City: Tulsa, OK

Category: Education

Telephone: (918) 594-8229

Address: 700 N. Greenwood Ave.

Description: The small but attractive campus is basically an extension of the large Stillwater campus. Students on the Tulsa campus earn the same degrees as those in Stillwater and, indeed, may take a number of classes on that main campus, facilitated by BOB—the big orange bus—that shuttles back and forth the 70 miles between the two campuses.The median age of the students is 25, and the school concentrates on junior-, senior-, and graduate-level course work. The faculty includes local instructors and those who commute from Stillwater. More than 40 undergraduate degrees are offered, including aviation science, business, engineering, liberal arts, education, early-childhood development, journalism and broadcasting, and health and human performance. Master’s degrees are offered in as many fields, and EdD and PhD degrees are offered in education, computer science, educational psychology, electrical engineering, and environmental science.Classes have been taught in Tulsa since 1982; OSU-Tulsa was established in 1999. There are approximately 2,700 students—all commuters, with no resident housing (although this is being considered).The campus is on the site where Booker T. Washington High School once stood. It was one of the few buildings to survive the fires during the 1921 Riot. The school changed locations in 1950 and the building was demolished. There is a marker on the campus telling about the school’s history.OSU-Tulsa is home to the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers founded by author Teresa Miller. The center houses the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame and sponsors, every even year, the Celebration of Books, one of the largest conferences for writers in the Southwest. Through the center’s activities, Oklahomans have heard such important writers as Pat Conroy, Tony Hillerman, Maya Angelou, N. Scott Momaday, and Edward Albee. The center also houses archives of manuscripts by Oklahoma authors including Carolyn Hart, William Bernhardt, and Michael Wallis.Just west of the campus is the Helmerich Advanced Technology Research Center, where members of the OSU engineering faculty, graduate students, and visiting scholars work on the development of new materials—ceramics, composites, aerospace materials, polymers, and metals—for future industries.