An Oil & Gas Journal issue from 1983 has accompanied Mike McConnell from office to office for more than 40 years. It sits within easy reach of his desk at the Michael F. Price College of Business, where he serves as director of the Robert M. Zinke Energy Management Program. The man on the cover is Jon Rex Jones, OU ’57 BS geology, an Oklahoma energy giant and the father of McConnell’s closest friend.

“Jon Rex Jones taught me that you can be incredibly successful in business while doing the right thing,” McConnell says. “That was a great reminder when I reached the 50th floor of the Enron building.”

McConnell served on Enron’s executive committee at the time of its historic 2001 bankruptcy. He has spent the years since trying to articulate—for his children and now for his students—what made the difference between the people who walked free out of that experience and the people who didn’t. The answer informs everything about the OU program he leads and the $1 million commitment he and his wife, Chris, have made to ensure it endures.

“Integrity isn’t just a word. It’s a way of life,” he says. “If you live that way, people who want to have improper conversations don’t invite you to their meetings.”

Producing leaders

 OU’s Energy Management program was established in 1958 as the first of its kind in the nation to prepare graduates with the scientific, legal, financial and commercial skills to lead across every segment of the domestic and global energy industries. When McConnell became director of the program, he wanted to understand the type of professionals it actually produced, so he pulled the unit’s alumni database and sorted it by job title. Of the approximately 1,100 graduates with complete records, 99 were presidents or CEOs—nearly 9%. The expected rate for any alumni population is normally around 1%, he says.

“I wasn’t picking and choosing from the data,” he says. “I was stunned.”

He attributes much of those results to the program’s use of adjunct lecturers in upper-division coursework. Of the program’s 13 required upper-division classes, five are taught by working industry professionals.

McConnell points to the final semesters of the program as particularly formative, when adjuncts working in the industry bring current perspectives to coursework built on a foundation faculty have established throughout the degree.  

This summer, 100 of the program’s 292 enrolled students are working internships at 68 different companies—a placement rate that reflects McConnell’s relentless outreach efforts. He personally visits companies across the country to make the case for his students, connecting with more than 300 companies over the past several years.

The results are visible in graduates like Blake Brigham, now president of Cibolo Royalties in Austin, Texas. Brigham earned a bachelor’s degree with double majors in Energy Management and Entrepreneurship and Venture Management in 2021.

“The program offered abundant scholarship opportunities, three incredible internships and, ultimately, a full-time job offer—even in the middle of the pandemic,” Brigham says. “I graduated feeling prepared, connected and grateful.”

Brenda Peters, Price College’s first corporate engagement and employer development coordinator, has watched a pattern of gratitude take shape across decades. Before joining the program in 2013, she spent 23 years at OU’s Career Center.

“The Energy Management alumni are loyal, and they are really good about giving back,” Peters says. “That’s how they’ve been raised.”

A flexible gift 

The McConnells have already contributed $220,000 toward their $1 million commitment through the OU Foundation. The funding supports the Industry Partners/Energy Management endowment and is designated to support the program at the director’s discretion. 

McConnell raises money every year to close the funding gap in the program’s operating expenses. He knows what could be accomplished with more resources.

“I want whoever comes next to have the flexibility to cover shortfalls, start new scholarships, fund travel—whatever the program needs most,” he says.

The family’s gift also carries a second purpose: inspiration. The McConnells’ children, Claire and Michael, are Price College graduates.

“Chris and I wanted to show our children, as well as my students, what it looks like to believe in something enough to support it beyond your lifetime,” he says.

Looking ahead

McConnell graduated from OU in 1982 with a degree in petroleum land management—the program now known as Energy Management, the oldest of its kind in the nation. The fundamentals he gained then shaped a career that took him from his first job as a landman at Champlin Petroleum through 16 years at Enron and 14 years as president of Jones Energy Inc., an exploration and production company in Austin.

When his OU predecessor, Steve Long, prepared to retire after 13 years leading the Energy Management program, he called McConnell.

“He talked about the three phases of our lives: We learn, we earn, we return,” McConnell recalls. Realizing it was time for his own transition, McConnell said yes. He is now in his seventh year as director.

McConnell wrote a book in 2008, Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should, originally for his children. It became a teaching text in his class. His final lecture of the semester— “Enron and Ethics: Educating Tomorrow’s Leaders”—does not shy away from the hard parts.

“I know people who went to prison after Enron,” he says. “I consider myself a pretty normal person who came through some extraordinary circumstances with my integrity intact. Writing that book was an attempt to figure out what made the difference and share it.”

What made the difference, he believes, was the grounding he received at OU: faculty who had worked in the industry, who taught judgment alongside technical skill, and who modeled what it looked like to make hard calls under real pressure. That is the intention of McConnell’s gift. He wants to give the next generation of Energy Management students the same preparation he received, taught by the same kind of practitioners who helped shape him, sustained by a program with lasting resources.

“When you consider the impact you can have in this job, it's hard to imagine doing anything else,” he says. 

Brian Brus writes for the OU Foundation.