page_title: Oral Roberts University
section_title: Early history: 1965-1989
hierarchical_section_title: Oral Roberts University / History / Early history: 1965-1989
caption_attribution_description: Photograph of the Praying Hands bronze sculpture and the Avenue of Flags at the main entrance to Oral Roberts Universityen in Tulsaen, Oklahomaen.
context_page_description: Oral Roberts University is a private evangelical liberal arts university in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Founded in 1963, the university is named after its founder, evangelist Oral Roberts, and accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. The university enrolls approximately 4,000 students.
  Sitting on a 263-acre campus, ORU offers over 60 undergraduate degree programs along with a number of masters and doctoral degrees. ORU is classified among "Baccalaureate Colleges: Diverse Fields".
context_section_description: Ground was officially broken for Oral Roberts' university in 1962 in the southern part of the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The university received its charter the following year from the State of Oklahoma and Oral Roberts University officially opened in 1965 with an enrollment of 300 students and with seven major completed buildings. The university was founded by Oral Roberts "as a result of the evangelist Oral Roberts' obeying God’s mandate to build a university on God’s authority and the Holy Spirit. God’s commission to Oral Roberts was to 'Raise up your students to hear My voice, to go where My light is dim, where My voice is heard small, and My healing power is not known, even to the uttermost bounds of the earth. Their work will exceed yours, and in this I am well pleased'." Oral Roberts placed special importance on the Prayer Tower, even though the concept of a building specifically dedicated to prayer located at the center of the campus caused some considerable tension, as some academic leaders were afraid the school would be unable to receive accreditation with such a building. However, the tower, designed by architect Frank Wallace, was completed in 1967 at a cost of two million dollars, a further source of contention. After the tower's completion, Roberts called for a three-day period of prayer and fasting. At the university's dedication ceremony in 1967, the evangelist Billy Graham was the keynote speaker.
  The first partial graduation took place in 1968 and the first full graduation in 1969. In 1971, Oral Roberts University was accredited by the North Central Association.
  The school was accredited in 1971 by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. It is also accredited by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada.
  During the first decade of the school's existence many of the campus' iconic structures were completed, such as the Howard Auditorium, the Graduate Center, the Mabee Center, and Christ's Chapel among others.
  The university built the City of Faith Medical and Research Center hospital, which opened in 1981, and started the Oral Roberts University School of Medicine in 1978, but severe financial difficulties with both of these institutions led to their closure in 1989.
  The O. W. Coburn School of Law opened in 1979. In 1986 the university "shut down its ailing law school and sent its library to Pat Robertson's Bible-based college in Virginia", which subsequently founded the Regent University School of Law.
caption: Main entrance to campus and The Billy Joe Daugherty Circle
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