The University of Tulsa (TU) is a private research university in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States. Originally established as the Presbyterian School for Indian Girls and later as the Henry Kendall College in 1894, it merged with the proposed McFarlin College to become the University of Tulsa in 1920. As of 2024, the university enrolled 3,769 students.
Tulsa's athletic teams are collectively known as the Tulsa Golden Hurricane and compete in Division I of the NCAA as members of the American Conference. Its mascot is Gus T and its official colors are royal blue, old gold, and crimson.
History
Frontier Origins The Presbyterian School for Indian Girls (also known as "Minerva Home")Mullins, Jonita. Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. "Muskogee County." Retrieved April 22, 2013. was founded in Muskogee, Indian Territory, in 1882 to offer a primary education to young women of the Creek Nation.
In 1894, the young school expanded to become Henry Kendall College, named in honor of Henry Kendall, secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions.Logsdon, Guy William. "The University of Tulsa: a history from 1882–1972." Norman, Okla.; 1975.Delfraisse, Betty Dew. "The history of the University of Tulsa." Austin, Tex.: [S.l.], 1929. The first president was William A. Caldwell, who served a brief two-year term, which ended in 1896.
Caldwell was succeeded by William Robert King, a Presbyterian minister and co-founder of the college, who had come to Oklahoma from Tennessee, by way of the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Kendall College, while still in Muskogee, granted the first post-secondary degree in Oklahoma in June 1898. Under King, the college was moved from its original location in downtown Muskogee to a larger campus on lands donated by Creek Nation Chief Pleasant Porter.
Kendall College students, faculty and administrators were instrumental in efforts to get the State of Sequoyah recognized; they wrote most of the proposed constitution and designed the seal among other things.
The opening of the new campus coincided with the start of the tenure of the third president, A. Grant Evans. Over the next 10 years, Evans oversaw the struggling school's growth. In most years, class sizes remained small and although the academy, the attached elementary, middle, and high school was more successful; by the end of the 1906–07 year Kendall College had had only 27 collegiate graduates. At the request of the administration, the Synod of Indian Territory assumed control as trustees and began to look at alternatives for the future of the school. When the administration was approached by the comparatively smaller town of Tulsa and offered a chance to move, the decision was made to relocate."Henry Kendall College Bulletin"
Relocation to Tulsa The Tulsa Commercial Club (a forerunner of the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce) decided to bid for the college. Club members who packaged a bid in 1907 to move the college to Tulsa included: B. Betters, H. O. McClure, L. N. Butts, W. L. North, James H. Hall (sic), Grant C. Stebbins, Charles W. Kerr, and C. H. Nicholson. The offer included $100,000, 20 acres of real estate, and a guarantee for utilities and street car service.The University of Tulsa, "Tulsa Commercial Club 'had a hunch and bet a bunch.'"
The college opened to 35 students in September 1907, two months before Oklahoma became a state. These first students attended classes at the First Presbyterian Church until permanent buildings could be erected on the new campus. This became the start of higher education in Tulsa. Kendall Hall, the first building of the new school, was completed in 1908 and was quickly followed by two other buildings. All three buildings have since been demolished, with Kendall the last to be razed in 1972.Campbell, Joshua. "TU's history highlights change." The Collegian. October 16, 2007. Retrieved August 27, 2011. The bell that once hung in the Kendall Building tower was saved and displayed in Bayless Plaza.
The Kendall College presidents during 1907–1919 were Arthur Grant Evans, Levi Harrison Beeler, Seth Reed Gordon, Frederick William Hawley, Ralph J. Lamb, Charles Evans, James G. McMurtry and Arthur L. Odell.
In 1918, the Methodist Church proposed building a college in Tulsa, using money donated by a Tulsa oilman Robert M. McFarlin. The proposed college was to be named McFarlin College. However, it was soon apparent that Tulsa could not yet support two competing schools. In 1920, Henry Kendall College merged with the proposed McFarlin College to become the University of Tulsa. The McFarlin Library of TU was named for the principal donor of the proposed college. The name of Henry Kendall has lived on to the present as the Kendall College of Arts and Sciences.
20th century The University of Tulsa opened its School of Petroleum Engineering in 1928..Tulsa University Website "History of TU." Accessed February 24, 2011
The Great Depression hit the university hard. By 1935, the school was about to close because of its poor financial condition. It had a debt of $250,000, enrollment had fallen to 300 students (including many who could not pay their tuition), the faculty was poorly paid and morale was low. It was then that the oil tycoon and TU-patron Waite Phillips offered the school presidency to Clarence Isaiah ("Cy") Pontius, a former investment banker. His primary focus would be to rescue the school's finances. A dean's council would take charge of academic issues.Scott Cooper, "Pontius Pilot", Tulsa World, January 12, 1998.
