University of Oklahoma

In December 1890 the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature created the University of Oklahoma, 17 years before Oklahoma became a state. The university’s official mission is to provide the best possible educational experience for its students through excellence in teaching, research and creative activity, and service to the state and society.⁠[1][2][2][2]

In August 1892 the university’s first president, David Ross Boyd, arrived in Norman, Oklahoma. Stepping off the train, he was met by a barren expanse of prairie with no tree in sight, and his only remark was “What possibilities!” By 1895 the university had four faculty members (three men and one woman) and 100 students.⁠[1][1][1][1]

In fall 1895 a committee chaired by student May Overstreet chose crimson and cream as the school colors, which the student body approved with great enthusiasm; that same fall the university held its first football game and first oratorical contest.⁠[1][1][1][1]

In 1905 student Arthur M. Alden wrote the lyrics of the fight song “Boomer Sooner,” borrowing the tune of Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Its predecessor, the Collegiate School, received a charter in 1701. Trustees chose New Haven in 1716; the institution became Yale College in 1718 and Yale University in 1887. Yale provides undergraduate, graduate and professional education and has 14 undergraduate residential colleges. As of October 2026, its president was Maurie McInnis, who took office in July 2024. In 2026, Yale expanded aid for incoming undergraduates and celebrated its 325th anniversary.Open the full entry’s “Boola Boola.” OU’s athletic teams were called the Rough Riders or the Boomers before the Sooners nickname emerged in 1908. The name comes from Oklahoma’s Land Runs beginning in 1889: each race began with a pistol shot, and those who jumped the gun were called Sooners. The university says it embraces the complexity of this heritage, including that the land was originally home to several tribal nations.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

In 1923 OU’s third president, Stratton Brooks, was forced from office by Oklahoma Governor John Walton, and the board of regents selected James Buchanan as acting president, granting him the official title of president the following year; Buchanan served until 1925 and during that time made the School of Business an independent entity.⁠[3][3][3]

After President Joseph Brandt resigned in 1944, George Cross, dean of the Research Institute and Graduate College, became interim president and ultimately served as president for 25 years, constructing 37 new buildings and receiving a donation of 1,400 acres from the U.S. Navy to expand the campus.⁠[3][3][3]

On January 14, 1946, Sipuel, a qualified Black applicant, applied for admission to the University of Oklahoma School of Law, then the only state-supported law school in Oklahoma, and was denied solely because of her color. After state courts refused her petition for a writ of mandamus, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled per curiam on January 12, 1948, that the state must provide her a legal education under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as soon as it did for applicants of any other group, and reversed the Oklahoma Supreme Court.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4][4][4]

G. W. McLaurin, a Black citizen with a master’s degree, applied to pursue a doctorate in education at the University of Oklahoma and was initially rejected under state laws barring Black and white students from the same schools; after the law was amended he was admitted to the Graduate School, but was required to sit apart at a desk in an anteroom adjoining the classroom and at designated places and times in the library and cafeteria. On June 5, 1950, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment precludes differences in treatment by the state based on race, and that a student admitted to a state graduate school must receive the same treatment as students of other races.⁠[5][5][5][5][5][5][5]

In 1970 President J. Herbert Hollomon suddenly resigned, and Pete Kyle McCarter, the university’s first provost, served as interim president for one year.⁠[3][3]

After President William Banowsky resigned in December 1984, Martin Jischke, dean of the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, served as interim president from February to September 1985, the shortest tenure of any OU president, focusing on helping the university recover from an economic depression.⁠[3][3][3]

In 1988 Frank Horton resigned as OU’s 11th president, and former law dean David Swank became interim president, tasked with rebuilding the strained relationship between the board of regents and the president’s office and handling athletic scandals until Richard Van Horn was appointed president in 1989.⁠[3][3][3]

From August to November 1994 John R. Morris served as interim president, after which the university selected David Boren, who was leaving the U.S. Senate, as president.⁠[3][3]

In 2007 a lead gift from oil entrepreneur Harold HammHarold HammHarold Hamm (Harold G. Hamm) is an American oil entrepreneur who at age 21 in 1967 founded the Oklahoma oil and gas exploration and production company Continental Resources and long served as its chief executive officer; the company went on to become one of the main developers of the Bakken shale field in North Dakota and Montana. He took the company private in 2022 and has been chairman emeritus since 2025; he is also an active advocate on U.S. energy policy and a longtime funder of diabetes research at the University of Oklahoma, to which he pledged $150 million in 2026.Open the full entry helped the university establish the Harold Hamm Diabetes Center (later the OU Health Harold Hamm Diabetes Center); he has since invested more than $50 million in it, and NIH research funding associated with the center has grown from $5 million to $33 million.⁠[6][6][6]

In 2011 the Stephenson Cancer Center opened at the university’s health sciences center; it first achieved National Cancer Institute (NCI) designation in 2018, renewed it in May 2023, and is the only NCI-designated cancer center in Oklahoma.⁠[7][7][7]

