The People’s Building

By Terry Tush

Melanie Schilt is one of many proud Oklahoma State University graduates involved with the NYC Cowboys alumni chapter. So there’s no doubt where the Adair, Okla., native was going to be in February when Ken Eastman, dean of the Spears School of Business, spoke to the New York City area alumni in Manhattan.

Eastman, in his third year as dean, enjoys sharing his vision for Spears Business, especially with alumni who live too far from Stillwater to make frequent trips back to the OSU campus. He often speaks about the changes in the core curriculum that faculty members will begin implementing this fall. Eastman also proudly updates alumni on the progress of the new Business Building.

After all, it will be the first time in years OSU business students will have a “home away from home,” something the college outgrew many years ago. The new 147,450-square-foot building will nearly double today’s available space for students, faculty and staff.

Schilt, who hasn’t been back to the OSU campus in three years, was captivated when Eastman and Diane Crane, OSU Foundation senior director of development, shared details about the new building. She was surprised to learn that the $74 million project is scheduled for completion without a lead donor.

“I said, ‘Are you thinking that I can do the naming rights? Because if you are, I think you’re woefully misunderstanding.’ So we had a laugh about that,” Schilt says.

Schilt went online to the OSU Foundation’s website the next day and made a donation to the new building at osugiving.com/businessbuilding.

It’s because of Schilt and more than 650 other households — and another 80 corporations, foundations and other organizations — that the state-of-the-art Business Building will open in 2018.

More than $36 million in private donations is making the longtime dream of a new Business Building into reality.

“I thought, I want to be a part of this. It’s my home too,” says Schilt, who earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from OSU. “As an alumna, I don’t want not to be a part of helping make this new building possible.”

Those same words could have been spoken by Chris Campbell, Jasmine Colorado, Claude “Arthur” Rickets and Brady Sidwell, a few of the other donors whose gifts are helping make up the entire funding picture for the iconic building that will assist in transforming how OSU business students are taught.

New building projects throughout the country are typically funded with a relatively small number of very large gifts, usually beginning with a lead gift that is large enough to give naming rights for the new building to that donor. And a donor may yet decide to make such a gift to OSU to name the new Business Building, as its signature design takes form in the shadow of Boone Pickens Stadium and a short stroll down Legacy Walk from Edmon Low Library.

But the broad support from a large number of supporters has made the new building possible. Gifts as low as $1 and from donors as young as 21 have brought the new building into reality.

Major gift donations that name classrooms, team rooms, centers and other locations throughout the building tell the story of the impact of gifts of $50,000 and above. Even some of those namings are the result of group gifts, in which likeminded alumni combined funds to name a space, often to honor a former faculty member. 

This article highlights the contributions and impact made by 775 donors who will have not a single space named for them, but who will know that in every brick, in every hidden beam of steel and in every pane of glass is writ their contribution.

The four-story building (plus a basement) is possible only because longtime OSU alumni like Rickets (1961, management) and recent graduates like Colorado (2016, entrepreneurship/marketing) — and many others — have given to make it possible.

“It’s definitely great to see that a large number of Oklahoma State business school alumni have given to make the building become a reality, even though not all of us have given a large amount of money,” Rickets says. “The key to me is being consistent in my giving and seeing the impact it makes over the years.

“When I saw blueprints for the building, when I was celebrating my 50th anniversary of graduating in 2011, I thought how wonderful that facility will be and what a difference it’s going to make for future OSU business students,” the 77-year-old says.

“Oklahoma State’s business school is really gaining a great reputation nationally in recent years, and with the opening of the new Business Building it’s really going to increase. I’d like to see Oklahoma State become one of the best business schools in the United States, and this is my small part in helping to make that happen.”

Colorado was on the receiving end when a current OSU student dialed her telephone number during the Cowboy Callers program in March. “I’m sure whoever called and asked me for money thought it was strange that I didn’t hang up on him since I was so young,” she says.

But the 23-year-old remembers the assistance she received as a student. “I received a few scholarships while I was at the Spears School and that enabled me to go on a couple of study-abroad programs – Dr. [Andy] Urich’s Chicago trip and then I went to Barcelona, Spain, one spring break. The scholarships helped me to get to those places, so I wanted to help somebody else, kinda pay it forward,” says Colorado, who is a technical sales representative for Hewlett Packard in Plano, Texas.

Colorado’s perspective on the importance of paying it forward is a good one for everyone to remember, regardless of age.

“I would say that it’s very important to give back and try to enable the rest of our generation to complete school. It doesn’t have to be a large amount, so anything will help,” she says.

While 90 percent of donations come from alumni of Spears Business like Rickets and Colorado, former students from virtually all academic areas at OSU have made gifts. Building donations have come from 677 alumni households, including alumni from 60 different majors and from locations throughout the United States and abroad.

Brady Sidwell is among the other 10 percent. The OSU agricultural economics degree graduate (2004) was asked to be a part of the funding committee for the Dr. B. Curtis Hamm Office of the School of Marketing and International Business, named in honor of the late OSU marketing professor. He not only made his own donation but encouraged others to recognize Hamm.

“He was a mentor but he was also a close personal friend. He was just that grandfatherly figure to me,” says Sidwell, who sought Hamm’s advice about international travel and international business as a student and remained in close contact with him after graduating, despite living in Asia for 10 years.

The group raised the money to name the School of Marketing and International Business office on the fourth floor after Hamm and funded the Dr. B. Curtis Hamm Classroom on the second floor.

“I think it goes to show what the people who were influenced by him think of him,” Sidwell says. “I understand the influence and support that come from Bob and the others whose names are on rooms and centers. Otherwise, a room is just a room or a building is just a building.”

“I think his legacy will kind of live on through this.”

Chris Campbell, senior associate vice president of information strategy with the OSU Foundation, has been involved with helping transform the Stillwater campus for 13 years, first as a fundraiser for OSU Athletics and then at the business school. A 2002 OSU graduate with a bachelor’s degree in management information systems, he knows the impact a building can have on a campus.

“When I started back here in the Foundation with Athletics in 2004. … I remember walking up to the south side of Boone Pickens Stadium after it had been completed and I really stopped in my tracks, and said, ‘This is what a football stadium is supposed to look like, right?’ I drive by the new Business Building every day driving into work, so it won’t be as dramatic as that type of realization but that’s what a Business Building is supposed to look like,” he says.

“I know that President Hargis really wanted a wow factor and when you walk by that thing you go, ‘Okay, that’s impressive.’ Getting the attention of a 16-, 17- or 18-year-old kid is going to require that wow factor, and the new building definitely does that,” says Campbell, who in August will mark 10 years of continuous monthly support since his first gift to the building campaign.

Schilt agrees that more than 800 donors who are helping to make the Business Building a reality will stand tall and proud in the near future.

“I think we saw it after the first Boone Pickens gift [of $165 million in 2006],” she says. “Everyone pitched in because they wanted to be a part of that. Even though my gift was much smaller than some others, I want to be a part of this. At some point in looking at the building, we all know that our gift is helping to make this happen, even if it is only for that one little brick or that glass of window pane. The OSU family is very much wanting to be a part of this at whatever level each of us can be.”