Crimson Quarterly summer 2018 issue

crimson QUA RT E R LY Summer 2018

Volume 3, Issue 2

Accomplished corporate executive takes the reins • Page 6

Gallogly’s Turn

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Children like Henry who are battling serious illness were on hand for Soonerthon’s record year.

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STORY BY JESSE POUND • @JESSERPOUND

C

ampus Activities Council Soonerthon reached a major milestone this year as it raised more than $1 million for the Children’s Miracle Network.

This year’s event improved on the 2017 result by nearly $200,000, a success Soonerthon chair Maxi Anderson attributed in part to making the event more cause-connected and focused on the kids battling illness.

Over 1800 attendees joined the Soonerthon executive team on March 3 in the Sarkeys Fitness Center, with more than 700

participants staying for the whole 12 hours.

“It still hasn’t really hit me yet,” said Anderson, an entrepreneurship and marketing senior.

Previously known as Dance Marathon, Soonerthon has seen rapid growth in recent years. It raised $30,000 in 2010, $196,000 in 2013 and $560,000 in 2015, according to the event’s website.

The money goes to Children’s Hospital foundation in Oklahoma City, according to the group’s website, and the many children who have

struggled with illness and their families attend the event as well.

“It’s the one day of the year where some of our kids get to be a kid,” Anderson said.

One big part of Soonerthon this year was giving attendees a chance to make a strand of Beads of Courage.

Children battling serious illness often make strands of beads to mark each new treatment or milestone of their journey. Anderson said the attendees were able to gain a new perspective by stringing just a few of the beads together and

comparing it to the strands of kids, some of which were longer than the kids themselves.

This was the pinnacle of a passion Anderson has had ever since she came to campus five years ago. She said this year, as chair, was her favorite memory of Soonerthon.

“Just seeing all the different pieces come together … nothing beats that,” Anderson said.

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CONTENTS Summer 2018 Volume 3, Issue 2

6 A New Era James Gallogly brings a vast amount of business experience to the presidency.

EDITORS Jesse Pound

McKenzie Lane

Gabrielle Velasco

Editor-in-chief

Copy Editor

Design Editor

CONTRIBUTORS Zheng Qu: photographer Paxson Haws: photographer Megan Ross: photographer

Nick Hazelrigg: writer Abby Bitterman: writer

Cover image by Megan Ross

20 Lingering questions The selection of the new president has left some faculty members uneasy.

22 CQ Q&A Guy Patton explains what comes next for the proposed basketball arena north of campus.

23 Ebbs and Flows The biggest stories you may have missed.

4

16

The Oklahoma teacher walkout has brought education funding to the national scene.

Photo by Paxson Haws

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Major donor, former business executive chosen as next OU president STORY BY JESSE POUND • @JESSERPOUND

Before James L. Gallogly was officially introduced as the 14th President of the University of Oklahoma on March 26, he had what amounted to a dress rehearsal earlier that morning. After shaking hands and greeting selected OU donors, regents, administrators, students and others, Gallogly gave a test run of the speech he would soon give to hundreds of people and have broadcast out to the world.

Once Clay Bennett, the chair of the OU Board of Regents, had introduced him, Gallogly took his turn at the microphone and hit all the major points he would make in the fully public speech about an hour later.

In the University Club, however, with a smaller room providing a more intimate setting and no Pride of Oklahoma to punctuate the event with fight songs, Gallogly’s quiet intensity was allowed to shine through.

Sixty-five years old with closely cropped white hair, Gallogly spoke slowly and deliberately, taking care to rotate his glance from one person to another, making eye contact as he went. The speech was light on details but high on aggressive optimism.

“We are collectively on a mission, an absolute mission of greatness. Now, some of the people who represent us here in the state, who represent us in Washington would say ‘Jim, but there’s budget issues.

And you have to be realistic in expectations,’” Gallogly said. “I’ll tell you, one of my bad traits is I am never realistic in expectations, and you will see that immediately. I will ask you so much of yourself. More than you can imagine, and I will give you that back, more than you can imagine.”

‘There’s always room at the top’ 6

Photo by Megan Ross

continued on page 11

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A six-month search for OU’s new president, conducted mostly in secret, ended with Gallogly, a major university donor and businessman, getting the job as soon as students returned from spring break.

