An annual workshop that exposes high school students to careers in journalism and life on a college campus was a pivotal point for 2020 University of Oklahoma graduate Janki Patel. “The camp changed my entire life,” said Patel, a first-generation college student who attended the Oklahoma Institute for Diversity in Journalism in 2015. “I just fell...

For nearly 30 years, the generosity of the late Walter and Claire Bork has helped the University of Oklahoma’s Gallogly College of Engineering attract and retain outstanding freshman students. Their gifts have only become more important in the year of COVID-19. “We recognize that it is challenging for a lot of students to get to college,” said Ran...

People in Oklahoma’s rural communities may one day have better access to the radiological services they need. And for that, they can thank four generations of the Berry-Miller family. The Professor Jeffrey L. Berry Memorial Scholarship Fund will provide scholarships for students who are from a rural area or interested in serving a rural population...

A unique, decades-long friendship and the realities of a difficult early life have become a gift to University of Oklahoma students. “Nothing was ever given to Rick,” Judy Fong said of her late friend and OU alumnus Rick Moore. “He had a really tough road in his upbringing and worked for everything he had in his life. Rick wanted to help those who...

Just one year after its launch, an OU Law campaign to establish the Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher Chair in Civil Rights, Race and Justice in the Law has been completed through gifts from more than 80 individuals and a capstone commitment from an anonymous family foundation. Individual donors gave nearly $100,000 to the University of Oklahoma Foundation s...

Public service is woven into the cultural fabric of OU Law, where every student is asked to sign a minimum pledge of 50 hours of pro bono or public service during their three years of legal education. These volunteer experiences are made possible through private giving to the University of Oklahoma Foundation, including the Marjorie P. Maute Memor...

University of Oklahoma Foundation Board of Trustees members Carlisle Mabrey and David Rainbolt will retire from the board on Dec. 31 after a combined 18 years of service. The Foundation’s board is composed of professionals from such fields as finance, law, business, philanthropy and medicine. Members are not compensated and oversee total Foundatio...

The University of Oklahoma Foundation mourns the loss of former Board of Trustees chair and longtime member Mike Samis, who died Oct. 22 after a 15-year battle with cancer. Samis was on the Foundation board from 2008 through the end of 2019, serving in several key leadership roles during his tenure and helping guide the Foundation through significa...

You might believe Dr. Sunny Po is thinking outside the box in his groundbreaking research in electrophysiology at the University of Oklahoma’s Heart Rhythm Institute, and to some extent, you would be right. The truth is Po’s new ideas are actually inspired by some of the oldest medical principles in the world. Po is trailblazing a new path by bl...

Every University of Oklahoma student is challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic, but the challenges facing OU’s vibrant and valued international student community are unique. “It is a time of unprecedented stress – I think of a ‘once-in-a-century flood’ – on both international students and the systems that serve them in higher education,” said Scott...

Daron Rudy, left, a representative of Stride Bank Wealth Management, presents an $891,000 estate gift from the James Roy Maxey Trust during the Sept. 26 OU/Kansas State football game to, from left, OU Foundation Board of Trustees member Don Smitherman, General Counsel Keith Peters and Director of Donor Relations Jana Moring. Smitherman, who was a m...

Mitchell Makeover The largest gift in the history of OU baseball will improve the fan experience and student-athlete facilities at OU’s L. Dale Mitchell Park. Brian and Kim Kimrey committed $1.1 million to the renovation project, which will provide a new interior and exterior look for the park – including locker rooms, training and team meeting ar...

A $4.2 million estate gift from longtime Tinker Air Force Base physician Dr. Wesley R. “Bob” Mote will help produce a new generation of University of Oklahoma medical and engineering graduates. Mote’s bequest to the OU Foundation was designated to create separate, $2.1 million scholarship endowments in the OU College of Medicine and the Gallogly C...

Poverty can have significant negative impacts on children’s development and education, even at the earliest ages. But an endowed position established with a gift to the University of Oklahoma Foundation is helping children persevere. Diane Horm is OU’s George Kaiser Family Foundation Endowed Chair of Early Childhood Education and was recruited to...

