Hall of Fame Member Biographies

R. Leon Price

Teaching and inspiring students to pursue knowledge and to realize fully the talents with which they have been given remains the central mission of higher education.  A few professors fully complete that mission; one of them is R. Leon Price of the University of Oklahoma.  Leon Price’s career began with the U.S. Navy where he worked with the Navy’s computer systems between 1956 and 1960. After being honorably discharged, he then was employed at the Federal Aviation Administration, while at the same time pursing a bachelor‘s degree at the University of Oklahoma.  He later earned an MBA at the University of Tulsa in 1971, and then his Doctorate in Business Administration in 1978 from the University of Oklahoma.  His particular forte is building long-term relationships with key stakeholders—with students and employers in particular, building the MIS program which he started in 1981, and building the Center for Management Information Systems Studies (CMISS) —facts, which have played key roles in the MIS program in the Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma being ranked in the Top 20 programs in the nation for five years in a row (by US News and World Report).  The payoff from these relationships has been realized in many ways: jobs for graduates, scholarships for students, research support for faculty, field sites for doctoral research, guest lecturers for courses and student association, and organizational on-site group projects for various classes.  Without the sustained effort of Dr. Price, many of these activities would not have succeeded to the extent that they have.    
Even though his Doctorate was in Management, his area of expertise was Management Information Systems; the University of Oklahoma recognized his talent and hired him as an Assistant Professor in 1979.  Leon Price until his retirement in 2006 published extensively—at the end of his academic career he  co-authored a textbook on MIS— He has presented papers at scholarly conferences, and maintained his extensive business contacts as a consultant—an activity that has redounded to the benefit of graduate and undergraduate  students alike.  His major contribution to the state of Oklahoma, higher education, and the University of Oklahoma lay in teaching—in cultivating the talents students had but were unaware they had.  Over the course of over 30 years in the University of Oklahoma classroom, while teaching over 27000 students, he received an unprecedented number of awards for teaching among which are 5 Outstanding Faculty Member awards in the College of Business Administration, the University AMOCO Teaching Award, the Burlington Northern Teaching Award, 5 Southwestern Bell Master Mentor awards, the Exxon Teaching Fellow, the Conoco Teaching Award, and 4 Delta Sigma Pi Teaching awards.  For his outstanding contribution to higher education in Oklahoma, the Higher Education Heritage Society welcomes R. Leon Price into the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame.