Leading hundreds of University of Oklahoma faculty, staff and students in a chant of, “We change lives,” President Joseph Harroz, Jr., recently unveiled Lead On, University: The Next Phase. This bold recalibration of OU’s Strategic Plan was shaped by a yearlong, campus-wide collaboration. 

The original plan, launched in 2020, helped stabilize the university during a historic moment of disruption across the higher education landscape. In the past five years, OU has reversed financial risk, set freshman enrollment records, expanded access and accelerated its research enterprise while nearly tripling annual fundraising. 

But success also demands self-reflection. The refreshed plan responds to an ever-evolving landscape and sets a proactive approach to ensuring that OU’s excellence continues by centering measurable, mission-driven results impacting the lives of Oklahomans.

Like its predecessor, Lead On, University: The Next Phase consists of five complementary pillars and one clear purpose. Across OU’s three campuses and OU Online, faculty, students and staff are already advancing the mission of changing lives. Here, meet five individuals, each embodying a pillar and proving that OU’s future isn’t just written in strategy—it is demonstrated in action.

Pillar 1: Lead as a Top-Tier Public Research University 

Kathleen Gallagher

When it comes to teaching young children, Kathleen Gallagher has had the joy of nearly doing it all: providing disability-inclusive education for toddlers and kindergarteners, running preschool programs and developing Head Start initiatives focused on literacy and childhood development. 

Today, she is one of the nation’s leading education researchers and the second person to lead the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa’s groundbreaking Early Childhood Education Institute.

“I jumped at the chance,” says Gallagher, who came to OU last summer after seven years with the University of Nebraska’s Buffett Early Childhood Institute. She follows in the footsteps of retiring ECEI founder Diane Horm.

Gallagher’s work points to a Pillar 1 strategy, Transform Oklahoma’s Future, through enhancing educational outcomes statewide. The research she leads informs national and state policies translating directly to the kitchen table, from improving teacher pay and physical surroundings to safeguarding parents’ mental health.

“Research has been telling us that parents of young children are probably the most-stressed demographic,” she says. “The way we create a society that has a successful workforce is by making sure every young child and every family who cares for them—and the educators behind them—has what they need to be well and do well.”

Gallagher’s ECEI team includes researchers and graduate students who will become tomorrow’s leaders and collaborates with highly respected Head Start programs at Tulsa Educare and Community Action Project of Tulsa County. Their partnership brings OU’s community-based, engaged research and support to children, their families and educators.

“There is nothing more impactful you can do than to teach a very young child and work with their family to enhance their capabilities,” she says. “It’s the most life-changing place to be an educator. Researching that impact is what the ECEI is all about.”

Strategy 1: Achieve the highest standards of academic and research excellence, measured by Association of American Universities (AAU) peer benchmarks

Strategy 2: Be a leading value public research university, combining outstanding quality with distinctive affordability

Strategy 3: Open the doors of opportunity for all with the talent and drive to succeed

Strategy 4: Transform Oklahoma’s future

Strategy 5: Build on OU’s championship culture across the entire University

Pillar 2: Empower Students for a Life of Success, Meaning and Impact

Thao Tran

In just a few short years, Thao Tran hopes to be confronting some of the world’s most daunting health challenges as a biomedical researcher. It’s a life her Vietnamese parents could have only dreamed of when they made the heart-wrenching decision to send Tran and her three siblings to live with American relatives.

“My parents wanted me to get an education in the United States because there are so many opportunities here,” says Tran, who came to the country at age 10 and celebrated becoming a U.S. citizen in 2023. 

Tran is a University of Oklahoma junior majoring in biomedical engineering at the Gallogly College of Engineering. She is the first in her family to attend college—just like 27.1% of all OU students.

As a freshman, Tran took part in a Pillar Two tactic, Faculty-Mentored Research, which taught her the ins and outs of laboratory life. Today, she’s an undergraduate research assistant leading her own independent project in the lab of Stefan Wilhelm, OU’s Stephenson Chair in Biomedical Engineering. 