With her 90th birthday approaching in 2018, University of Oklahoma Professor Emeritus Joanne Hendrick couldn’t think of a single thing she needed. “Then, I began to remember those penny-pinching years of graduate education and I had an idea,” she said. Hendrick challenged her family and friends to give to an endowed scholarship she’d established a...

Joe and Marti Ferretti’s lives took them from meeting at a college social to becoming two of the University of Oklahoma’s most influential health professionals. Through service and private giving, the couple allows students to share their success. The Ferrettis have given more than $370,000 to endowed scholarships at the OU Foundation in their res...

Academy Award-winning director Ron Howard is honoring his parents and the dream that sparked a family legacy worthy of its own Hollywood movie through a scholarship fund at the University of Oklahoma Foundation. Rance and Jean Howard both were born in Oklahoma and came to OU to study drama in the late 1940s. “Our mom and dad were from small-town,...

When it comes to video production, Scott Hodgson is as hard core as they come, listing CNN, PBS and the U.S. State Department among a long list of clients he’s served through a career that has taken him around the world and coast to coast. The Gaylord Family Endowed Professor of Media Production is a born director with a natural talent for teachi...

Pancreatic cancer hides. And by the time it is found, patients have only a 5 to 10 percent chance of survival through either surgery or chemotherapy. University of Oklahoma researchers led by Dr. Min Li of OU Medicine are working to better the odds for pancreatic cancer patients by developing new medical therapies. Their potentially groundbreaking...

Anyone who follows sports knows that the twin powerhouses of University of Oklahoma men’s and women’s gymnastics have dominated NCAA championships in the 21st century. But it wasn’t always that way. When Michael Wilson came to Norman in 1975, he was the first “blue chip” student-athlete to join the OU men’s team. The high school national champion...

Fostering Hope Professionals who deliver family and child welfare services to Oklahoma’s Native American tribes will receive enhanced training due to a $10,000 gift to the OU Foundation from Casey Family Programs. The trainings grew from a collaboration between OU’s Anne and Henry Zarrow School of Social Work and tribal child welfare leaders. The...

When the COVID-19 crisis created financial chasms threatening the future of more than 1,000 University of Oklahoma students, alumni and supporters stepped into the breach. Sooners Helping Sooners, an online giving platform, became the most direct route between donors and students facing emergencies from all three of OU’s campuses. To date, more th...

A musical revue that leaves its audiences dancing in the aisles helps more than a dozen University of Oklahoma Helmerich School of Drama students reach for their dreams each year. Larry Gallagher studied fine arts at OU from 1965 to 1967 and was the creator and director of “Beehive: The 1960s Musical.” When the Duncan, Okla., native died in 1988,...

Everyone relies on computers – men, women, children, people of every race, every religion and every nationality use computers to perform a multitude of tasks. So why are most software design teams largely composed of white males? It’s a fact that cuts against the grain for Phil Gilbert, a 1978 University of Oklahoma Price College of Business grad...

Like their colleagues at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and OU Medicine, many medical faculty members at OU Physicians-Tulsa are serving on the front lines of the COVID-19 battle. And Sooners Helping Sooners is providing some of their armor. Sooners Helping Sooners offers opportunities for donors to give to each of OU’s three ca...

Sooners Helping Sooners has been a presence on the University of Oklahoma’s Norman campus since 2012, when it was established by students to help their peers during emergencies. Kristen Partridge, associate vice president for student affairs and associate dean of students, helped launch the fund in 2012 with the support of a gift from OU alumnus K...

OU students have written to share their gratitude for the generous donors who reached out to them during the COVID-19 crisis through Sooners Helping Sooners. “I cried, and even now as I am writing, I am struck by the help given during a time when no other resources were available.” “The aid is more than the sum of a house and utilities payments...

Within a week of COVID-19 isolation starting nationwide, social media was flooded with memes reflecting the humor and struggle of parents suddenly faced with teaching their elementary school-aged children at home. According to University of Oklahoma Price College of Business Professor Radhika Santhanam, parents should let “gamification” lend a han...

