“Robert Henry has displayed his considerable talents in a number of arenas, including the state legislature, the 
attorney general’s office, the federal bench, the classroom, and OCU’s law school among them. I’ve been asked to say a few things about a small number of his accomplishments as OCU’s President, and I am delighted to do so.
About 20 years ago, in an address to his Alumni Council, James Wright, the President of Dartmouth College, said that former Oklahoma Governor Alfalfa Bill Murray had described history as “just one ***-damned thing after another.” This might be accurate, but the sources with which I’m familiar have Murray saying this about the governorship, and in slightly different language. It was, he said, “one damn thing after another.”
I’ve not heard President Henry say this about his time at OCU’s helm, but presiding over a university is an arduous adventure, with each day a festival of surprises. Hats off to anyone who survives this relatively intact. President Henry surely did this, even with the occasional medical procedure thrown in. And he will certainly leave us much better off than when he came to us.
Many of the President’s most important achievements came in the area of stewarding resources. I served on the Academic Task Force, which was part of our prioritization effort to create a more strategic allocation of resources. This involved extensive program review and resulted in, among other things, a rethinking of admissions and recruiting strategies. The work was difficult, and not without controversy, but I think it had to be done, and while President Henry was, by design, hands-off in the process, his leadership in initiating it was obviously crucial. Of at least equal importance was the University debt-restructuring that occurred under his leadership, a restructuring that was essential to the University’s continued vitality. Put another way, the importance of this debt-restructuring was directly proportional to how boring it sounds. President Henry also sustained our long-running relationship with the Oklahoma United Methodist Conference and moved investments to the Oklahoma United Methodist Foundation.
Other achievements of note include securing the match for the Priddy grant, resulting in the permanent establishment of our Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. Accreditation bodies affirmed the quality of our academic programs and our University leadership. As a professor (now emeritus) in the School of Law, I have experienced daily our magnificent downtown building, the acquisition of which was an immensely complex project achieved under President Henry’s aegis.
There is much else of course, including new academic ventures like the Doctor of Psychology and the Physician Assistant program. But the President’s greatest achievement, perhaps, was doing his best (and that’s awfully, awfully good), every day, to position us to better serve future student generations and the many communities and constituents to whom we feel bound.”
By Art LeFrancois, law professor emeritus
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