Dr. Rick L. Upchurch serves as Associate Vice President for eLearning and Educational Innovation at Belhaven University, where he oversees online and adult academic programs serving approximately 3,500 students and supervises institutional implementation of AI-enabled curriculum initiatives. His leadership portfolio includes direct oversight of the expansion of the Learning Management System, course architecture redesign, faculty development systems, and AI-supported instructional delivery.
With more than twenty years of senior administrative experience in higher education, Dr. Upchurch has led multi-campus academic systems across several states, developed balanced scorecard institutional assessment models, and built scalable curriculum infrastructures for adult and online education. He has initiated and supervised AI integration projects in course development and instructional delivery, aligning innovation with accreditation standards and governance requirements.
Rick is also known as The Bama Llama Leader. The title arises from a focus on sustained leadership over decades. His book, The Bama Llama Leader describes what it means to be a Bama Llama leader. There is also a self-assessment available that goes with the book for those interested in what it means to have steady leadership over the long-haul, without losing yourself.
Dr. Upchurch’s work focuses on structured AI integration, outcomes-based assessment, faculty formation, and institutional governance. He brings a practitioner-scholar perspective to the evolving intersection of artificial intelligence and higher education architecture.