Southwest Tech Superintendent and CEO, Dale Latham announces that Dr. Lee Denney will be the keynote speaker at the Southwest Tech graduation ceremony on Tuesday, May 16 at 7pm located in the Western Oklahoma Stat College gymnasium.
Dr. Lee Denney, interim chief of staff of the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education, served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 2004 to 2016, representing District 33. She served on various committees, including appropriations and budget; higher education career technology; energy; economic development and tourism; arts and culture, as chairman; and banking, as vice chairman. She also served as chairman of the appropriations and budget subcommittee on common education. She ended her time in the Oklahoma House serving as Speaker Pro Tempore. After leaving the House, Denney served as department head of the veterinary technology program at Oklahoma State University-Oklahoma City in 2016-17 and then as Oklahoma state director for rural development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 2017 to 2021. Denney, who was born and raised in Cushing, earned both a bachelor’s degree in agricultural economics and a doctor of veterinary medicine degree from Oklahoma State University. She practiced in a mixed animal practice for 35 years, mainly working on companion animals. In addition to her work as a veterinarian, Denney worked as a recruitment coordinator for the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine and taught anatomy and physiology at Central Technology Center in Drumright.
She serves on the boards of directors of the Oklahoma State Library, Oklahoma Academy for State Goals, the Oklahoma Public School Resource Center, Friends for Folks, the Oklahoma Commission on the Status of Women and Payne County Youth Services.
The community is invited to come celebrate the graduates of Southwest Technology Center.