Gee, he has done it again.

The energetic, bow-tie clad Elwood Gordon Gee, a man who has apparently held — and also has left — more college presidencies than any other American, is about to add a staggering sixth stint to his career total.

Following in the footsteps of Billy Martin, who managed the Yankees five different times, and Grover Cleveland, who was both the 22nd and 24th president of America, Mr. Gee’s latest move marks a roundabout return to a place he led once before.

The 63-year-old itinerant intellectual, who late last month released a statement saying he intended to remain at Vanderbilt “a long time to come,” announced yesterday that he would resign the chancellorship of the private university in Nashville, Tenn., on August 1, to return to Ohio State University, where he served as president between 1990 and 1997.

While Mr. Gee has drawn praise for raising Vanderbilt’s profile and selectivity, increasing minority enrollment and completing a $1.25 billion capital campaign ahead of schedule, he also raised eyebrows by having Vanderbilt spend more than $6 million dollars renovating its expansive 19,700 square foot, hilltop, Greek Revival mansion, which is a presidential residence staffed with a personal chef. Wafts of criticism also arose when his wife was apparently found smoking marijuana in the presidential mansion, alarming some trustees and administrators.

Then there is the issue of the five corporate governing boards that Mr. Gee sits on in addition to his $1.3 million a year job at Vanderbilt, where he took over in 2000. Those boards had 77 meetings in 2006, according to the Wall Street Journal. In the past, he said that he has used board-related travel to fundraise in various cities.

Universities are becoming more careful and seeking greater accountability, said a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, Kevin Dougherty. Expenditures of other university leaders have also come under scrutiny over the years, such as leaders of American University, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and Adelphi University. Mr. Dougherty said that presidents are also under much greater pressure to raise money. He also said that with presidential salaries going up sharply, there was growing concern about corporate norms entering universities and more people wondering whether that is appropriate. “Presidents are encountering considerably greater criticism. It’s getting to be a much tougher role,” Mr. Dougherty said.

In an e-mail to the Vanderbilt community, Mr. Gee wrote, “I want you to know that I am not leaving Vanderbilt. Rather, I am following my heart and returning to a place that I consider my home.”

He called the decision to leave Vanderbilt “by far the most difficult professional decision” he has ever made.

Mr. Gee has also served as president of Brown, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and West Virginia University, which he led when he was 37 years old.

When Mr. Gee announced he was leaving Ohio State to go to Brown University, students in Ohio put on bow ties and pleaded with him to stay, according to the Wall Street Journal, which ran a front-page article last year about Mr. Gee’s spending at Vanderbilt. The article said that at Brown University, a renovation of the university president’s house during Mr. Gee’s two-year tenure there cost $3 million.

A Columbia University-educated lawyer, Mr. Gee clerked for Justice Burger on the Supreme Court. As a university president, he is known for shaking up campuses that he has led. At Vanderbilt, he absorbed the athletic department into the Student Life. At Brown, he ended the university’s string quartet while launching an expensive biomedical sciences expansion.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Mrs. Gee, a faculty member at Vanderbilt, lowered the Stars and Stripes outside the mansion in 2004 when President Bush was re-elected, and signed a letter protesting when Condoleezza Rice was going to speak at graduation that year. Mr. Gee drew wide attention after the Drudge Report posted a photo of the grinning president holding an undergraduate campus newspaper spoof whose two-word headline ran “Gee Dead.” But his career is alive for Ohio State’s trustees, who, the Columbus Dispatch reported this week, plan to pay him at least $1 million a year.

The report didn’t say if there were plans in the works to renovate his residence.