The University of Oklahoma (OU) is a coeducational public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two became the state of Oklahoma. As of 2007 the university had 29,931 students enrolled, most located at its main campus in Norman. Employing nearly 3,000 faculty members, the school offers 152 baccalaureate programs, 160 master's programs, 75 doctorate programs, and 20 majors at the first professional level. David Lyle Boren, a former U.S. Senator and Oklahoma Governor, has served as President of the University of Oklahoma since 1994.
The school is ranked first per capita among public universities in enrollment of National Merit Scholars and among the top ten in the graduation of Rhodes Scholars. PC Magazine and the Princeton Review rated it one of the "20 Most Wired Colleges" in both 2006 and 2008, while the Carnegie Foundation classifies it as a research university with "very high research activity." Located on its Norman campus are two prominent museums, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, specializing in French Impressionism and Native American artwork, and the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, specializing in the natural history of Oklahoma.
The school, well known for its athletic programs, has won 7 NCAA Division I National Football Championships. Its baseball team has won 2 NCAA national championships and the women's softball team won the national championship in 2000. The gymnastics teams have won four national championships since 2002 and its football program has the best winning percentage of any Division I-FBS team since the introduction of the AP Poll in 1936, playing in four BCS national championship games since the inception of the BCS system in 1998.
Read more about University Of Oklahoma: History, Academic Profile, Museums and Libraries, Notable People and Alumni, Athletics
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“It is well known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. He must be an university of knowledges.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I know only one person who ever crossed the ocean without feeling it, either spiritually or physically.... he went from Oklahoma to France and back again ... without ever getting off dry land. He remembers several places I remember too, and several French words, but he says firmly, “We must of went different ways. I don’t rightly recollect no water, ever.””
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)