OU Board of Regents Selects New Chair 2020 and Takes Other Actions

OU Board of Regents Selects New Chair 2020 and Takes Other Actions

Belinda Higgs Hyppolite, Ed.D., will serve as vice president of diversity and inclusion beginning in January 2020. Hyppolite will join OU from the University of Central Florida, where she currently serves as assistant vice president for student development and enrollment services.

Julie Hoff, Ph.D., was appointed as dean of the Fran and Earl Zeigler College of Nursing. She is currently the dean of nursing at the Texas A&M Corpus Christi College of Nursing and Health Sciences and will also join OU in January 2020.  

The board approved the formation of search committees for other open dean positions in the Honors College, College of Professional and Continuing Studies, and University Libraries. 

The board also considered the development of a new Executive Master of Business degree program in Aerospace and Defense. The proposed program will now go before the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education for final approval. The program is set to offer business management education to the growing aerospace and defense market. It will be open to working professionals in the aerospace and defense industry within Oklahoma, the United States and the broader global community. The program is set to launch in the fall of 2020 pending approval by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education.

“We are excited today to announce key leadership appointments and to continue our work in strategic areas that create opportunity for our students and faculty,” said OU Interim President Joseph Harroz Jr. “OU is making immense progress around our priorities of diversity and inclusion and building our research efforts to support the state and nation. With these recent hires and our focus on developing programs that advance our mission, we are continuing to position OU as a national leader.”

The Regents approved the University’s updated Conflict of Interest policy, which reflects recent changes in the state’s ethics rules. The revised policy now better aligns with emerging best practices on a national level. During the revision process, a taskforce identified functional areas in the administration of the policy in which it could be updated to promote improvement in education, disclosure, decision-making, management and recordkeeping.