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Regis College announced today that Antoinette M. Hays, who currently serves as the dean of the Regis School of Nursing, will become president of the Weston school beginning on July 1.

Hays will replace president Mary Jane England, with whom she collaborated on the school's international nursing program in Haiti, the college said in a release.

“I am passionate about Regis College,” said Hays. “The students and the positive impact of Regis’ mission on them energize me. I thank the Board for the trust it expressed in selecting me as the next President and look forward eagerly to working with trustees, faculty, staff, students, and alumni to take Regis to its next stage of excellence.”

Hays received her doctorate from the Heller School at Brandeis University in 1990 with a dissertation on health policy and aging. She received an MS from Boston University in 1978 and bachelor's degree in nursing from Boston College in 1974. She has a background in fine arts as well as medicine and liberal arts and has cultivated interdisciplinary connections among the arts and sciences.

Hays has played a pivotal role in implementing new undergraduate programs in health and fitness (nutrition and sport management) and public health and adding new master’s programs in nursing, health administration, and biomedical science to existing master’s programs in communications, education, management, and health product regulation. She oversaw and launched the College’s first doctoral program, a Doctorate of Nursing Practice.

Under her leadership, the Regis College School of Nursing, Science and Health Professions won the only designation in New England as a Center of Excellence in Nursing Education (2008-2011) from the National League of Nursing, the college said.

Regis’s nursing programs have affiliations with 11 greater Boston hospitals.

Beginning in 2007, well before the massive earthquake in 2010, Hays worked with England to establish an international nursing education program aimed at educating nursing faculty in Haiti. Forged in collaboration with the Haitian Ministry of Health, the Regis College Haiti Project now has the approval of the International Haiti Recovery Commission and is funded through Partners in Health, the Ansara Family Foundation, and other donors. The first cohort of 12 Haitian nursing faculty members will arrive on the Regis campus to begin their master’s program this June.

“Dr. Hays is a remarkable individual who possesses outstanding vision, energy, and poise,” said England. “She has a track record of executing her ideas locally and globally with great integrity and a strong sense of values. She is a person of imagination, achievement and great humanity. This College and its Board are enthusiastic about her selection as the right individual to be the president of Regis at this time.”

Hays is married to Dr. John Przybylski, and they have three grown children. Their daughter Alexis graduated from Boston College and works in public relations and graduate admissions at MIT; their son Wesley, an Emmanuel College graduate, teaches mathematics at a private international school in Bangkok, Thailand; and their son John is a sophomore at Fairfield University in Connecticut. The family makes its home in Wayland.

For more information visit regiscollege.edu.