Ruby Grant was not a large woman, nor was she loud or obstreperous, but her quiet determination could fill a room. In the mid-1980s, the diminutive septuagenarian met with University of Oklahoma Foundation President Ron D. Burton and laid out her plans for the estate she had inherited from her parents.

"She wanted two things," said Burton...

JP Audas, a veteran OU administrator, was appointed in September by OU Regents as the Vice President for University Development. He succeeds David Maloney, who served 12 years as vice president and came to be very well known to many OU donors. To help donors get to know the new head of OU's fund-raising programs, Priority offers the following.

The Hille Foundation of Tulsa is joining the University of Oklahoma in the fight against diabetes with a $1 million gift to the OU College of Medicine, Tulsa, to establish the Hille Foundation Chair in Diabetes.

"This generous gift from the Hille Foundation will be of enormous benefit to those who suffer from diabetes, especially for thos...

Diabetes has long been established as a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes, amputations, blindness, kidney failure and fetal mortality in the United States. In Oklahoma, the disease has increased to epidemic proportions, affecting more than 190,000 adults and an alarming number of children. For most, provision of care has lagged far behind es...

On October 12, University and community leaders took decisive action

against one of the state's most deadly diseases with the groundbreaking

of a planned $165 million OU Cancer Institute on the Health Sciences

Center campus in Oklahoma City. During the celebration, University of

Oklahoma President David L. Boren...

Forget Spiderman and Marvel Girl. Oklahoma children have their own team of life-saving super heroes. Since 1998, the triumvirate of Children's Medical Research Institute, the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine and Children's Hospital at the OU Medical Center has been rescuing children from life-threatening illnesses with the triple threat o...

Jason White, Alvan Adams, Stacey Dales...talk about your OU dream team.

What began as a unique scholarship opportunity in the women's basketball program has captured the attention of former OU starters from all arenas, who are joining forces with donors to provide endowed scholarships for today's student-athletes.

OU women's bask...

Although recent graduates themselves, Angela and Justin Beitelspacher of Sasche, Texas, are already helping others cross the academic finish line by establishing two endowed scholarships at the University of Oklahoma.

The couple is funding one scholarship in the Michael F. Price College of Business and another in the College of Engineering...

Since 1988, the State Regents Endowment Program, funded by the Oklahoma State Legislature, has matched faculty endowments dollar for dollar, allowing donors to double the impact of their gifts.

Howard Kauffmann describes his retirement as a painless transition from the "Who's Who" list to the "Who's He?" list. Humble as he may be, the reti...

After 24 years in increasingly cramped quarters, KGOU Radio has expanded its horizons with an $800,000 capital campaign to fund the transition from Kaufman to Copeland Hall. The vacancy left by the Gaylord College of Journalism's move from Copeland to Gaylord Hall created an opening in VanVleet real estate, but with fragile equipment older than mo...

Visitors to the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History soon will have the opportunity to enrich their museum experience with a behind-the-scenes look into the work of museum researchers, curators and conservationists. A $1 million gift from Noble Corporation and Noble Energy Inc. will make possible the construction of a new Orientation Galle...

A $2.8 million grant from the OU Foundation Inc. to the University of Oklahoma will raise faculty compensation from 6th to 2nd in the Big 12.

This will give OU the highest ranking in the history of the University in faculty salaries among its peer institutions. The grant will be recurring each year.

Of the $2.8 million, $2.25 mil...

The financial statement presented at the November meeting of the University of Oklahoma Foundation Board of Trustees cited total assets of $752, 734, 991 and a total endowment of $583, 443, 961. The quarterly report detailed total revenues of $35, 425, 507, which includes gifts of cash and property of $14, 933, 167.

Investment income, incl...

David L. Maloney, vice president for University Development since December 1994, has announced that he will retire from the University, effective Sept. 30, 2006.

Maloney presided over OU’s most successful era of fundraising, with more than $1.26 billion in gifts and pledges recorded. That success was recognized on a national level when OU...

A creative partnership between Hillcrest Medical Center and the College of Nursing at OU-Tulsa has led to a gift of $120,000 for nursing faculty salaries. Hillcrest is providing $60,000 a year for two years in return for a commitment of time and expertise from OU-Tulsa nursing faculty and students.

