George Lynn Cross Hall

George Lynn Cross Hall. . This structure was completed on May 13, 1965 to house the growing Department of Botany and Microbiology. The department had its beginnings as the School of Biology, which was founded by the University of Oklahoma's first President David Ross Boyd. He brought the first professor of botany and biology to the university, Dr. Albert H. Van Vleet in 1898. As the Department of Botany was formed in 1906, Dr. Van Vleet became the chair as well as the dean of the Graduate College, which was formed in 1909. He remained at the university until his death in 1925. , However, the person who held the greatest impact to the Department of Botany and Microbiology was Dr. George Lynn Cross, who served as the seventh president of the University of Oklahoma from 1944 until 1968. In 1934, Dr. Cross joined the faculty as an assistant professor of Botany and head of the department from 1938 to 1942. Dr. Cross received his BA from South Dakota State University in 1926, his MS, in 1927, and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1929. , President Cross and his wife and partner, Cleo Cross, had a profound and lasting impact on this institution. When he became president, the university had 3.834 students and when he retired in 1968, there were more than 18,000. When he became president, the university had awarded only 74 doctoral degrees in its entire history, and when he retired it was awarding 150 each year. In many ways he was the architect of its transition from a college to a great comprehensive university. , He led the university to the peaceful acceptance of racial desegregation. He withstood political pressures in order to defend academic freedom and intellectual integrity. His example led many of those students to invest their lives in causes greater than themselves, and it was for these gifts that he gave the greater university family that the building was dedicated to Dr. George Lynn Cross in May of 1995. , The Department of Botany and Microbiology has made several achievements through the years with expertise in the biology of anaerobic microbes and in the flora of the Southwest. As well as prominent research into the ecology of the tall grass prairie with collections of regional flora in the Bebb Herbarium, located in George Lynn Cross Hall.