FrontThis boulevard was named in honor of David L. Boren, the 13th President of the University of Oklahoma by the University of Oklahoma Board of Regents to mark the 10th anniversary of his presidency.
Prior to becoming President of the University of Oklahoma, Borne served as Governor of Oklahoma and as a U.S. Senator. He is the first person in state history to have served the state in all three positions. He spent nearly three decades in elective politics, including 8 years in the state legislature. From Oklahoma to Washington, Boren carried a commitment to reform, including campaign finance reform, lobbying reform, open meetings laws, and increased competitive bidding on public projects. When Bored left the U.S. Senate in 1994 to become President of OU, he had an approval rating of 91 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.
Boren grew up in Seminole, Oklahoma where he was a highs school debater. He graduated from Yale University in 1963 in the top 1% of his class and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He was selected as a Rhodes Scholar and earned a master's degree in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University, England, in 1965. He received a law degree from the University of Oklahoma College
of Law in 1968Back
where he received the Bledsoe Prize as the outstanding graduate by a vote of the faculty.
At OU, Boren created many new major programs including the establishment of the Honors College, a new freshman writing program, an interdisciplinary religious studies program and new programs in international studies. The number of new facilities built on the campus during the Boren years matched the explosion in new programs. Major new garden areas were also created on OU's campuses under the leadership of First Lady Molly Shi Boren.
Boren led the effort to establish the Research Campus and to position the University as a major force for the development of research and intellectual property to transform the state's economy. The first two buildings on the Research Campus were the National Weather Center and the Stephenson Research and Technology Center.
In the first 10 years of Boren's presidency, endowed professorships more than quadrupled, the OU donor base grew from from 18,000 to more than 92,000 and over $1 billion in private gifts were received. Above all, the Boren years are marked by President Boren's emphasis on putting students first.
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