My Mother’s Dream
My Mother's Dream
After a lifetime of teaching and writing more than 35 books, David Ross Boyd Professor Emeritus George Henderson has returned to his beginnings. My Mother’s Dream: The Story of a First-Generation College Student shares how the founder of OU’s Department of Human Relations and first African-American dean rose from segregation and illiteracy to become one of the most transformational people in Oklahoma history. The book speaks directly to first-generation college students and shares a message of hope, tenacity, resilience and self-growth. Learn more about My Mother's Dream here.
Farewell to a Humble Giant
When J.R. Morris died in September, a university era passed with him. OU’s provost emeritus and Regents’ Professor of Psychology and Educational Leadership was invested in every aspect of campus life for 40 years, serving three times as interim president, as well as dean of University College and founder of Project Threshold for minority and first-generation OU students. The Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame inductee also received OU’s highest honors. More important, as OU Regents’ Professor of Education Jerome Weber once noted, “J.R. was universally seen to be the epitome of good judgment, fairness, openness and honesty.”
A Display of Pride
The Pride of Oklahoma Marching Band stepped off its 120th year with a special exhibit at Bizzell Memorial Library. The display includes memorabilia from the band’s earliest days, historic images and even the 1987 Sudler Trophy, considered the Heisman Trophy of marching bands. The exhibit on Bizzell’s first floor runs through May 2025.
Literary Leader
OU’s vaunted literary journal, World Literature Today, is celebrating 25 years of leadership from Executive Director Robert Con Davis-Undiano. Davis-Undiano revolutionized the WLT brand and broadened readership by introducing a magazine edition, the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature and sister journals Chinese Literature and Thought Today and Latin American Literature Today. He also started the WLT Academy, a statewide teacher outreach program bringing the best contemporary international literature and culture to Oklahoma classrooms.
Fossilized Answers to an Ancient Puzzle
Canada’s remote Anticosti Island may help reveal what happened before and after the world’s first major mass extinction 445 million years ago. Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History Assistant Curators of Invertebrate Paleontology Lena Cole and David Wright received a $621,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to excavate and study fossil specimens that bookend the Ordovician mass extinction. “In many ways, research on Anticosti Island is like finding a missing chapter from the history of life,” Wright says.
Honoring a Hero
When Brian Nacci, OU ’72 BBA, and his wife, Julie, visited Italy this summer, he fulfilled a promise to himself by visiting the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery gravesite of his uncle, Willis Jarboe, a 1941 OU drama graduate and WWII 45th Infantry corporal who died in action. Nacci, also a U.S. Army veteran and OU Army ROTC alumnus, placed American, Italian and OU flags in remembrance of his late uncle’s sacrifices.
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