Party Like It’s 1999: First ever OSU-Tulsa alumni party celebrates 25 years of impact

Friday, December 20, 2024

Media Contact: Aaron Campbell | OSU-Tulsa Communications Coordinator | 918-594-8046 | aaron.ross.campbell@okstate.edu

Booyah! OSU-Tulsa’s first ever alumni party paid homage to the campus’ 1999 debut with a uniquely 90’s theme that encouraged partygoers to come and kick it with their old classmates, professors and staff members.

Dozens of alumni — and guests — of all ages and backgrounds came to enjoy the reunion, see old professors and classmates, grab some food and take in the old and the new on campus with a variety of self-guided activities, like trivia and scavenger hunts.

“I thought ‘why not,’” said Belinda Wildcat, class of 2020 sociology graduate, who currently works as a paralegal for a local defense attorney. “I graduated from here, so I wanted to come check things out.”

Wildcat, like many other OSU-Tulsa graduates, was drawn to the campus because of its convenience for local working professionals.

“I just thought ‘this is perfect.’ I live in Tulsa, in midtown, and I thought this would be the perfect place for me,” she said.

Class of 2015 Management of Information Systems graduate Hannah Sutton travelled the furthest for the party, coming up from Dallas, Texas.

“I saw the invitation and I thought, ‘you know what, I want to come back,’” she said.

Her brother Alex also graduated from OSU-Tulsa in 2018, got a job at Exxon and now works in finance at ONE Gas downtown. For her and Alex both, who worked throughout their studies, OSU-Tulsa just made sense.

“It’s definitely a super convenient option when you’re trying to work and go to school,” Alex Sutton said. “That’s the biggest thing. It really helped me manage a work-life balance, and I still got all the perks as far as being able to go the career fair, finding a job at Exxon – it’s just definitely worth it.”

For Hannah, a senior engineer at USAA, the quality of learning at OSU-Tulsa has stuck with her and helped her find career success.

“My professors here would give us real world experience, because they’re coming from the workforce,” she said. “When I would take classes elsewhere it was like ‘hey, we’ll make a program to make a dog run a race,’ versus here, I had a professor who was like ‘hey, I was in the oil field and I had to solve this mathematically, now I want you all to solve it.’”

Since graduating, Hannah Sutton has made many trips to OSU Stillwater for football games, but this was her first time back on the OSU-Tulsa campus.

“The campus is a lot brighter and orange now,” she said.

She and many other partygoers reacted positively to the new Student Union space in North Hall, completed in 2020, along with the adjacent Pete’s Pop-Up Kitchen where the food was served.

Campus may have changed, but the memories and connections she’s made will last a lifetime.

“I don’t miss tests,” Hannah Sutton joked. “But I do miss the study groups. I had the same study partners junior and senior year, and we’d go to McNellie’s sometimes afterwards and get fries and talk about the classes. I still keep in contact with most of them, so I actually saw one recently. She lives in LA, but we went to TCC and OSU-Tulsa together and I saw her like last month. So, for me, it’s all about the connections.”

 

To learn more about OSU-Tulsa’s history and impact through the years, check out the special anniversary feature in STATE Magazine.