After more than 25 years at OU-Tulsa, the University of Oklahoma’s graduate college office on the campus likely will be merged with the one in Norman.
The OU Board of Regents approved the proposal during its regularly scheduled annual meeting at OU-Tulsa on Thursday.
The proposal will now go to the Oklahoma Regents for Higher Education for final approval.
“You look at the Tulsa campus, and the programs here are too often not fully connected to the programs on the Norman campus,” said OU President Joseph Harroz Jr.
“This is an example of one. There were separate graduate college offices, one on the Tulsa campus, one in Norman. It didn’t make a lot of sense.”
Merging the two into one Norman-based office will “create greater efficiencies for our students and their progress in that college,” Harroz said.
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Officials said the move would come with no loss or reduction in staff in Tulsa and no impact on graduate students or faculty.
Graduation ceremonies would continue to be held in both Norman and Tulsa.
Under the proposal, leadership of graduate education would be consolidated under the dean of the Graduate College in Norman, currently Randall Hewes.
Jim Sluss, current dean of the Graduate College in Tulsa, would step out of the dean’s role but continue to serve as interim president of OU-Tulsa. OU’s Tulsa Graduate College was established in 1996, originally as the Tulsa Graduate Office, so administrative issues regarding graduate education could be handled locally. Norman-based graduate programs have been offered in Tulsa since 1957.
The merger would have no impact on the OU Health Sciences Center Graduate College, officials said.
Also during Thursday’s meeting, the OU regents received a brief update on the planned OU Polytechnic School in Tulsa, which was announced earlier this year. The plan was approved recently by the state regents. Final approval on school programming is still pending.
The school would start with five concentration areas: cyber, data science, software development, advanced mobility and medical informatics.
The goal is to start in fall 2024 with the first cohort of students, officials said.