“There was very quickly a clear choice,” Bennett would say later that day. “A person of remarkable skill, unmatched track record of success, energy, sophistication in terms of finding answers to problems, of inspiring people to greatness, of building teams, of moving organizations to the next level.”

Gallogly will replace an incredibly popular president in David Boren, and the secretive nature of the search process certainly made parts of campus uneasy. As he begins his role, however, he has his eyes set upward.

“There’s always room at the top,” Gallogly said.

“So Janet and I are coming back because there’s room at the top. There is the ability for this university to be absolutely at the pinnacle of higher education.”

James Gallogly is an accomplished man, but one noticeable thing about his resume, a thing that cannot be ignored given his new job, is a complete lack of experience in higher education.

Gallogy’s major professional accomplishments have come as a corporate executive, mainly for energy giant ConocoPhillips and petrochemical firm LyondellBasell, the latter of which he helped lead out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

If he harbors any doubts about his ability to transition into a very different field, he showed no signs of it at a press conference after his introduction, pointing to his juris doctorate degree from OU and his declination of offers to teach at an unspecified law school as proof of his academic credentials. He also said the management experience he gained in the worlds of energy and petrochemicals will translate to higher education.

“Business and academia are all about people

at the end of the day. It’s teaching, it’s working together, and so I’m not worried about that at all,” Gallogly said. “I grew up in a teaching family. So I started my life there, and I’m going to finish my life there.”

He spent a long time on the LyondellBasell turnaround during his introduction speech. That company rebounded dramatically under his leadership, making him a very wealthy man in the process. Gallogly earned more than $43 million in total compensation from 2012-2014, according to the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“I said to them, ‘I did not come to help you get out of bankruptcy. I came to help you become the greatest petrochemical company in the world.’

And they did it,” Gallogly recalled during his introduction. “In a few short years the stock price went from $17 to $115. We exited Chapter 11 quicker than any other company. We became investment grade

quicker than any other company … It is that level of energy that I will bring here and work with you to achieve what I just talked about a moment ago.”

That optimistic outlook is a longstanding trait of Gallogly’s, not a new act he tried out for the OU crowd.

In a 2013 interview with consulting firm McKinsey & Company, Gallogly recalled people advising him not to make promises he couldn’t keep as he took over LyondellBasell, but he put forth that positive vision anyway.

LyondellBasell entered bankruptcy in January of 2009 with $24 billion in debt and emerged 15 months later with $7.2 billion in debt, according to a 2010 article from MarketWatch. It isn’t clear how much credit Gallogly deserves for that, though.

As is typical in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy process, a large chunk of that debt was converted into equity in the reformed company – LyondellBasell didn’t pay its creditors back in those 15 months because of major of revenue jumps, but continued on page 12

“There was very quickly a clear choice.”

CLAY BENNETT, BOARD OF REGENTS CHAIR

Buttons were passed out at Gallogly’s introduction.

Photo by Jesse Pound.

11

instead saw its creditors willing to bet on its future with an ownership stake.

New management is often brought in during this process to give creditors confidence the company will make that decision worth it, said Adam Kolasinski, an associate professor of finance at Texas A&M University and the holder of the James W. Ashton Republic Bank Professorship in Finance.

The time frame that Gallogly called a record is actually not abnormal, according to Kolasinski.

“That seems maybe a little shorter than average, but a year-and-a-half to two years is pretty typical,” Kolasinski said.

Of course, not everyone shared in the good fortune of the LyondellBasell turnaround. The company was formed by a 2007 merger between Lyondell and Basell that was heavily financed by debt. When the company did not make the adjustments to achieve the efficiencies that the merger promised by the time it hit a rough cycle, it quickly found itself unable to pay its creditors, bringing on a bankruptcy filing and new management.

Total head count at the company decreased by 20 percent between 2008, the year before Gallogly

OU President David Boren (right) announced his retirement from the position last September.

Boren fought publicly for more state funding for education in recent years.

Photo by Paxson Haws.

12

arrived, and 2013, according to McKinsey. Even the roles at LyondellBasell that were not eliminated saw significant turnover.

Gallogly told McKinsey that he shook up most of the firm’s senior leadership and also oversaw a “plantfloor revolution,” changing almost every plant manager, usually from within.