In spring 2019 President James Gallogly announced his retirement, and four days later the board of regents, in a nearly six-hour meeting, named Joseph Harroz Jr. interim president, the eighth interim president in the university’s 130-year history. Board chairman Gary Pierson said Harroz had been offered the permanent job at the time but chose a 15-month interim term to bring “harmony and direction” to the university.⁠[3][3][3][3]

On May 9, 2020, Joseph Harroz Jr. was named the University of Oklahoma’s 15th president. A native Oklahoman, he graduated from OU in 1989 with a degree in economics and earned a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1992; he had previously served the university as interim president for one year, dean of the College of Law for nine years, general counsel for 12 years and vice president for executive affairs for two years.⁠[8][8][8][8]

On October 14, 2022, the university publicly launched “Lead On: The University of Oklahoma’s Campaign for the Future,” with a goal of $2 billion, describing it as the largest philanthropic campaign in the history of Oklahoma higher education. The campaign’s quiet phase began on July 1, 2020, $600 million had been raised by the public launch, and it is to conclude on June 30, 2027; it includes a $500 million commitment to scholarships and student support and a $300 million commitment to recruiting and retaining faculty.⁠[9][9][9][9][9][9][9]

In February 2023 the Big 12 announced that it had reached early exit terms with the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas. On May 5, 2023, OU’s board of regents approved the agreements under which the university would leave the Big 12 and join the Southeastern Conference (SEC) beginning July 1, 2024. President Harroz said OU had initiated the transition almost two years earlier in anticipation of sweeping changes in college athletics.⁠[10][10][10]

On July 17, 2023, the university announced that its campus in Norman, Oklahoma had received $210.4 million in sponsored research funding in fiscal year 2023, an increase of nearly 33% over the previous fiscal year, with federally funded research up more than 50%.⁠[11][11]

On July 1, 2024, the University of Oklahoma officially became a member of the Southeastern Conference, with celebrations held in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and elsewhere. President Harroz called joining the SEC “a bold step into a future full of potential.”⁠[12][12][12]

On July 14, 2025, the university announced more than $352 million in gifts for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025, breaking the previous year’s record of $334 million; the Lead On campaign had raised more than $1.5 billion in total.⁠[13][13][13]

On August 25, 2025, the university announced a Class of 2029 of 6,251 students, the largest freshman class ever in Oklahoma, with total enrollment across all campuses exceeding 36,500. In 2023 Governor Kevin Stitt had challenged the university to reach 40,000 students by 2030.⁠[14][14][14]

On June 16, 2026, the board of regents approved the fiscal 2026–2027 budget, including a 3% increase in tuition and mandatory fees for undergraduate and graduate students on the campus in Norman, Oklahoma. The university said it was on pace to enroll 40,000 students by fall 2027, that research expenditures were expected to exceed $500 million that year, and that 58% of undergraduates graduate debt-free.⁠[15][15][15][15][15]

On September 15, 2026, President Harroz reported to the board of regents that in fall 2026 the university had welcomed its sixth consecutive record freshman class, enrollment on the Health Campus had surpassed 4,000 students for the first time, research had grown more than 70% in six years, and annual philanthropic support had reached a record $427 million. The academic health system OU Health marked its fifth anniversary, serving more than 1 million patients a year, with annual revenue having grown from $1.4 billion to nearly $4 billion.⁠[16][16][16][16][16][16]

The university’s Project 200 initiative is recruiting about 200 research faculty in four areas—health, severe weather, national security and defense, and energy—and is projected to generate nearly $100 million a year in new federal research funding by 2032.⁠[16][16]

On September 22, 2026, the university announced a $150 million gift commitment from Harold Hamm, the largest single gift in its history: $50 million for the Harold Hamm Diabetes Center and $100 million for the broader academic and research enterprise of the Health Campus. The Oklahoma City Health Campus was renamed the Harold Hamm Health Campus at the University of Oklahoma, and Hamm became the largest individual donor in the university’s history, with lifetime giving approaching $250 million.⁠[6][6][6][6]

The Health Campus brings together six health professions colleges and the Graduate College, with more than 4,100 students, and educates 80% of Oklahoma’s health care workforce; in 2026 it earned its first-ever Top 100 national ranking in NIH funding.⁠[6][6][6]

The University of Oklahoma is the state’s flagship university, offering 170 academic programs across three campuses with research expenditures of $416.6 million. The campus in Norman, Oklahoma is home to all academic programs except health-related fields, which are concentrated in Oklahoma City; colleges from both the campus in Norman, Oklahoma and the health campus offer programs at the Schusterman Center (OU-Tulsa) in Tulsa. The university has more than 2,600 full-time faculty members and 20 colleges. That campus holds the Research 1 designation in the Carnegie Classification, for very high research spending and doctorate production.⁠[2][2][2][2][1][1][1][17]

The university’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art received the Weitzenhoffer Collection, which the university describes as the largest gift of French Impressionist paintings ever given to a university.⁠[1][1]

University of Oklahoma: Official website: https://www.ou.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[6]

X: Public account: https://x.com/uofoklahoma (opens in a new window)⁠[2]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/universityofoklahoma (opens in a new window)⁠[2]