OFE News Release
Boren to Give Keynote Address at Academic Awards Banquet
April 14, 2006
OKLAHOMA CITY -- David L. Boren, whose vision and leadership created the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence in 1985, will be the keynote speaker at the Foundation’s 20th anniversary Academic Awards Banquet at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 20, at the Renaissance Tulsa Hotel and Convention Center, 6808 S. 107th E. Ave.
Boren, who has served Oklahoma as governor and U.S. senator, became the 13th president of the University of Oklahoma in November 1994. He is the first person in state history to have served in all three positions.
Boren founded the non-profit Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence with the mission of recognizing and encouraging academic excellence in public schools. In addition to its Academic Awards Program, the foundation provides free training and technical support for public school foundations, coordinates history education programs in partnership with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and provides professional development grants for teachers. In conjunction with its 20th anniversary, the foundation recently launched the David and Molly Boren Mentoring Initiative to encourage the growth and development of school-based mentoring programs around the state.
During the Academic Awards banquet, Boren will give the keynote address titled “The Challenges Facing the Academic All-Staters.” He also will meet earlier in the day with the All-State scholars for an informal discussion or “bull session.”
“The All-State Bull Session has become a banquet-day tradition and is certainly a memorable experience for our All-Staters,” said Emily Stratton, executive director of the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence. “They enjoy having the opportunity to speak freely with David Boren about current events and about his many years in public service.”
Boren is widely respected for his academic credentials, his longtime support of education, and for his distinguished political career as a reformer of the American political system. Boren himself excelled as a student, graduating among the top 1 percent of his class at Yale University in 1963 and earning a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, where he completed his master’s degree in politics, philosophy and economics in 1965. In 1968, he received a law degree from the OU College of Law, where the faculty selected him as outstanding graduate.
As the nation’s youngest governor from 1974 to 1978, Boren promoted key educational initiatives that have had an enduring impact on Oklahoma. Established during his tenure were: the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute; the Scholar-Leadership Enrichment Program; and the Oklahoma Physicians Manpower Training Program, which provides scholarships for medical students and medical personnel who commit to practice in underserved rural areas. Also, the first state funding for Gifted and Talented classes was provided in 1976 and, from 1976 through 1978, Oklahoma ranked first among all states in the percentage increases of funding for higher education.
During his time in the U.S. Senate -- from 1979 to 1994 -- Boren served on the Senate Finance and Agriculture Committees and was the longest-serving chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Boren also chaired the special 1992-93 Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, which produced proposals to make Congress more efficient and responsive by streamlining congressional bureaucracy, reducing staff sizes and reforming procedures to end legislative gridlock. In his continued support of education, he was the author of the National Security Education Act in 1992, which provides scholarships for study abroad and for learning additional languages.
Boren left the U.S. Senate in 1994 with an approval rating of 9l percent after being reelected with 83 percent of the vote in 1990, the highest percentage in the nation in a U.S. Senate contest in that election year. Under his presidential leadership, the University of Oklahoma has developed and emerged as a "pacesetter university in American public higher education,” with 20 major new programs initiated since his inauguration. They include establishment of the Honors College, a new expository writing program for freshmen modeled on the program at Harvard, an interdisciplinary religious studies program, the International Programs Center, and the Faculty-in-Residence Program putting faculty family apartments in student residence halls.
Since 1994, almost $1 billion in construction projects have been completed or are under way on OU’s three campuses, ranging from the $67 million National Weather Center to the $18.7 million renovation of historic Holmberg Hall, home of music and dance programs. Since 1994, endowed professorships have tripled and the OU donor base has grown from 18,000 to more than 98,000 friends and alumni. During the first 10 years of Boren’s tenure, over $1 billion in private gifts were donated to the university.
Despite his busy schedule as an administrator, Boren is one of the few university presidents in the nation who teaches. His freshman-level political science course is among the most popular on campus.