“Any company that’s in Chapter 11 is going to have to make big layoffs, big reductions, painful plant closures,” Kolasinski said.

“That’s the nature of the game.”

Two things that are clear, however, is that Gallogly was successful, and that success sometimes came with hard choices about costs and personnel (the 2002 ConocoPhillips merger, which Gallogly was a part of and was referenced in his introduction speech, also involved layoffs).

“You have to make some tough decisions to keep the firm running … in

general terms, being able to know which costs to cut to keep the firm running as a viable going concern is not an easy thing to do,” Kolasinski said.

For all the pomp and circumstances surrounding Gallogly’s announcement, the loudest cheers were reserved for his predecessor, Boren, who sat in front of the stage as Gallogly was introduced to the crowd jammed into a ballroom continued on page 15

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named after Boren’s wife Molly Shi. “David Boren has done a fabulous job building a foundation. The first thing you do when you build some kind of wonderful structure is you build a great foundation, and David has done that. And I plan to work with his team to take to a higher level,” Gallogly said.

Of course, a foundation can only tell you so much about what the resulting structure will look like. Fighting for the future of OU has been a regular topic of Boren’s in recent years, mainly as it relates to state funding cuts for the school.

“I’m not going to be sitting here complaining about the finances,” Gallogly continued. “I’m going to be encouraging people to do more than they’ve ever thought possible. I’ve been involved with those kind of things more than once, and people were inspired to do amazing things.”

OU is not bankrupt, but it certainly has been in a budget crunch in recent years. The university has seen two rounds of incentivized early retirements as the school tried to cut costs without resorting to layoffs, and funding cuts from a cash-strapped state government are a constant concern.

While he did not say that he thought the university needs major cost cutting, Gallogly drew a comparison between his success in the corporate world and his new role.

“I know that the state is talking a lot about budgets, but I’ve had a lot of success working with budget challenges in the past and finding a way to get everybody to do things they never thought they were capable of before,” Gallogly said.

“I’m going to be working with our governor and others to make sure that we’re absolutely perfect in our execution, because we’re going to be good stewards of the money of the people of Oklahoma.”

JAMES GALLOGLY, OU PRESIDENT-DESIGNATE

“We’re going to do that at OU as well.”

When asked what he would like OU faculty and staff who were nervous about what he will do in the role to know, he said he planned to listen to their concerns and work with them.

“What I can ask of the faculty is that they give me a chance. That’s all that I can ask,” Gallogly said. “I have been around a lot of different challenging circumstances, and sometimes when I was the CEO coming into a very challenged situation, not everybody buys in at the beginning. So all I ask for is let’s talk, let me listen, let’s see if we can come to a mutual solution, and then let’s go do something incredible together.”

Boren’s most visible role in state politics in recent years has been the push he helped lead, as a private citizen, for a new statewide penny-sales tax that would go to fund education in the state. That proposal, State Question 779, failed at the ballot box in 2016, and Boren

announced his retirement less than a year later.

Gallogly, on the other hand, appears to have no interest in picking up that particular torch.

“We do have budget issues in the state of Oklahoma,” Gallogly said. “I’m going to be working with our governor and others to make sure that we’re absolutely perfect in our execution because we’re going to be good stewards of the money of the people of Oklahoma.”

If there was a checklist of things James Gallogly needed to say and do on his first day as the president-designate, it appears he did them all.

He stepped up to make his speech as The Pride of Oklahoma played “Boomer Sooner.” He talked about the special place OU had in his life from when he was a law student in Norman. He praised Boren repeatedly, cracked a joke about how he hated losing football games and borrowed a cap from a RUF/NEK, donning

the weathered hat and giving a horns down sign.

“Whoever survived this process had to have one thing for sure,” Bennett said. “They had to love OU, and they had to love Oklahoma.”

Gallogly, with his name on the engineering college and his easy embrace of school spirit, certainly checked that box.

President Gallogly will be judged differently than candidate Gallogly, however, and he will ultimately be remembered for how he shapes the university’s future.

After his first speech in the University Club, the trial run, was over, and nobody was quite sure what to do next, Gallogly leaned back over to the microphone and dryly joked, “if you give me this podium any longer, I’m going to start giving work assignments.”

