Van Vleet Oval

Van Vleet Oval. . This part of the campus is named in honor of Albert Heald Van Vleet (1861-1925). Born in Iowa and raised and educated in Nebraska and Wisconsin, he earned his PhD at the University of Leipzig in 1897 and then undertook an additional year of study at the Johns Hopkins University. He came to this campus – hired by President David Ross Boyd at an annual salary of $1200 – in the fall of 1898. The university had been in existence for only six years when he arrived, and he was the first holder of a doctorate to join the faculty. , Albert H. Van Vleet was the father of the study of the natural sciences here. At this university the disciplines of botany, zoology, physiology, anatomy, medicine and geology can all trace their origins to his dedicated and multi-faceted instruction. Seven months after arriving in Norman, he led in the establishment of the Territorial natural history and geological survey and became its director. It was the forerunner of the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. , Albert Heald Van Vleet collected specimens of Oklahoma flora and fauna and surveyed the Territory's topography by criss-crossing the land during the summers in a covered wagon. He was a devoted teacher and a distinguished scientist, particularly in the field of botany. In 1909 he was appointed the first dean of the Graduate School, a position he held until his death. , He was a man of extraordinary gentleness, generosity, and good humor. One of his students, later a colleague, recalled that “in the classroom and in the laboratory, he made lasting friendships – his most lasting friendships.” It was his enormous capacity for friendship the many others remembered when they thought of him. One of those companions was Vernon L. Parrington, for whom the north oval of the university is named. "There was no smallness or meanness in him.” said Parrington. “His wit was as genial at the end of a hard day as at the beginning … The zest of a boy was in him, and the self control of a man. He loved life and got much from it, but never ungenerously, never grudging others.”