It wasn’t too long ago, in spring 2020, when former Pres. Randy Beutler announced a temporary hiring freeze to help with the university’s budget that had suffered from the pandemic and the shut down of SWOSU.

Now, Pres. Dr. Diane Lovell sees the university on a good way.

“We are in a good financial situation, we are certainly nowhere near crisis,” she said. “Our enrollment was up a lot during summer, which was a surprise, 8 or 9% in credit hours and that’s what we get paid on, that’s how we get our money. But this fall, it is down a bit, so we are working on some measures to remedy that and we are working on increasing our enrollment in Yukon.”

According to Lovell, there are around 115 students enrolled in Yukon after only a bit more than one year of partnership – and Yukon is part of Canadian County, the fastest-growing county in Oklahoma.

“We know that that will be a lot of enrollment growth,” Lovell said.