TICUA Hall of Fame Spotlight:

Southern College of Optometry Graduate

Dr. William Cochran

As a third generation optometrist, Dr. William Cochran is deeply connected to Southern College of Optometry. In fact, his parents met while studying optometry at SCO in the 1940s. His mother was only the third woman to graduate from SCO.

After Dr. Cochran graduated from SCO in 1968, he served his country as a captain in the U.S. Army's Medical Service Corps and was stationed at Martin Army Hospital in Columbus, Georgia. Upon completing his military service, he practiced 13 years in a private primary optometry partnership in Kosciusko, Mississippi.

Dr. Cochran became the president of SCO in 1984 and began implementing changes to move the college into the national arena of optometric education. By his second decade as president, he had improved and stabilized the college's finances. This strengthened the college's ability to meet the educational, clinical, and technological needs of its students.

By the late 1990s, the college had outgrown its clinical facilities, and Dr. Cochran launched a capital campaign to construct The Eye Center at SCO, a freestanding clinic in Memphis that was designed as a long-term teaching and patient care facility. The 55,000-square-foot clinic opened in 2002. Now in its 20th year, The Eye Center remains one of the largest public-teaching eye care facilities of its kind in the U.S.