Content about University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma

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.

Want to read the 2011 USAO Magazine in its entirety? You can download the whole thing here!

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.

Save the date!
OCLA REUNION
June 21-24, 2012
register online at
usao.edu/home/alumni

Amid the stresses of making it to class in a timely fashion, it is easy to forget that the IDS core curriculum makes USAO what it is.

While the liberal arts focus is what separates USAO from other public institutions in Oklahoma, it is the interdisciplinary approach of team teaching across disciplines that distinguishes it from other liberal arts universities, public and private, around the country.

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).

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.

Known for her lifelong devotion to teaching and preserving the Kiowa language, author and educator Alecia Keahbone Gonzales died on April 22.

Faculty dreamed it. They built it. And now the Masons are helping to fund it.

“Better late than never.”

This is the advice that Leona Metzger Ford, the oldest alum to ever serve on the USAO Alumni Association’s Executive Board, has for students and graduates. Ford turned 95 years old in June and continues to live this motto, recently accepting the invitation by the board to serve a two-year term for her district.

As if USAO’s deaf education program wasn’t already completely unique, a $1.2 million cash infusion will only strengthen and further distinguish the only public program of its kind in Oklahoma and the oldest similar degree program west of the Mississippi.

When deaf education moved into the wholly redesigned Canning Hall in 2009, USAO took another leap forward in the field, welcoming a satellite school from the Oklahoma School for the Deaf (OSD) and crafting a unique partnership to better serve the deaf and students in deaf education.