The University of Oklahoma announced Joe Harroz as the next president of the school. The 54-year old former University of Oklahoma College of Law dean is the 15th president of the university. Harroz has served as the interim president for the last 12 months.

Harroz, a native Oklahoman, earned a bachelor of arts in economics from OU in 1989, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, and later earned a juris doctorate from Georgetown University in 1992. He rejoined OU in 1994, the beginning of almost 25 years of service to the university. He worked first as vice president for executive affairs and then for 12 years as general counsel, the chief legal counsel to the president, the OU Board of Regents, Rogers State University and Cameron University.

Throughout his nine-year tenure as dean, the OU College of Law earned record national recognition, including the highest-ever U.S. News & World Report ranking by any Oklahoma law school and the first law school in the nation to achieve Apple Distinguished School status (Apple, Inc.).

Under Harroz’s direction, National Jurist Magazine named OU Law one of the nation’s “Best Value Law Schools” for 10 consecutive years, and its graduates consistently led the state in bar exam passage rates. Additionally, his fundraising efforts more than tripled the size of the college’s scholarship endowment and expanded the annual amount of scholarship money given to students to more than $1.5 million.

Harroz emerged as a top finalist after the Board of Regents’ most recent nationwide presidential search, Pierson noted. He went through the extensive research process, meeting with a 19-member search committee comprised of students, faculty, staff and alumni, and was presented to the board as the search’s only internal candidate.