Gift to OU Honors College Establishes Chair to Support Faculty Excellence

NORMAN, OKLA. – A gift to the University of Oklahoma Honors College will celebrate the legacy of a significant figure in the college’s development and support a new chair position for the college dean.

The newly created Jean Marie Warren Endowed Chair will be held by the Honors College dean, helping the college attract top talent and support teaching and research activities. Marie Elise Young and the late Lee Warren Young established the position to honor their late mother, Jean Marie Warren, a 1955 OU drama graduate.

“OU’s Honors College is such a vital part of our mission to expand impactful research at the university, and thanks to Jean Marie Warren and her family, we will always be able to offer talented faculty a world-class home,” said OU President Joseph Harroz Jr. “The Jean Marie Warren Endowed Chair will forever draw remarkable leaders to the Honors College, allowing us to continue to build on the Honors College’s tradition of excellence that Jean Marie and so many others helped create.”

Warren was extremely active with the university as an alumna, especially within the Honors College. There, she helped found the college’s Board of Visitors and was instrumental in launching Dean Emeritus David Ray’s widely popular Informal Reading Groups.

The family also supports the Carol Elizabeth Young Chair in Honors, a second endowed faculty position honoring Warren’s late daughter. That chair is currently occupied by Honors College Interim Dean Rich Hamerla.

The new Jean Marie Warren Endowed Chair will support a full-time faculty member with a national reputation for academic and research excellence whose work will attract gifted students to the college.

“The chair’s namesake, Jean Warren, was a founding member of our Board of Visitors and a longtime friend of the Honors College and of me personally,” Hamerla said. “Presented on her behalf by her daughter, Marie Elise Young, and late son, Lee Warren Young, this generous piece of her legacy will assist the college in its mission of promoting intellectual excellence and opportunities for OU’s best and brightest undergraduates.”