Todd Lamb is not the first politician in Oklahoma to be appointed to a leadership post in higher education in Oklahoma.
David Boren was perhaps the highest-profile example. Boren was elected governor and then U.S. Senator, and in 1994 was appointed president of the University of Oklahoma, where he served for almost two decades.
After being elected lieutenant governor and then governor of Oklahoma, George Nigh served as president of the University of Central Oklahoma in 1992-97.
W. Roger Webb earned a bachelor’s degree from OSU and a law degree from OU. He worked for the Secretary of the U.S. Senate and later was appointed commissioner of the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety. In 1978 he became the 14th president of Northeastern State University at Tahlequah, and in 1997 succeeded Nigh as president of UCO.
Former state Rep. Don Davis was named president of Lawton’s Cameron University in 1980.
Dr. Larry Rice, also a former state Representative, became president of Rogers State University in 2008.
Former state Rep. Randy Beutler was appointed president of Southwestern Oklahoma State University in 2010.
Glen D. Johnson Jr., former Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, was named Chancellor of the Oklahoma System of Higher Education in 2007 after serving 10 years as president of Southeastern Oklahoma State University.
Former Oklahoma House Speaker Jeff Hickman was appointed in 2017 to a nine-year term as a State Regent for Higher Education.
And most recently, Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt, a former member of the Oklahoma Senate and a 2009 graduate of the Oklahoma City University School of Law, will begin his term July 1 as the new dean of the OCU law school.