OCU announced on Mar. 23 that Dr. Kenneth Evans will serve as the new president of OCU following July 1.
In an email from OCU Communications sent out to the campus community, Paul McLaughlin, Board of Trustees chairman, announced that Evans is the chosen pick for president.
“With his years of academic leadership at Lamar and other institutions, we are confident in Dr. Evans’ ability to help us continue our tradition of excellence,” McLaughlin said in the email. “His experience as a president and administrator, along with his local connections in central Oklahoma, will be valuable assets in continuing to move the university forward.”
President Martha Burger will continue as president of OCU until June 1. Burger said she is looking forward to Evans’s leadership.
“I am excited to welcome Dr. Evans as the new president of OCU,” Burger said. “I believe that my alma mater will be in good hands and that OCU’s future is as bright as ever.”
Evans currently serves as the president of Lamar University and has served in that position since 2013. Evans has a bachelors in English/political science from University of California-Davis and received his masters in business from California State University-Sacramento and doctorate in business from University of Colorado.
Evans has worked in higher education for over 35 years, including serving as dean at the Michael F. Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma, various positions at the University of Missouri-Columbia and a faculty position at Arizona State University.
During the general and student candidate forums hosted by the Presidential Search Committee on March 11, Evans said one of the reasons he wants to be president at OCU is because he likes Oklahoma.
“I was in Oklahoma, as you know, for about seven years. I fell in love with Oklahoma,” Evans said. “I grew to love the people here a great deal.”
Evans also said he liked OCU is because it is the only university embedded in OKC and is perfectly situated to help the city grow.
“Being the only embedded university in this city, you have an obligation to this city,” Evans said. “The more you improve this city with the next level of improvements, revitalizations going on in Oklahoma City, unless you attend the gentrification, you will create a massive problem. There’s too much data out there to demonstrate that that is the case.”
Evans said he sees a gentrification problem in Oklahoma City, and he sees the less financially capable people in these gentrified areas will be crowded out of their homes in the coming years. He said he wants OCU to be part of helping these communities when and if this process happens.
“You can, indeed, make a contribution as a university to start talking about the important subjects around gentrification, and how we can do intelligent things now in Oklahoma City so we can avoid some of the pitfalls that community after community has experienced,” Evans said.
Evans said he thinks issues of diversity and inclusion in most instances comes from a place of ignorance, and universities like OCU should work to educate people on these matters.
“Our role, and the great thing about being educators, is we have the opportunity to sit in the driver’s seat to do a much better job of preparing the world to understand how the greatest communities that constitute the network, the fabric, this rich mosaic, this part of humanity, how it all fits together,” Evans said. “And if we’re not playing a role in that space then shame on us.”
Student Publications conducted a survey about how the campus community felt about Evans being selected as the new university president and the Presidential Search Process in general. Several community members expressed their concerns about Evans’s ability to lead a healthy and diverse campus. Evans said Lamar University has a very diverse population, with a about quarter of the population on campus being Black, around 21% being Latinx and 58% of students being first generation. Lamar University also has a significant amount of deaf and hearing-impaired students on their campus.
“When you talk about diversity and inclusion, it means telling the community, of which you are apart, that we welcome the diverse population, and we want you to feel that you have access to the supportive services this institution can provide you to make your experience as a successful student at OCU the very best it can be.” Evans said.
When asked about cost-of-living adjustments for university employees and the lack thereof in recent years, Evans said he has hosted fundraisers for faculty raises at LU.
“The commitment is really around building professorships, fellowships, endowed chairs. When I arrived, we had I want to say maybe six endowed chairs and professorships and no fellowships. We now have about 35, and this campaign will probably grow that, about double that number,” Evans said. “So, where I may not be able to find funds in the operating budget, specifically, I’m finding funds through alternative sources.”
When asked about a time he defended academic freedom, Evans did not provide a specific example but said academic freedom is essential to universities and spoke about the invention of tenure during the McCarthy era to protect professors from being fired and blacklisted for teaching the subject they wanted to teach.
“If we kept doing that, then who really dictates what the message is? Who becomes the governing mechanism to determine what truth is? You tell me,” Evans said.
Several attendants at the general session asked if Evans would commit to creating an office of sustainability to transition OCU renewable energy. Evans said he doesn’t know the specifics of what it would take to do those things, but he is in favor of it.
“I’d have to see a plan, and I would have to see how it plays out. But that would be a really positive and a very exciting objective,” Evans said.
Another attendant asked him about the recent United Methodist Conference decision against LGBTQ+ clergy and marriages. Evans said OCU’s role in the midst of that decision is to encourage discussion.
“I think when misunderstanding and misrepresentation–and oftentimes hate–is a consequence of attitudes that are formed in a social setting. Those attitudes are often a function of misinformation. They are a function of ignorance. They are a function of the failure to perceive alternative perspectives. And the role of the university plays is all about building intelligent dialogue,” Evans said.
BreAuna Shaw, marketing sophomore, said she appreciated how open the candidate was with the attendants of the forum. Shaw asked what brought him to apply for OCU, to which he responded he would like to work with a smaller university, and he said his wife had recently died, so he said he sees working for a different university as a way of moving on.
“I liked how open he was, especially to my question. Of course, I had no idea what brought him here, but I thought it was really cool that he mentioned his wife,” Shaw said. “I also love that, besides his experience as a previous president, he also comes with a lot of unique ideas.”
Maya Ferrer, acting senior, said she is not thrilled about the decision.
“I hope that Dr. Evans is good for OCU,” she said. “But I do know of some staff members who are not happy. I don’t know a single student who wanted him to be president.”
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