With the national nursing shortages well-...

Two charitable foundations established by the late Edith Kinney Gaylord have joined together to make the largest grant in their 24-year history – $7 million – to build the second phase of a University of Oklahoma facility originally constructed with gifts from Edith Gaylord and her brother, Edward L. Gaylord.

Grants of $5 million from the...

Wall Street investor Michael F. Price, well known on the University of Oklahoma campus for his transformational gifts to the College of Business, is being honored for underlining his commitment to all OU students with a $2.5 million gift to OU’s Campaign for Scholarships.

Price became a key scholarship donor in April, when he announced fu...

Just one year into a five-year fundraising drive, a $5 million contribution from longtime OU supporters Cy and Lissa Wagner of Midland, Texas, has pushed the University’s Campaign for Scholarships over its original goal of $50 million. The Wagners, who earlier gave $1 million to the campaign, have created the largest scholarship endowment in OU hi...

An OU alumnus who believes he was given a chance to better his life through higher education wants to pass that opportunity on to future generations and honor his family while doing so. Glenn W. Okerson, a 1935 electrical engineering graduate, has established four new scholarship endowments to encourage students who think a college education is bey...

A man who fellow pilots call a true aviation pioneer has a new endowed scholarship in his name at the University of Oklahoma. The James M. Cook Memorial Scholarship in Aviation will honor the Texas pilot who is known as the “grandfather of airborne weather radar.”

During his 15 years of flying through thunderstorms for the National Weathe...

When members of the first graduating class of the OU College of Dentistry wanted to make a class gift that would have a lasting impact on their alma mater, they unanimously agreed that a scholarship endowment would give future dentistry students something to smile about.

Although the Class of 1972 was small in number—less than two dozen—th...

The family of J. Todd Jacobs, an OU alumnus who championed for a more sensitive approach in the treatment of adolescent patients in America, has established a scholarship in his name for students at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine. The $50,000 scholarship endowment was created by Jacobs’ sisters, Jamie Keifer of Oklahoma City, and Ju...

The University of Oklahoma Board of Regents has approved the renaming of the Norman campus’s oldest building to honor an exceptional new scholarship endowment that will help future generations of OU students.

Old Science Hall, built in 1904 – when it was known as New Science Hall—soon will be known as the Beatrice Carr Wallace Old Science...

Continuing its significant record of support for the University of Oklahoma, the Noble Foundation has funded a $400,000 scholarship endowment to keep the University competitive in the recruiting of top state and regional high school scholars. Gifts from the Noble Foundation to some of the University’s most progressive initiatives now total nearly...

For a quarter century, Dr. Joanne I. Moore served as chairman of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, one of the first women to hold such a position at an American medical school. Fittingly, the first endowed faculty position in the Department of Cell Biology at the OU Health Sciences Center bears her na...

Former residents and alumni in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery have stepped forward to express their appreciation for the training they received by raising more than $400,000 for an endowed chair in resident education. Anchored by a $100,000 contribution from the Hansjoerg Wyss Foundation of Paoli, Pa., the endowment will help offset departmen...

Sooner faithful in Tennessee soon may be exchanging the green rolling hills on their back bumpers for the Sooner Schooner if plans for a custom license plate pan out. OU alumni chapters in Memphis, Nashville and Knoxville currently are taking orders for the new plates in order to show their Sooner pride. Tennessee now issues custom university plate...

The University of Oklahoma Foundation, Inc. marked a financial milestone for the fiscal year ending June 31, with assets over the $700 million mark for the year. Vice president and treasurer Ron C. Winkler announced at the May 5 Board of Trustees meeting that total assets have reached nearly $733 million, with more than $502 million in the permane...

From music to meteorology, OU faculty positions, some of which have been waiting for state funds for more than five years, will finally meet their match. On March 24, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education approved matching funds of $56.1 million for 215 endowed chairs, professorships and lectureships on Oklahoma’s college campuses. Of tha...

