Murray Takes Home the Heisman
An incredible football season ended with a 65-pound exclamation point as OU quarterback Kyler Murray laid claim to the Heisman Trophy on Dec. 8 in Manhattan. Murray, who has already signed a $4.6 million contract with the Oakland Athletics baseball franchise, is the second OU quarterback in as many years to win the Heisman. Baker Mayfield, now quarterback for the Celeveland Browns, won the troply in 2017. With a total of seven, OU is now tied with Notre Dame and Ohio State for the most Heisman winners.
Immature Mars
Immature Mars
The red planet is suffering from arrested development and an astrophysics team at the University of Oklahoma believes they know why. Like other dysfunctional families, the orbital instability of its larger siblings kept Mars from growing into an Earth-sized planet, says Matthew S. Clement, OU graduate student in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy. Recent geological data from Mars and Earth indicates that Mars’ formation period was about 10 times shorter than Earth’s, which led to the idea that Mars was left behind as a “stranded planetary embryo” during the formation of the Sun’s inner planets.
Davis-Undiano wins multiple awards
Robert Con Davis-Undiano, World Literature Today’s executive director, will be inducted into the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame in November. He is OU’s Neustadt Professor and Latino Studies Program director, and his book Mestizos Come Home! Making and Claiming Mexican American Identity won the 2017 International Latino Book Award. In December 2017, he won the Hispanic Arts Council’s writer of the year award and in September received the President’s Award from the Latino Community Development Agency in Oklahoma City. His play, “Day of the Dead – A One-Act Real Life and Death Play,” was presented by the OU School of Drama in October.
Top-Notch Brain
OU meteorologist and fomer vice president for research Kelvin Droegemeier has been tapped to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Pending Senate confirmation, he will likely become the president’s top science adviser. A Regents’ Professor of Meteorology, Droegemeier joined the OU faculty in 1985 and has served the science and education communities at the national level for more than 25 years.
Best of the Best
Four University of Oklahoma alumni will be inducted into the Oklahoma Military Hall of Fame in November. They are Lt. Col. William Hamilton of Granby, Colo.; Capt. Charles W. Ward, Tulsa; Capt. Robert Lloyd Ford, Okeene, Okla. (pictured in the ROTC story, "100 Years Strong"); and 1st Lt. William M. Grammar, deceased. Hamilton graduated from OU in 1957 and went into the Army, serving 20 years including combat tours in Cambodia and Vietnam. Ward returned from World War II and attended OU, graduating with an architecture degree in 1950. Ford graduated from OU and its ROTC program in 1966. A combat helicopter pilot, he flew more than 1,000 missions in Vietnam. Grammar went to OU in 1960 and was in Naval ROTC. He was killed in action in Vietnam in 1967.