MY TURN featuring Dr. Brett S. Sharp
Dr. Brett S. Sharp, asst. professor, assoc. director, Oklahoma Policy Research Center
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A professor emeritus from our department and I were having lunch the other day. He was bragging to another colleague about how far the Political Science Department has come in the last ten years. Basically, he attributed the changes to hiring more qualified people and all from different universities. In fact, he was pretty complimentary about the university overall. He added (in language more colorful than I can relate in this forum) that there has also been a dramatic drop in the number of not-so-nice people in positions of responsibility. It was fun listening to him. Since I've just started my second year here at UCO, I flattered myself that I might be a part of the positive changes he described.
His comments made me reflect on my own perspectives of UCO over the years. It's now been a couple of decades since I made my own decision about where to attend college. Being a Tulsa native with a fairly parochial perspective, I thought the only reasonable choices after high school graduation were OU and OSU. I had heard vague rumors about a place called "Central State" but kept getting it confused with a similarly named state hospital.
After graduating from OSU some years later, I found a job in the OKC area, married my college sweetheart, and settled down in a new home. Time passed and I got the itch to go back to school for a graduate degree. I shopped around and seriously considered going to Central State University because it would be so convenient. I had to stop myself though and ask why I would want to go to a school with such a geographically ambiguous name? What kind of reputation would it carry if I moved out of state?
It sounded like the "Midvale College" made famous in so many Walt Disney films. I decided to go to a different university a half-hour's drive to the south where I pursued a master's degree and eventually a Ph.D.
Doctoral work can be highly competitive. I wondered if I could possibly measure up to others in the program who had already been awarded scholarships or prestigious fellowships. Mercifully, I soon realized that most of the other doctoral students were as insecure and flawed as I was. Still, I truly came to admire some students. A couple of them were graduates from UCO. I began then to look at UCO in a different light. As a human resources manager at the time, I also discovered that UCO graduates had earned a great reputation among area employers.
UCO is not like the two larger state universities. There, undergraduate courses can have several hundred students or be led by inexperienced graduate assistants. Here, accomplished professionals with excellent academic credentials teach to relatively small classes. That's an incredible success. It should be treasured and trumpeted. UCO has come a long way since its name was changed. Maybe, instead of changing its identity, it became better connected with its own culture and sense of mission. And the wider community is also beginning to recognize that UCO is a nice place in which to work and learn.
