winter 2012 excellence for oral roberts university alumni and friends Make no little plans here. SEE PAGE 8. your voice Join Us in Tulsa for Homecoming Coming home. That is what Homecoming is all about. I am so excited about the changes that have taken place at ORU in the past several years. Much of my excitement stems from help future world-changers experience frequent visits to Tulsa and actually the beginning of their lifelong dreams seeing the campus we all know and at ORU. love. The buildings look great. The Your Alumni Association Board dorms are better than ever. But my met in Tulsa in October and we real joy comes in seeing ORU students have some great new initiatives pursuing God, chasing their dreams and programs to roll out in the with passion, and making huge plans coming year. They are all focused for the future! on reengaging with you, the Fellow alumni, let this be my incredible alumni of Oral Roberts The Rearden family was ready for Christmas personal invitation for you to join me in 2011. Pictured are Mackenzie, Matt, Amanda University. Some of these programs (holding Austin), and Ava. and other alumni at Homecoming will be discussed in Tulsa during 2012. There is still time to plan and While you are making your plans to Homecoming and others will begin prepare. So, meet me and our entire join hundreds of your fellow alumni in just as soon as possible. In the Alumni Association Board in Tulsa Tulsa in February, I want to take this meantime, if you have suggestions for for an incredible event! Here are my opportunity to encourage you to think how this Alumni Association Board top five reasons why you need to be at about helping a student attend ORU can help you, please visit the ORU Homecoming 2012: so they too can experience a future alumni Web site where you will find • The Banquet. The signature event ORU Homecoming as an alumnus. our contact information. Our mission of the weekend and a great time to By now you should have heard about as an Alumni Association is to know see all of your friends. the annual Whole Person Scholarship you, impact you, represent you, and • The Campus. Our iconic buildings program that helps ORU to recruit, inform you. Your Alumni Board is and grounds have never looked attract, and retain many outstanding dedicated to seeing ORU succeed and better. You have to see them to students. This program has a dollar- making sure that you, the alumni, are a believe the progress that has been for-dollar matching component, but huge part of that success. made. we need your help to reach the lofty In closing, I am personally asking • The Chapel. Being in Christ’s goals set for this year. each one of you to pray for ORU, its Chapel for an ORU chapel service As you will see on page 8, the administration, faculty, staff, and is still an incredible experience for Whole Person Scholarship gives students. If you have not sown back students and alumni. deserving young people a chance to into this great place, take a moment to • The Connection. Few places will experience everything ORU has to give back to a place that gave so much provide inspiration, memories, and offer. Your contribution may give a to you. I look forward to seeing you at motivation as you find when you talented musician a chance to receive Homecoming 2012. step foot back onto the campus instruction and play a Steinway piano Coming home, where you “made no little plans.” for the first time (page 11), provide an • The Student Center. Officially orator the opportunity to sharpen their known as the Armand Hammer skills through the newly established Matt ReaRden 97 Alumni-Student Center, it will be debate program (page 38), offer media CHAIR, ORU ALUMNI ASSOCIATION under construction when you get students the chance to use state-of- BOARD OF DIRECTORS here! the-art technology (page 14), or simply 2 | Excellence | WINTER 2012 | http://alumni.oru.edu Key Contacts Jesse Pisors 96, 05-MA-Ed. Senior Director Development and Alumni Relations 918/495.6610 winteR 2012 | vol. 24 no. 1 [email protected] George Paul 69 Director Major Gifts 918/495.7324 [email protected] YOU'LL FIND IT AT OR aL RO BeRtS U NIVeRSITY PUBLISHER dePaRtMentS ORU Office of Alumni Relations EDITOR 2 your voice Debbie Titus 77 George Alumni Board Chair Matt Rearden CONTRIBUTORS/WRITERS Debbie (Titus) George, Andrea Graff, Ossie Mills, encourages you to attend Natasha (Washington) Mitchell, ORU Athletic Homecoming. Media Relations, ORU Public Relations, Matt Rearden, Dr. Mark Rutland. 