Longtime OU benefactor Mrs. Laurence S. Youngblood has made another substantial gift in support of the University’s Energy Library that carries the name and honors the memory of her husband, a prominent Oklahoma City oilman for 36 years.

OU will use half of Mrs. Youngblood’s gift to create the Laurence S. and Loyce L. Youngblood Maintenanc...

Two new gifts have helped to launch a major fund-raising initiative to support the Oklahoma Diabetes Center at the Health Sciences Center. The initiative is led by OU President David Boren, who is one of the thousands of Oklahomans with diabetes. It is designed to support the mission of the Oklahoma Diabetes Center, which is:

to condu...

The University of Oklahoma’s Jimmie Austin Golf Course will be in top form when it hosts the 2009 U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship, thanks in part to a $500, 000 challenge gift from the families of Jimmie Austin and the late Wayne T. “Dusty” Biddle. With a commitment from the University to match the gifts from the Austins and the Biddles, the...

mozelle “Mo” Gregg was a tenant farmer’s daughter in rural Oklahoma when she met Richard Anderson during her sophomore year at Waukomis High School. Since the 1950s, the outgoing cheerleader and the shy handsome basketball player have never wavered in their devotion to each other.

After not one, but two cycles of rags to riches, Mo Anderso...

A gift from Founders and Associates Inc. has established an endowment in honor of a longtime Tulsa family physician and one of the original trustees of Doctors’ Hospital. The $100,000 Hugh B. Nicholas Family Medicine Research Endowment will support research efforts by young faculty in the Department of Family Medicine at the OU-Tulsa College of Med...

A $1 million gift from a Connecticut couple has created the first major faculty position at the University of Oklahoma dedicated to an in-depth exploration of U.S.-Chinese issues. The Harold J. and Ruth Newman Chair in U.S-China Issues is the cornerstone of a new institute that will focus on topics of great relevance to the two countries, including...

A new faculty endowment by Tulsa residents Walter and Peggy Helmerich will endow in perpetuity the position of the University of Oklahoma’s dean of University Libraries.

The Helmerichs have been longtime supporters of OU and its libraries.

Their previous $1 million gift to the library endowment was honored through the naming of th...

World renowned choreographers, dancers and dance scholars soon will be teaching OU students on the Norman campus as a result of a new faculty position created by a dance patron and former professor at the OU Health Sciences Center College of Dentistry. The Susan E. Brackett Distinguished Visiting Artist Chair in the School of Dance will bring profe...

Inspired by daily contact with University donors, an OU development officer has decided to leave her own mark on the $50 million scholarship campaign announced by President David L. Boren in April 2005. Karen Renfroe, who joined OU’s development staff in August, says her job puts her in touch with “some of the most generous people in the world.”

Jackie Wise didn’t attend the University of Oklahoma, but being an OU supporter was part of the package when she married Bill Wise, a 1950 graduate of the College of Business. Over the course of their 53-year marriage, the couple attended countless OU football games and came back to the campus as often as possible.

“I really think Bill wa...

Jackie Wise didn’t attend the University of Oklahoma,

but being an OU supporter was part of the package when she married Bill

Wise, a 1950 graduate of the College of Business. Over the course of

their 53-year marriage, the couple attended countless OU football games

and came back to the campus as often as possib...

Danny Heatly was a small town boy with great potential when he came to OU in the 1970s to study business. Shortly thereafter, he had the good fortune to encounter Professor Wayne Garrison, who became not only his teacher, but also his mentor and friend. Heatly, now vice president of accounting for Devon Energy Corporation, is showing his gratitude...

$1 million from Will Webster of Altadena, California, for the Will and Helen Webster Sooner Heritage Endowed Scholarship. Will Webster serves on OU’s Campaign for Scholarships Committee, and the Websters have contributed to the Warren Jackman Chair in the Cardiac Arrhythmia Research Institute (CARI) at the OU Health Sciences Center and established...

An OU alumnus, whose ideas have helped revolutionize the world’s banking industry, has committed $1 million to a facility designed to let future OU students bring their ideas to life. The gift from Michael Miller, a 1987 graduate in electrical engineering, will help fund the College of Engineering’s ExxonMobil Lawrence G. Rawl Engineering Practice...