Content about North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Teacher and USAO graduate Andrea (Wood) Brock may be spending part of her summer expanding her trophy case after being named the OK-AR MAA Oklahoma Middle School Teacher of the Year and the Moore School District 2012 Teacher of the Year.

Although it is several months until the next USAO Alumni Hall of Fame and Young Alumni awards ceremony, the search is already underway for this year’s recipients. Nominations will be accepted through April 1.

We chose GIVING BACK as the theme for this year’s USAO Magazine because we see so many USAO alumni, students, faculty and staff active in their communities. This publication is not intended to be a comprehensive list, but is merely a sampling of the people and programs at USAO who encourage giving back.

Having accepted the challenge to lose weight to generate monies for the scholarship program, student Taryn Mazur and Sodexo manager Cynthia Richardson each brought home the grand prize of a 42-inch flat screen television.

They were competing against 54 students and staff in a pounds-for-dollars program called Make Marble Pay. The program ran through the Spring 2011 trimester at the University of Science and Arts.

Several OCW, OCLA and USAO alumni received a call from the college in the spring and summer of 2011. That call may have been from one of the members of the Student Advancement Team at USAO. The SAT was formed to boost alumni giving to the university. Four students worked the Call Center tirelessly over the course of the trimester to raise more than $11,000 from 145 donors.

An overview of Drover sports in 2010-11.

Women’s Soccer

The 2011-12 USAO Alumni Association Board of Directors has established an endowed USAO Alumni Association Scholarship in honor of all alumni. The

USAO Alumni Association was born on the afternoon of May 18, 1917, in the college library, then located on the third floor of the Administration Building. The purpose of the association was outlined in the second meeting in 1918 by President Emma Estill. 

A pianist, accompanist and vocal coach with a world-wide reputation, an award-winning author and political science professor and the recipient of the 2010-11 National VFW Elementary Teacher of the Year award will be inducted in the USAO Alumni Hall of Fame this year.
 

If you ask an ecologist, the cross timbers is a unique habitat spanning from southeastern Kansas across Oklahoma into central Texas that marks the boundary between the forests of the eastern United States and the Great Plains.

Two scholarships honoring the memory of the late Laron Short have been established: one, an annual scholarship for current students; the other, an endowed scholarship for future students.

The two funds were established by 1949 graduate and emeriti faculty member Dr. Rose Marie Smith, alum and adjunct faculty member Tonnia Anderson and 2010 graduate JJ William Francais to honor Short, a communication alum who died May 24 from injuries sustained in the tornado that touched down in Chickasha.

Born in Birmingham, England, Sandra Soli graduated from College High School in Bartlesville and entered the Oklahoma College for Women in 1959. Her memories of OCW, nearing the end of the first incarnation, are idyllic.

"The Nellie Sparks dorm room that my roommate Judy and I shared had water pipes climbing one wall," Soli remembered, "so we painted them green and installed fake ivy to 'grow' up the wall of our room"

The OCW class of 1961 wants to celebrate its 50th class reunion in style. Having established the Class of 1961 Scholarship in 2010, the group hopes to increase the scholarship base. Class member Maryilnn Stuart Holland has issued a challenge to her classmates and alumni. Holland will match, up to $5,000, any funds contributed between Jan. 1-Sept. 1, 2011.