4 Presidential Perspective PHOTOS/IMAGES PROVIDED BY Johnie Hampton, Junius Johnson, KSQ Architects Your investment in the Whole Person (Alumni-Student Center images), Jeremy Loud, Scholarship program can change the Mark Moore, ORU Outreach Ministries, Paul Palmer, Matt Rearden, Don Wilson, course of a student’s life. ORU Photo Library. Homecoming logo created by Amanda King 07 13 Campus Currents I Alumni-Student Center logo created by Candace • ONEOK Executive Boardroom Jackson 04 and enhanced by Hampton Creative • Studio 1 renovated ART AND PRODUCTION • Veterans Lounge Waller & Company Public Relations The glass doors and walls on the front of the “Shark Tank” become opaque when students are making presentations. Page 13 HONOR ROLL OF DONORS Excellence is published and distributed to 15 alumni and friends by the ORU Office of Alumni Relations. featUReS 4 0 Campus Currents II s • HLC i coming again DIRECT INQUIRIES TO: • ABET, Inc. visit ORU Office of Alumni Relations 5 JUNIUS JOHNSON: IMPACTING THE [email protected] • Presidential Succession plan alumni.oru.edu IVY LEAGUE 918/495.6610 • Student Center update Facebook: www.facebook.com/orualumni This 1998 graduate is a different kind of • Ossie Mills, new EVP Twitter: www.twitter.com/orualumni missionary. 44 TRUSTEES MISSION STATEMENT The purpose of Excellence magazine is to share • Meet Dr. Don Argue. alumni stories and recent University news with 8 ' little PLANS'? NO way alumni and friends of ORU, thereby demonstrat- ing that the mission of ORU is being carried out Students from many nations have found a 46 the ELI REPORT on a daily basis all over the globe – “in every person’s world.” home at ORU, thanks to the Whole Person • ORU’s upcoming move to Scholarship program . and they are the Southland Conference CORRECTIONS The headline on page 11 of the Summer 2011 passionate about becoming world-changers. issue should have read, “Bill and Lisa Shuler, 47 LIFELONG links Distinguished Service to God.” On page 25, “January 2009” (column one) should have read • Top 11 reasons to choose ORU ORU, STEINwAYS MAKE BEAUTIFUL “January 2007.” 11 • Homecoming 2012 preview MUSIC TOGETHER • Alumni News “All-Steinway School” was added to ORU’s list • AOY: Nominate now! of honors in 2011. • Obituaries • College Weekend 3 8 OPEN TO DEBATE Two alumni have enabled ORU to relaunch its long-dormant debate program. A higher standard. A higher purpose. email: [email protected] | WINTER 2012 | Excellence | 3 presidential perspective More Than a Coin Toss Juliane Lapidus, a music/piano performance major from Cologne, Germany, is one of this year’s whole Person Scholarship students. mong the “trite and true” metaphors of all time saving. Maybe next year.” is the saying, two sides of the same coin. So What made the difference for Todd? What might have A trite, in fact, that one hates to use it. It is the made the difference for Lilly? It was the Whole Person perfect metaphor, however, for scholarships for worthy Scholarship. I have never encountered a scholarship students. program so productive, so efficiently run, and so effective at If there is a moment in which, as a university finding and funding exactly the kind of students we want at president, I thoroughly delight, it is seeing the joy on ORU. the face of a student who can be at ORU because of There is absolutely no greater return in the Kingdom of a scholarship. The gratitude, the radiance of a dream God than investing in human potential. Those who, with come true, the hope of new experiences at ORU and the the generous help of others, are able to bathe in the ORU excitement of knowing their life beyond ORU will touch experience are not just learning math or theology. They are the world . there is nothing to compare with seeing all taking a giant step toward the destiny God has for them. that and more on the face of a scholarship winner. Here More than 65 percent of all students who compete for a is a boy at ORU — call him Todd — pursuing his dream Whole Person Scholarship actually enroll at ORU. That’s of an engineering degree. He told me, “Without the huge! But it’s not enough. It won’t be enough until it’s 100 Whole Person Scholarship, I could never be here.” percent. It won’t be enough until I see that same joy on Of course, there’s another, darker side to that coin. Lilly’s face. There is hardly a moment more painful than seeing So again, what makes the difference for a Todd or Lilly? the crestfallen who head home from a visit knowing It’s more than a coin toss. The difference-maker is you. For they cannot come to the University of their dreams. Call a return on investment that’s eternal, for the joy of making her Lilly. She is from a broken home in a tiny town in a difference in a life that will make a difference, invest in the Rio Grande Valley.