systems Engineering and as a faculty member teaching courses in engineering management, systems engineering and decision analysis.

As an engineer officer, Tim served in many assignments. Three in particular helped him grow as a leader in diverse environments: advising the UK-led Provincial Reconstruction Team in Basra helping Iraqi leaders improve their infrastructure revitalization plans; coordinating the actions of the NATO military staff, US Embassy-Sarajevo and other governmental agencies as an operations officer for the 35-member nation NATO force in Bosnia; and serving as the primary project manager for a 1,000 Soldier engineer task force in Honduras that designed, planned and constructed several large projects and smaller humanitarian projects such as wells and school repair.

Tim has authored, or co-authored scholarly works in the fields of systems engineering, engineering management, operations research and decision analysis.

He has experienced and served at every level of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as a cadet, faculty member, department head, Dean of the Academic Board, and as a parent.

Education
  • PHD, Industrial Engineering, North Carolina State University
  • MBA, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University
  • BS, U.S. Military Academy at West Point
Publications/Awards
  • New graduate school of Health Professions at Mount St. Mary's University was named in his honor
  • President Emeritus, Mount St. Mary’s University
  • Honorary Doctorate, Mount St. Mary’s University
  • Influential Marylander for 2021 by The Daily Record
  • Recipient of the Father John McElroy Award from the Friends of Catholic Education in Frederick, MD
  • Recipient of the John Carroll Society Medal in Washington, D.C.
  • Engineering Manager of the Year for 2011 by the American Society of Engineering Management
  • Silver de Fleury Medal for outstanding and significant service to the Army Engineer Regiment
  • Several military awards/decorations including the U.S. Army’s Distinguished Service Medal, Senior Parachutist, Sapper, and Ranger tabs
Organizations
  • Mount St. Mary’s University
  • U.S. Army Engineer Regiment
Personal

Tim and his family are “all-Army”. He and his wife, Colonel (Ret.) Donna Brazil, another Thayer Leadership faculty member, both graduated in 1983, and all three of the children are graduates.

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