New Leadership Team Takes Reins At Local College
(Press Release 07-25-07)
Hank Mooney, Office of Public Information

When students and faculty return for fall semester classes August 14, they will be met with a new leadership council at Eastern Oklahoma State College.

Within the last year, almost all of the people in the council positions have changed.

The Eastern leadership council includes the President, Vice President for Finance, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Vice President for Student Affairs, Eastern Development Foundation Director and the Dean of the Eastern McAlester branch campus.

Eastern regents named Dr. Stephen Smith president of the Wilburton college following the resignation of Dr. Richard Bernard as the college president March 28. Smith was serving as the Dean of the McAlester branch campus when regents elevated him to president.

Smith came to Eastern as an administrator with 13 years experience in mid-sized and large public school districts as well as a technology center. Smith joined the Eastern staff in July 2005 as Dean of the McAlester campus.

At Meridian Technology Center he served as the director of full-time programs. His duties there included teacher supervision, staff evaluations, personnel, program development, program budgeting, student supervision, recruitment, marketing and campus promotion.

Smith was originally from Quinton. He also serves as the current president of the McAlester Chamber of Commerce.

Vic Woods was hired to replace Smith as Dean of the McAlester branch campus in July. He comes to Eastern from Drummond where he spent the last year as Superintendent of Drummond Public Schools. He served with the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education as a program supervisor and regional field representative for both the Technology Education and Trade and Industrial Education Division.

He has spent the last nine years as a superintendent, educator, state coordinator and state program supervisor. Since 1998 he has actively worked on school reform issues at both the state and local level. Last year he was instrumental in the process of restructuring and reorganizing a school system to maintain high educational standards and improve financial soundness.

Dr. Karen Harrison became the Vice President for Academic Affairs in July. She has spent the majority of her time in the classroom since she began teaching as an assistant in 1978 at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

She came to Eastern from McAlester High School in 1998 as a science teacher. While at Eastern she has served as Honors Program Coordinator, Self Study Coordinator for the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association visit last year and most recently as Division of Science and Mathematics Chairperson and faculty member.

Taylor became Eastern’s first Vice President for Finance in late February. He was serving as the Chief Financial Officer for Bacone College in Muskogee. He served as fiduciary trust officer for the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, as CFO of a venture capital firm in Georgia and as a grants manager for the University of Texas Health Science Center.

He spent most of his accounting career in the oil and gas industry where he worked in the 1980’s and 1990’s following his 1979 graduation from the University of Oklahoma in accounting.

Ann Owens came to Eastern as Development Foundation Director in July from McAlester Regional Health Center Foundation where she had been working since 2001. She began her professional career with Southwestern Bell Telephone (now AT&T) in 1973 as a service representative in McAlester.

She spent most of her career, except to two years in St. Louis, working in Tulsa. In 1995 she moved back to McAlester as External Affairs Manager responsible for 22 communities around McAlester until her retirement from the company in 2000.

The Vice President for Student Affairs, Leah McLaughlin, began working as a secretary in the president’s office at Eastern in 1992. She became the administrative assistant to the president and secretary to the Board of Regents a year later and became the Director of Admissions/Recruiting/Financial Aid in 2000.

Her title became the Director of Enrollment Management in 2004 and was named a vice president in 2006. She received her AAS in Business from Eastern, her BS in Management of Human Resources from Oklahoma Wesleyan College and her MS Human Resources Administration in 2004 from East Central University.

Caption info:
The new leadership team for Eastern Oklahoma State College includes from left:  Vice President for Student Affairs Leah McLaughlin, Dean of the McAlester Campus Vic Woods, Development Foundation Director Ann Owens, Vice President for Fincance George Taylor,  Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Karen Harrison and President Dr. Stephen Smith.