However, Pontius' accomplishments went beyond raising money. During his tenure, the following events occurred: In 1935, the university opened the College of Business Administration, which it renamed the Collins College of Business in 2008. The Tulsa Law School (University of Tulsa College of Law), located in downtown Tulsa, became part of the university in 1943. In 1948, oil magnate William G. Skelly donated funds to found the university radio station, KWGS (named for his initials), now known as Public Radio Tulsa.
After William G. Skelly died, his widow donated the Skelly Mansion, at the corner of 21st Street and Madison Avenue, to the University of Tulsa. The school sold the mansion and its furnishings to private owners in 1959. On July 5, 2012, the university announced that it would repurchase the house as a residence for its president. TU sold the property in 2021.
In 1958, Ben Graf Henneke, a scholar of theater and communications, became the first alumnus to hold the presidency of the University of Tulsa. During his tenure, the university established new doctoral programs, increased the proportion of faculty with doctorates, started new publications including Petroleum Abstracts and the James Joyce Quarterly, developed a North Campus center for petroleum engineering research, and expanded many main campus facilities. He was succeeded by Eugene L. Swearingen, a Stanford University-trained economist and Oklahoma native who served on the National Finance Committee for the Jimmy Carter Presidential Campaign. Swearingen increased TU's endowment and expanded the footprint of its campus.
21st century In 2004, anthropologist Steadman Upham joined The University of Tulsa as president, having served in faculty and leadership positions at the University of Oregon and Arizona State University. Within five years of his arrival, TU saw 13 major construction projects and renovations on campus, ranging from the construction of the Roxana Rozsa and Robert Eugene Lorton Performance Center to the overhaul of Keplinger Hall, and plans for seven more major projects finalized (despite the nationwide recession).
The university also launched the Oxley College of Health Sciences, in downtown Tulsa, named in recognition of a major gift from Tulsa's Oxley Foundation. In 2023, the unit was renamed the Oxley College of Health & Natural Sciences. The university also partnered with the George Kaiser Family Foundation to temporarily house The Bob Dylan Archive at TU in 2016. Under Upham's leadership, the University of Tulsa assumed management of the famous Gilcrease Museum in northwest Tulsa.
In 2016, President Upham retired and was succeeded by Gerard Clancy, who previously served as a psychiatry professor and held leadership positions at the University of Iowa and the University of Oklahoma. About two and a half years into his presidency, in the spring of 2019, President Clancy and Provost Janet K. Levit announced a restructuring of academic programs at the university that would eliminate several academic programs. The plan was met with resistance from some faculty who believed it was formulated without adequate input from faculty. Although faculty members voted "no confidence" in the president and provost in November, the university's board of trustees publicly affirmed their support of the plan.
In January 2020, President Clancy informed the board that he needed to cut back on his activities because of unspecified medical issues. The board named Provost Levit as interim president of the school, effective in January 2020.
Former Congressman Brad R. Carson became president of the University of Tulsa on July 1, 2021. He resigned effective May 31, 2025. Stacy Leeds took office as president on July 1, 2026.
Academics
The University of Tulsa is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".
Rankings +USNWR graduate school rankings Petroleum Engineering 6 Law 120
+USNWR departmental rankings Clinical Psychology 146 Computer Science 176 English 113 Psychology 194 Speech–Language Pathology 159
U.S. News & World Reports 2025 edition of "Best Colleges" ranked the University of Tulsa tied for 179th among "national universities" and tied at 90th for "Best Value".
Campus The campus of the University of Tulsa centers on a wide, grassy, quad-like space known as Dietler Commons, formerly called "The U." The predominant architectural style is English Gothic. Most of the buildings are constructed from tan and rose-colored Crab Orchard sandstone from Tennessee interspersed with stone quarried in Arkansas. Other materials include Bedford limestone from Indiana and slate quarried in Vermont. The university's campus borders Tulsa's Kendall Whittier neighborhood and is not far from Tulsa's downtown and midtown neighborhoods. The campus, in particular its football venue Skelly Field, is located on the historic U.S. 66, America's "Mother Road" stretching from Chicago to Los Angeles.
Skelly Field at H. A. Chapman Stadium
Tulsa Golden Hurricane football has played home games at Skelly Field at H. A. Chapman Stadium since 1930.
Museums and libraries
McFarlin Library: Resources and Notable Collections
The library's Department of Special Collections and University Archives houses over 12 million archival items and has over 1,000 collections on a wide-ranging array of topics including 20th-century British, Irish, and American literature, which includes the world's second-largest collection of materials by James Joyce. It also houses the papers of Nobel Prize winners V.S. Naipaul and Doris Lessing, as well as novelists and poets Jean Rhys, Eliot Bliss, David Plante, Anna Kavan, and Stevie Smith, just to name a few. In addition to these famous novelists, McFarlin Library houses the papers of Congresswoman Alice Mary Robertson, literary critic Richard Ellmann, comic book innovator E. Nelson Bridwell, Cherokee Principal Chief J.B. Milam, and writer/sexologist Edward Charles, among others. The Department of Special Collections also contains a vast collection of books on Native American history.
Partnership with Gilcrease Museum