The University of Oklahoma Foundation has passed a torch as longtime vice president and general counsel Gary Beadles retires and hands his duties over to Keith Peters. Beadles has served at the OU Foundation for two decades, during which time he broadly expanded the foundation’s ability to assist donors with estate planning and gifts of mineral in...

Scout Salute Lamar Wallace, the nation’s oldest living Eagle Scout when he died at the age of 107, has made a $50,000 estate gift to establish a scholarship for students in the University of Oklahoma Price College of Business. Wallace was a 1936 OU business alumnus and one of the oldest World War II veterans in Georgia. It’s little surprise tha...

Communication technology first gave workers the tools to stay connected to the office and be productive from home 30 years ago. But the number of employees doing that shot up dramatically this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. A March survey of 800 global human resources executives by Gartner Inc. showed 88 percent of organizations encouraged...

A $4.8 million gift from the Horizon Foundation of Dallas will help establish the University of Oklahoma as the premier center for Native American research and teaching. The gift to the OU Foundation will formally launch the OU Native Peoples Initiative, which places the cultures of Native peoples and the sovereignty of Native Nations at the cente...

There’s a new look and name for the University of Oklahoma Foundation newsletter. Impact will emphasize how private gifts contribute to every facet of OU’s mission, from making college affordable to supporting cutting-edge research and recruiting top faculty. Impact will highlight the enduring power of endowments and demonstrate how private giving...

Paul Jonas walked into the gleaming lobby of an Oklahoma City bank wearing his daily farming uniform of striped bib overalls and dilapidated work boots. Unseen in his pocket was a check for $800,000. “The bankers wouldn’t pay any attention to him,” said Jonas’ longtime attorney, Richard Fogg of El Reno, Okla. “Paul let them know that he had money...

University of Oklahoma alumni Don Crews and Shirley Biggs Crews share at least one thing with today’s students – a legacy of leadership. Natives of Oklahoma City, the 1965 alums met by chance as freshmen at an OU residence hall party and began dating their sophomore year. Don was a letters major and member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity, while Shirle...

Carson Ball doesn’t believe in limitations – at least not those placed on us by others. The University of Oklahoma student has become a leading campus voice for education equity, bridging the gap between potential and opportunity for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. “My parents always instilled in me that education is the one thing no one...

Exercise is preventative medicine that has the power to fend off conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. But how do you get the patient to take the medicine? That’s the challenge Kevin Short is seeking to overcome through a collaboration with the Choctaw Nation. Work began in 2012 on a project called MOVE. “We wanted teens who were...

It seems natural – maybe even obvious – that the University of Oklahoma is the U.S. epicenter of Native American law. But most people don’t realize that influence spreads far beyond our borders and into the United Nations itself. “We have what I believe is the most comprehensive Indian law curriculum in the country,” said Lindsay Robertson, OU’s C...

Five outstanding University of Oklahoma sophomores were named recipients of the prestigious 2019 Rita H. Lottinville Prize during a December luncheon hosted by OU Foundation President and CEO Guy L. Patton and OU Vice Provost for Instruction and Student Success Mark Morvant. The five 2019 Lottinville winners were selected from 643 OU sophomores –...

Kristen Bymaster has worked for ExxonMobil for 15 years and currently is an upstream engineering manager. “Receiving the Lottinville Prize provided me with the confidence to continue developing my service and leadership skills during my time at OU. It also opened the door to obtaining my first internship with ExxonMobil,” she said. “It’s important...

Business executive and philanthropist Sharen Jester Turney of New York City and retired corporate attorney Annabel Jones of Tulsa were welcomed as new members of the University of Oklahoma Foundation Board of Trustees during its quarterly meeting in February. The OU Foundation Board of Trustees is composed of professionals from such fields as fina...

The words “medical” and “humanities” might not seem to go together, but students who vie for a spot in one of the University of Oklahoma’s most competitive programs would disagree. They’d be joined by Sarah Tracy, who created the Medical Humanities Scholars Program two decades ago at OU’s Honors College. “There were many pre-medicine students i...

American ‘Renegades’ Architectural design and education shifted radically thanks to a handful of “renegades” at what is now the University of Oklahoma’s Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture. Their outsized influence is given long-due credit in a new exhibition, “Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture,” open through A...