The university also has established a $200,000 fund at its library to allow for the purchase of textbooks for large, required general education courses. The textbooks will be placed on reserve at the library for students to use. Boren also said he is encouraging OU faculty members to avoid requiring new editions of textbooks for their courses if earlier editions are adequate.
"We are determined that in spite of the pressure of costs and tuition increases over the past few years, that OU will remain affordable and will keep open the door of opportunity for all qualified students," Boren said.
Boren said that even with the hike, OU ranks in the bottom two among Big 12 Conference schools in tuition and mandatory fees along with Oklahoma State University. Last week, Oklahoma A&M regents approved tuition and fee increases that raised the cost for in-state students attending OSU's Stillwater campus to $5,491.20 for 30 hours, while out-of-state OSU students will pay $14,915.70.
In other action Wednesday, regents accepted a $7.5 million grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, which will be used to establish a new research program focusing on the diseases of aging. The grant follows an earlier $11.2 million grant from the foundation that benefited OU's geriatric medicine programs.
Regents also accepted a $5 million gift for the OU Cancer Institute from the Ardmore-based Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation. OU has raised $27 million in a $50 million fundraising campaign for the institute, Boren said.
Half of the $5 million will be used to support endowed faculty in the area of cancer research, while the other half will go toward construction costs of the cancer institute's new $120 million cancer treatment and clinical research facility.
Also approved by regents were the appointments of Ghislain d'Humieres as the director and chief curator at OU's Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art and Zach P. Messitte as the executive director of OU's International Programs Center.- Associated Press
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