David L. Boren Boulevard

David L. Boren Boulevard. . This boulevard was named in honor of David L. Boren, the 13th President of the University of Oklahoma by the University of Oklahoma Board of Regents to mark the 10th anniversary of his presidency. , Prior to becoming President of the University of Oklahoma, Boren served as Governor of Oklahoma and as U. S. Senator. He is the first person in state history to have served the state in all three positions. He spent nearly three decades in elective politics, including 8 years in the state legislature. From Oklahoma to Washington, Boren carried a commitment to reform, including campaign finance reform, lobbying reform, open meetings laws, and increased competitive bidding on public projects. When Boren left the U.S. Senate in 1994 to become President of OU, he had an approval rating of 91 percent after being reelected with 83 percent of the vote in 1990, the highest percentage in the nation in a U.S. Senate contest in that election year. , Boren grew up in Seminole, Oklahoma where he was a high school debater. He graduated from Yale University in 1963 in the top 1% of his class. He was selected as a Rhodes Scholar and earned a master's degree in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University, England in 1965. He received a law degree from the University of Oklahoma College of Law in 1968 where he received the Bledsoe Prize as the outstanding graduate by a vote of the faculty. , At OU Boren created many new major programs including the establishment of the Honors College, a new freshmen writing program, an interdisciplinary religious studies program and new programs in international studies. The number of new facilities built on the campus during the Boren years matched the explosion in new programs. Major new garden areas were also created on OU'S campuses under the leadership of First Lady Molly Shi Boren. , With the help of a $10 million gift from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, Boren led the effort to purchase the former BP-Amoco Research Center and grounds to serve as home of OU-Tulsa. Prior to the establishment of the Schusterman Campus, OU programs in Tulsa had been scattered in a wide variety of locations across the city. Under his leadership, OU began to better serve the community by providing a strong, centralized identity in Tulsa. , In the first 10 years of Boren's presidency, endowed professorships more than quadrupled and over $1 billion in private gifts were donated to the University. Above all, the Boren years are marked by President Boren's emphasis on putting students first.