Baptist Health College Little Rock on Tuesday named Joel Hicks as the college’s new president.
Hicks is the former dean of the College of Nursing and School of Allied Health at Northwestern State University, based in Natchitoches, Louisiana, a position he held until July 2021. As dean, he oversaw all certificate, undergraduate and graduate programs within the nursing and allied health programs divisions across four campuses.
Past roles Hicks include associate dean and director of the School of Allied Health. He also taught at Northwestern State starting in 2010, and was a tenured associate professor within the School of Allied Health.
Before working in higher education, Hicks served for almost two decades in health care, primarily in diagnostic and cardiac imaging. The majority of this clinical time was spent in a heart catheterization lab.
“We are thrilled to have Joel Hicks at the helm of our college, which for over a century has trained the next generation of health care professionals in nursing and allied health programs,” Mike Perkins, president of Baptist Health Medical Center-Little Rock, said in a statement. “His decades of experience, not only in education but in hands-on medical practice as well, make him a great fit for its next chapter.”
Hicks earned a certificate in radiologic technology in 1994 from LSU Health Sciences Center. He continued his education over a decade later, earning a bachelor’s in radiologic sciences in 2006 from Northwestern State and a master’s in radiologic technology in 2009 from Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas.
In 2016, he earned a doctorate in developmental education at Grambling State University in Grambling, Louisiana.
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