Oklahoma Baptist University history

The university opened in September 1911, holding classes for 150 students in the basement of the First Baptist Church and in the Convention Hall of Shawnee.

The school fought financial problems throughout its history and closed in 1913. It was reopened in the fall of 1912 in the First Baptist Church building and was called Southwestern Baptist College, then Western Baptist College.

The new residential unit was opened in 1917 and named Montgomery Hall, in honor of Doctor and Mrs.

After a fundraising effort to procure sufficient financial support for the new dormitory, groundbreaking occurred in 1927 for the new facility.

When WMU Memorial Dormitory opened in 1928, the building housed rooms for 200 female students, the university dining hall, parlors, assembly rooms, a recreation room, an infirmary, and a swimming pool.

Total annual enrollment in the university exceeded 1,000 for the first time in 1946.

In 1952 OBU initiated the first basic baccalaureate nursing program in Oklahoma.

Shawnee Hall had been the administration building prior to 1954.

OBU was officially racially integrated in 1955, when the Board of Trustees approved a motion by Doctor Herschel H. Hobbs, pastor of Oklahoma City's First Baptist Church, to allow African American students admission to the university.

James N. Owens, Annals of O. B. U. (Shawnee, Okla.: Bison Press, 1956).

In January 1964, during final examinations week, the school narrowly missed disaster when a man flew a small airplane into Shawnee Hall.

The Board of Trustees voted in 1965 to change the institution’s name to Ouachita Baptist University.

The tenure of Ouachita’s eleventh president, Doctor Ralph Phelps, Jr., saw a revised and expanded curriculum, the introduction of a graduate program, doubling of Ouachita’s endowment and a then-record enrollment of 1,881 in 1966.

In 1970, Doctor Daniel R. Grant, who grew up as the son of Ouachita’s eighth president, followed in his father’s footsteps.

In 1981 the Schools of Christian Service, Nursing, and Business joined the College of Arts and Sciences and the Warren M. Angell College of Fine Arts to provide academic programs.

Marvin Gaskin et al., The View from Bison Hill: 75 Years of Remembrance (Shawnee: Oklahoma Baptist University, 1985).

In October 1996, the Ouachita Board of Trustees voted to resume responsibility for trustee selection, as prescribed in the institution’s original charter.

“An institution such as Ouachita is a living entity, created afresh by each generation,” reflected Doctor Elrod, who has served since 1998 as university chancellor. “It is exciting to view a new Ouachita being built on the foundation of the past.”

Doctor Rex M. Horne, Jr., was named by the Board of Trustees to become the 15th president of Ouachita, effective June 1, 2006.

In 2007, OBU's International Graduate School opened in Oklahoma City, offering a master's of business administration degree.

President Horne facilitated Ouachita’s yearlong 125th anniversary celebration in 2011, including launching the university’s 125th anniversary “Defining the Difference” capital campaign.