There, she works directly with scientists from the leading edge of medical research into prostate cancer, one of the most common affecting American men.

“My independent research focuses specifically on lipid nanoparticles in immune cells to develop well-functioning, small-interfering RNA, or siRNA LNP,” Tran says. “We’re trying to improve the therapeutic potential for future prostate cancer treatment.

“It has given me insight into what research is really like on a day-to-day basis and helped me apply what I’m learning in class,” she adds. “I see that my work has a bigger purpose.”

Outside the lab, Tran works as a peer learning assistant for first-year students in Gallogly College’s Engineering Pathways program and as an OU Admissions and Recruitment connection and student engagement intern, offering campus tours to students who also might be the first in their family to attend college.

“OU has given me opportunities to get outside of my comfort zone,” she says. “I’ve been empowered to improve myself and to prepare for my future.”

Strategy 1: Inspire learners with a world-class academic experience, inside and outside the classroom, that drives personal and professional growth

Strategy 2: Foster the social and emotional growth of students via signature experiences and a top-tier residential campus community

Strategy 3: Foster a student-centered culture devoted to student academic success

Strategy 4: Equip OU students for career success

Strategy 5: Expand the reach of OU through online platforms and new, innovative educational pathways

Pillar 3: Ascend as One OU-Unified by Our Purpose, Values and Strategic Plan

Kyle Harper

As the University of Oklahoma’s G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty, Kyle Harper’s mission is written out in the university’s blueprint for the future.

Harper, a professor of classics and letters and former Norman campus provost, teaches courses offered through OU’s Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage. He believes the institute prepares students for active civic life in a democracy, as outlined in a Pillar 3 tactic, Build a Culture of Robust Civil Conversation.

“The institute is a forum for training citizens, and that involves the transmission of deep, fundamental knowledge about history, the Constitution and the law, but also practice in civil discourse,” says Harper.

He adds that OU students “learn to have very strong, passionate convictions, yet be able to have reasoned arguments and even be friends with people they disagree with.” Institute courses also expose students to a wide range of views from nationally prominent speakers.

“Freedom of expression and freedom of inquiry are values that have made our country great,” Harper says. “One of the things that make universities vital is the opportunity to think without fear, without inhibition, to argue—sometimes intensely—but in the end, respectfully.”

The former Guggenheim Fellow and Carnegie Fellow came to OU as a freshman whose education was made possible by scholarships. He earned a 2001 bachelor’s degree in letters before completing master’s and doctoral degrees in history at Harvard University.

“To me, OU has always been the spot where excellence and accessibility overlap. I’m glad I had access to an elite public university that is, in some ways, genuinely better than other institutions,” he says.

“My undergraduate education literally redirected the course of my life and kindled in me a kind of love of learning that wasn’t there before. It is something that has been with me ever since and deepened my understanding of what it means to be a citizen and the responsibilities that come with it.”

Strategy 1: Across all campuses and all departments, live out our values while pursuing our Strategic Plan together

Strategy 2: Promote and defend the ideals of bold inquiry and freedom of thought and expression

Strategy 3: Be a place of belonging for all

Strategy 4: Foster an engaged and satisfied workforce

Strategy 5: Achieve operational and financial excellence

Strategy 6: Connect alumni to the University for life

Pillar 4: Lift the Health of Oklahoma

Dr. Ian Dunn

No one can accuse University of Oklahoma College of Medicine Executive Dean Ian Dunn of thinking small. 

Dunn is heading a broad range of Pillar 4 strategies aimed at transforming Oklahomans’ health, from Becoming a World-Class Academic Health System to Meeting Health Care Workforce Needs and Focusing on Strategic Research Areas that will improve the quality of care and health outcomes statewide.

It’s a challenge he relishes. “We have a responsibility to create a comprehensive team so that no one has to leave Oklahoma for advanced care,” says the former chair of OU’s Department of Neurosurgery. Dunn specializes in treating tumors at the base of the skull and has spent decades studying his quarry.

