This year marks the 130th anniversary of the Kendall College of Arts & Sciences – the central, original college that later became The University of Tulsa. I hope you’ll join us to celebrate throughout the fall – at every football game, where we’ll be highlighting our different departments, at our cookout on Friday, Sept. 13, and at homecoming, where we’ll celebrate our current students and alumni.
The anniversary is especially exciting for me in my “freshman” year as dean of the college. Even though I have a few years on our other freshmen, I’m learning — like they are — about everything that makes the college so special. A few of my initial observations: Our faculty are passionately devoted to teaching and mentoring, our alumni care deeply about paying it forward, and our students are truly the best in the nation.
On that last point, our incoming class has an average ACT score of 30! I’m not sure if I did that well myself, but it puts me in mind of something that one of our most prominent alumni, Burt Holmes, recently told me. As we were driving through Tulsa, he was talking about his experience as a founder of QuikTrip and his service with various charities, including as chairman of the TU Board of Trustees. I asked, “How on earth did you find the time to run a major company and do all these other things?” He didn’t miss a beat: “I always surrounded myself with the best people.”
That’s TU in a nutshell: excellent people, doing amazing things together. And in our college, 27% are the very first in their families to attend college, which means they will bring new generations along with them. You’ll read about some of them below – like students winning major awards from the Association for Women in Communication or faculty who worked with students on research that led to a new national park.
With all the best for the new school year,
Blaine Greteman
Dean of the Kendall College of Arts & Sciences
The University of Tulsa