Come July 1, the podium – and the presidency – is all his.

15

Fed up, teachers walk out Years of frustration over budget cuts to education boiled over in April, leading to schools across the state closing as teachers walked out and descended upon the State Capitol. The state legislature passed a bill funding pay raises for teachers in late March, but the teachers decided that was not enough to cancel the walk. In many cases, the teachers were supported by their administrators.

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Lingering questions

Photo by Paxson Haws

STORY BY NICK HAZELRIGG • @NICKHAZELRIGG

F

or most faculty members at OU, there’s been only one occupant of the president’s office in Evans Hall during their time at OU — but with the arrival of James Gallogly as the university’s fourteenth president, that is about to change.

While the confetti was still being sweeped off the floor of the Molly Shi Boren Ballroom, OU faculty members already began to express mixed reviews for the former oil executive turned university president.

“How much money do you have to have to buy a university?” asked Professor Emeritus George Henderson, one of OU’s oldest and most distinguished faculty members, after Gallogly’s announcement. Henderson said 20

he believed Gallogly appointment to the presidency was related to large donations he has made to the university over the years.

“Words matter. Action matter more,” Henderson said.

“And I’ll be less than honest if I didn’t say that it’s my responsibility to make sure that he is doing his part, too. And that’s what I do.”

This concern, while voiced by many, was not the largest concern among faculty members. Many were more concerned about Gallogly’s lack of a higher education background. College of International Studies Dean Suzette Grillot, an outspoken opponent of the secretive presidential search process, said she was impressed by

his business background but concerned about his academic background.

“He’s come from a background where ... it seems like to be a fairly meager upbringing to being a very well educated and very successful individual,” Grillot said. “I would say that’s all very positive. On the other hand, I don’t necessarily see a lot of experience with higher education.”

While most faculty members see Gallogly as an unknown quantity, others see his outsider status as a breath of fresh air. OU’s Provost Kyle Harper said he believes Gallogly’s corporate experience will translate well as president.

“People are going to have different strengths and continued on page 21

Gallogly’s Resume -Graduated from OU College of Law, 1977 -29 years with Phillips, Chevron Phillips and ConocoPhillips -CEO of LyondellBasell, 2009-2014 Source: OU Public Affairs

“People are going to have different strengths and different experiences. It’s just a question of how someone uses the experiences they do have to be the most successful they can be.”

Photo by Megan Ross

KYLE HARPER OU PROVOST

different experiences,” Harper said. “It’s just a question of how someone uses the experiences they do have to be the most successful they can be.”

With over 500 OU community members signing a petition, Grillot helped draft asking Gallogly to meet with faculty members, OU’s president-designate has promised his first task will be to listen.

“Before I prejudge anything,

it’s always important to talk.

I want to spend time with people who know this university,” Gallogly said after his announcement. “If you’ve been a smart CEO and you’ve been running a business, the first thing you do is bring your team around you and start talking, and learning, and listening. I’m going to be a student.”

As Gallogly prepares to

become the head of the academic institution he says he loves more than anything, OU’s faculty are looking on in excitement and concern to experience OU’s first presidential transition in nearly 24 years.

“All roads lead to Rome they say,” Henderson said. “Now, which road is he, which is his?

How is he going to get there?

David got us this far, he must take us the rest of the way. But

he darn well better take us the rest of the way with students, faculty, and staff, and the alums. That’s what the university is.”

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INTERVIEW BY ABBY BITTERMAN • @ABBY_BITTERMAN

O

klahoma men’s and women’s basketball might have a new home soon — in a brand new arena that is part of what could be Norman’s new entertainment district.

Last fall, the OU Foundation and its president, Guy Patton, announced a masterplan for a mixed-use development of its land in University North Park, the first phase of which would involve construction of an entertainment district and a new sports arena.

The proposed new district would sit about six miles from OU’s campus, between Rock Creek and Tecumseh Roads.

Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione has expressed high interest in the Sooners being the anchor tenant for the new arena.

Patton says the foundation is excited and hope it becomes 22

OU Foundation President Guy Patton discusses the proposed North Park plans a real project. In this interview, Patton details how the project came about and its next steps.

This transcript was edited for length and clarity.

