Content about Person Career

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.

Calling running for public office “one of the best experiences of my life,” Brittany Novotny, a 2002 sociology graduate from the University of Science and Arts, came back to the college in the fall to speak to USAO students during the first in a series of alumni speakers this fall.

USAO alumna Ashley Hyde has a longer-than average card list during the holidays. In addition to family and friends, her list includes more than 20,000 cards to VA hospitals and care centers throughout the United States.

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.

Representatives from 10 different nonprofit organizations spoke last December in the Symposium on Africa hosted by the University of Science and Arts.

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.

In a post-Enron, post-Bernie Madoff world, the phrase “creative economist” is almost always followed by discussion of a trial and a lengthy prison term. When applied to Dr. Erik Guzik, associate professor of economics at the University of Science and Arts, however, it is in recognition of his journey to understand the mechanisms of creativity as well as his mission to improve the way that children are educated in the 21st century through a revolutionary technology known as Virtual Problem Solving (VPS).

At 5:10 a.m. on a quiet Thursday morning in November, a charter bus full of soccer players and coaches pulled out of the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma parking lot and into a still-sleeping Chickasha.

Food is something we often take for granted. For many, it comes in boxes, cans or wrapped in plastic. To others, though, food represents something more important than just the sum of calories and nutrition that can be wedged in between daily errands. For them, food is culture. Food is tradition and, in some cases, that tradition is on the edge of extinction.

An overview of Drover sports in 2010-11.

Women’s Soccer

The USAO Alumni Association is giving individuals another way to honor friends, professors, classmates and family who have passed away with the Memorial Scholarship.

“The Memorial Scholarship is an annual scholarship given in honor of those who have passed away. The scholarship may include several names and, depending on the amount, given to many different students,” said Eric Feuerborn, director of alumni development.

To Dr. Jeannette Loutsch, the fight against cancer is personal. Since she lost both parents to cancer in 2002, Loutsch, assistant professor of biology at USAO, makes it her mission to raise awareness about certain types of cancer and to teach young people how to check for cancerous tissue.

“Feb. 23, 2002, my mom died after a 16-year battle with cancer,” she said, adding that her father died later that year. “That’s why I do it. So someone else doesn’t have to deal with this … It was terrible, and I lived 12 hours away.”