The Creation of Quality

At a state legislature budget hearing, University of Oklahoma President George L. Cross was once asked why he wanted so much more money for his school. Answered Cross: "We want to build a university of which the football team can be proud." He meant it as a joke, and the remark does seem inappropriate today: Oklahoma's football fortunes have been on the decline since the resignation of Coach Charles ("Bud") Wilkinson in 1964, while Cross has been steadily nudging his school toward standards of quality achieved by such state university giants as California, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Geologists & Giselle. Oklahoma is not yet a first-rate university, but it has come a long way since its founding in 1890. O.U. ranks among the top ten state schools in Rhodes scholars. Its 1,000,000-volume Bizzell Memorial Library houses the world's finest collection of materials on the history of science. Its petroleum-science program--backed by gifts from the state's oil industry--has produced one-fourth of the nation's geologists and petrochemical engineers. Although best known for its strength in science, O.U. has one of the nation's few campus-run schools of ballet; last year it became the first U.S. university to present a full-scale production of Giselle.

Now in the midst of a $130 million expansion program, Oklahoma expects to grow from 15,500 to 25,000 students by 1975. Thanks to Cross's concern for good student-administration relations, O.U. has been relatively free of campus disorder, except before the annual football game with archrival Texas.

To keep gripes at a minimum, 51 students sit on the university's advisory councils, are given free rein to criticize policy. Oklahoma accepted its first Negro student in 1948, is one of the most successfully integrated state universities in the Southwest: there are about 450 Negro students.

On-the-Job Training. Last week Oklahoma's regents named a new president to succeed Cross, who plans to retire in 1968 after 24 years in office. He is John Herbert Hollomon, 48, Acting Under Secretary of Commerce. A pipe-smoking yachtsman with a doctorate in metallurgy from M.I.T., Hollomon was general manager of the General Electric laboratory in Schenectady, N.Y., when President Kennedy named him as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Science and Technology in 1962. President Johnson promoted him to Acting Under Secretary last February. Highly regarded in university circles--Virginia and Pittsburgh were also considering him for president--Hollomon has little educational experience. O.U. has taken care of that. Under the terms of his appointment, he will spend ten months in on-the-job training as president-elect, learning about the state and visiting other campuses to see the nature of their problems.

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