W

hat are the next steps to getting the plans approved by the city?

“The sort of immediate next steps to know whether we’ve got a project or not really are related to support for public financing of the arena construction project. That is a process that will ultimately have to go to city council vote. We don’t have a time frame for that at this point, but I think, at least from our perspective, we’re working towards late spring/ early summer kind of time frame for taking a proposal for formal council review.”

W

hat are the estimated costs of the project?

“The construction costs of the arena (are) estimated at somewhere between $125 and $140 million. The cost of the larger entertainment district is somewhere between another $150 million and $200 million, all of which, of course, would be privately funded.”

W

hat else do you envision will be in the entertainment district besides the arena?

“Because we don’t have a project, we don’t have specifics tenants that I can talk about — although there are certainly a pretty long list of tenants that we would love to see come. But I think it is safe to say the types of tenants that we expect will populate the entertainment

district. Let me say two other things: within the entertainment district there is commercial, so things like restaurants, bars, music venues, maybe a movie theater … those are the kinds of venues that we imagine being in the commercial part of the entertainment district. Beyond commercial, there will be more than 100,000 square feet of small platform office space. So this would be office space above the commercial venue … Think insurance agents, small accounting or CPA practices, that sort of thing — professional practices. And then the third kind of tenant in the entertainment district is a planned hotel, and I think from are perspective there certainly is at least one hotel and there may be market demand for more than one.

And it is our goal to bring a hotel product to Norman continued on page 23

that is of an even higher quality than say the Embassy Suites, so something different and really unique.”

O

nce things get approved, do you have a time frame of how quickly you would like to get things in this district, including the arena, built?

“To be frank, I’m always nervous about giving time frames because I don’t know the starting point. But assuming that we can get approval and support for this project quickly, it would be our goal for OU men’s and women’s basketball to play their first seasons in the new arena in the 2020 season. That’s very tight — two years to build an arena and an entertainment district is tight. There’ll certainly be components that aren’t open and complete yet, but we’ve tried to align the necessary resources to make this happen such that we can both start as quickly as possible and practical once we get approval and move as quickly as practical once we’ve started.”

H

ow long had the plans for the district and the arena been in the making before being introduced last fall?

“As you probably know, we presented (the plans) to city council for a study session in the middle of September this past year. We had been working with (architecture firm) CallisonRTKL since the spring … and there had been discussions about the development potential for the land north of Rock Creek in University North Park in earnest. So we’ve obviously been talking about developing that land for a long time, really since we owned it in 2006. But in terms of specifically what might go on there, since fall of 2016.”

H

ow did the idea to put a basketball arena come up in the talks of developing that area?

“That’s kind of interesting and a little mystery. … I actually think this is a conversation

that started that didn’t include us, the OU Foundation. It really started with the county. And as the story’s been told to me, the county was considering its needs for a new facility and when discussing new facilities, the potential for building athletic facilities ... (We were) approached as the county was conducting a feasibility study as to our willingness to simply sell land if it was decided that a sports facility — maybe even a basketball arena with no commitments from OU — were to be built would we be willing to sell the land for that purpose.

And the answer to that question was yes ... That was actually a conversation that took place now I think even slightly more than three years ago.

News you may have missed March 9

The OU Board of Regents interviews presidential candidates over two days in Oklahoma City. James Gallogly is announced as the next president on March 26.

March 15

Men’s basketball loses to Rhode Island in Trae Young’s final game.

The women’s team falls to DePaul the next day, closing the book on Sooner basketball for the year.

March 28

Proposal details -Arena would be located next to the Westheimer airport

-The development would draw in 4,000 new residents to Norman

-Arena would

have a capacity of about 10,000, slightly smaller that the LNC Source: Norman City Council

The Oklahoma Senate passed tax increases to fund raises for teachers.

The increased funding for education was below what a teachers union had asked for, however, and the walkout was not canceled.

April 2

The Oklahoma teacher walkout begins, with districts across the state closing as protestors arive at the Capitol in Oklahoma City.

April 3

OU alumna Alex Scott, 24, wins an election for Norman City Council.

Scott will be the youngest council member in city history.

April 7

Mom’s Day events and the Norman Medieval Fair both take place amid frigid temperatures as Oklahoma is hit with freezing rain and ice.

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