ARLINGTON, Va. — A walk through the Crystal City Shops and across 23rd Street South would give a shopper access to the usual mall fare — restaurants, clothing, electronics and the like.
It also would allow someone to stop in at one of OU’s 25 Advanced Programs campuses, sign up for a class and then join the Washington, D.C., OU alumni club at Mackey’s Public House for a football or basketball game.
The two OU-connected locations are less than 200 feet apart, common enough for Norman, but not so much for a suburb of Washington, D.C.
A CAPITAL CAMPUS
“OU’s campus here serves about 180 students, approximately 75 percent of whom are in the military,” said Steve Watson, site director for OU’s Advanced Programs in Washington, D.C.
Watson said OU markets the campus to the military installations near Washington, D.C., including the Pentagon.
“A lot of people in the area know that we’re here, especially on the military instillations,” he said.
Those students can receive instruction at OU’s location in the mall in pursuit of one of two master’s degrees — communications or international relations, he said. Professors fly in from the Norman campus to teach the week-long classes that meet for three hours a night Monday through Friday and for eight hours a day Saturday and Sunday. In addition to the in-class time, students also must complete pre- and post-session projects to earn three credit hours for each class, Watson said.
This class structure allows students to earn a master’s degree in a calendar year, although most students take 18 months, he said.
The Arlington campus also will help people complete bachelor’s degrees through OU’s College of Liberal Studies, but that instruction takes place online, Watson said.
OU students in Washington receive many of the same benefits Norman students do, including access to the OU library system and even student rates for football and basketball tickets. Graduates can walk in Norman’s graduation ceremony as well, Watson said.
“I always try to encourage the students to go back to main campus any opportunity,” he said. “Whether they take a course, or if they’re able to attend the graduation ceremony or, one day, just go and see the school that they’re graduating from.”
OU’s Advanced Programs are completely self-sufficient and receive no money from the state of Oklahoma, said Don Skinner, director of finance and administration for Advanced Programs.
The programs began in 1964 and started offering classes in Washington shortly afterward, Watson said.
Classes in Washington run $315 per credit hour, which is $55 more per hour than Advanced Programs classes in Oklahoma cost, he said. The cost of tuition required for an OU master’s degree at the Washington campus is about $10,000, Watson said. However, students in the military can get a large part of that tuition paid for by the federal government, and, since the classes are live and not online, students can also receive a housing allowance from the military, Watson said.
A CAPITAL CONNECTION
When class lets out in the mall, students can cross the street to watch a nighttime tip- or kickoff with the Washington, D.C., Area Sooners, D.C. Sooners for short.
“We’ve made it such a community feel at the watch parties that people come, and they feel they’re attending a game in Norman,” said club president Erin Wiley. “You’ve got a bar full of Sooner fans who live, breathe and die OU.”
Wiley said the watch parties began in the 1970s or 1980s, and the club has more than 1,100 people on its e-mail list. Watson said more than 2,000 people in the Washington, D.C., area are OU alumni.
Wiley said attendance varies based on OU’s opponent and the Sooners’ season record.
“You get to the first [football] game of the year, we pack the bar,” she said. “For OU-Texas, there’s standing room only.”
The watch parties’ proximity to OU’s Washington campus is “a great coincidence,” Wiley said. The club used to meet at a different sports bar, but was crowded out by other alumni clubs. Only after the switch did the D.C. Sooners discover their proximity to the campus.
The club is expanding beyond watch parties to offer a “reverse scholarship,” Wiley said. In contrast to scholarships from the OU alumni groups that give money to students from an area to go to OU, the D.C. Sooners’ scholarship will give $1,000 to a current OU student who is interning in the capital during the summer.
“We felt like $1,000 towards out-of state-tuition is good, but $1,000 to a student who is coming to spend a summer in D.C. can really make or break their experience,” she said.
In addition to the scholarship, the D.C. Sooners will also host a mixer with area alumni and any interested OU students in Washington for the summer.
“D.C. is all about who you know,” Wiley said. “So we figured if we can introduce them to some alumni, everyone is incredibly willing to help incoming students, so we thought it would be a nice way to kick off their summer experience.”
OU D.C.:
For more information about OU's Washington, D.C., campus, visit goou.edu/NorthAmerica/washington.html or call Watson at 703-418-4800.
For more information about OU's Advanced Programs, call 405-325-2250.
For more information about the Washington, D.C., Area Scholars, visit dcsooners.com
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matthewmurrayday 2 years, 2 months ago
WAY TO GO! Very nice!
I couldn't do that (study in the Beltway area) unless I was invited to do so. Kudos.