“The scholarship of advancing knowledge with a view toward improving the way we take care of patients has been a big part of my life,” he says.

“The duties of the College of Medicine will always be education, workforce development and research. All care advances through research. We’re studying the basic mechanisms of disease so that we can deliver and apply knowledge to patients.”

That knowledge is sorely needed in Oklahoma. “We’re 49th in health outcomes and 48th in the number of physicians per capita,” Dunn adds, explaining that OU will increase its medical school class size by 40% over the next five years and explore strategies ranging from a data-driven, modular curriculum that may help physicians move more quickly into the workforce to online professional health education and doubling the number of patients in clinical trials.

Medical research also will be tailored to the needs of Oklahomans.

“We already have great expertise in diabetes and an NCI-designated cancer center. And we have tremendous momentum around the emerging area of neuroscience—stroke, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, brain tumors and spinal cord injuries. All these conditions affect many Oklahomans,” he says. 

In addition, the college recently announced new programs in emergency medicine and molecular genetics and genome sciences. 

OU has its sights set on bold goals, including reducing Oklahoma’s cancer mortality by 10% and shrinking deaths from diabetes by 30% within five years, as well as hitting prestigious performance benchmarks like ranking in the Blue Ridge Institute’s Top 75.

“We are tripling down on our commitment,” Dunn says.

Strategy 1: Be a world-class academic health system through education, research and patient-centered care

Strategy 2: Provide outstanding health care statewide, including providing care not available anywhere else in Oklahoma

Strategy 3: Meet Oklahoma’s health care workforce needs with the urgency it demands

Strategy 4: Focus investments in strategic research areas to improve Oklahoma’s health and that of the world

Strategy 5: Translate research into practice to improve the quality of care and health outcomes

Pillar 5: Shape the Future Through Discovery, Creativity and Innovation

Joseph Tischler

Physicists ask questions that help unlock the secrets of the universe. But those same questions can also unlock challenges that touch our daily lives, from medical imaging to sensing dangerous chemicals in the environment.

After two decades of employing physics in national defense applications at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Joseph Tischler is director of OU’s Center for Quantum Research and Technology, or CORT. His team of physicists is working to Confront Grand Social and Technological Challenges, a Pillar 5 strategy, through what might seem unlikely methods.

“We study how matter interacts with light,” says Tischler, who also serves as OU’s Avenir Foundation Chair in Condensed Matter Physics. “We use light to interrogate materials and learn physical processes happening in those materials. We also can redirect light, absorb it, store it and create quasi particles to slow light down.”

Tischler’s team conducts research in OU's Lin Hall, a state-of-the art quantum physics facility. Their work has real-world applications, in part through a process called nanofabrication. 

“Nanofabrication allows you to change the properties of materials,” he says, adding that the process has a wide range of uses. Among them are improving how light is absorbed by solar cells, creating precise chemical sensors and developing affordable infrared cameras that allow self-driving cars to see through fog.

“It can also be used in crop monitoring to sense humidity levels and indicate if food is spoiling,” Tischler says.

“We’re always asking new questions. Our discoveries help us come up with tools and instruments that permeate other technologies, like GPS and medical imaging such as MRI. Basic questions push you into creativity and innovation.”

He says OU students are in the midst of that creative process. “They bring their own innovation to the table. It’s constant learning.

“The most exciting part,” Tischler says, “is that we don’t really know where the road is going to lead or what new technologies we’re going to develop.” 

Strategy 1: Achieve AAU peer benchmarks in research and creative activity

Strategy 2: Confront grand social and technological challenges

Strategy 3: Think big

Strategy 4: Provide the world-class infrastructure necessary to compete at the top level of public universities

Strategy 5: Empower researchers

Anne Barajas Harp is editor of Sooner Magazine.

To read the full Lead On, University: The Next Phase Strategic Plan, click here. To comment on this story, click here.