As artificial intelligence transforms science, engineering, healthcare, and nearly every profession, higher education faces a defining moment. Technical competence remains essential, but it is no longer enough. The institutions that will have the greatest impact will be those that develop graduates with the wisdom, character, and judgment to lead in a world of accelerating change. The deeper question is no longer simply “What can our students do?” It is: “Who are our students becoming?”
The College of Science & Engineering at Oral Roberts University, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has been asking that harder question for decades. And in 2026, as artificial intelligence reshapes industries, data science redefines decision-making, and autonomous systems challenge assumptions about human work, the answers the college has been cultivating are beginning to look quietly remarkable.
A College Built on a Whole-Person Promise
The college is not modest in its scope. It encompasses the School of Engineering alongside the departments of Behavioral Sciences, Biology & Chemistry, Computing & Mathematics, and Health, Leisure & Sport Sciences. Its flagship programs span Computer Science, Sport Management, Psychology, Mechanical Engineering, and Medical Molecular Biology, a range that might, at first glance, seem almost eclectic. But there is a coherent logic to it, and it comes from the institution’s organizing philosophy: develop the whole person. Spirit, mind, and body. At ORU, that is not a marketing line. It is the architecture.
The mission of the college is to develop whole leaders for the whole world, equipping students to integrate faith, scientific inquiry, professional excellence, a physically active and healthy lifestyle, and service. That mission carries particular weight in the present moment. As AI and other emerging technologies have transformed society, the college has responded by expanding into artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data science and machine learning, advanced computing, autonomous vehicles and drones, and cancer research. It has done so while maintaining the conviction that technology, however powerful, is only as valuable as the judgment and character of the people using it.
Pedagogy First, Technology Second
If there is one phrase that captures the college’s approach to the technological moment we are living through, it is this: pedagogy comes first, and technology comes second. Before any tool is introduced into the learning environment, the faculty asks a foundational question. What does this student need to learn? Who do they need to become? Only then do they reach for the technology.
It is a position that runs against the instinct, common across higher education, to chase every new technological advance. The College of Science & Engineering embraces innovation, but always in service of a larger purpose. As artificial intelligence reshapes how technical work is performed, the competitive advantage of a graduate is shifting. Information is abundant. Expertise is increasingly accessible. What remains scarce is the capacity to ask the right questions, exercise sound judgment, take responsibility, work with others, and lead wisely. The goal is not simply to prepare students for the next generation of technology, but to prepare the next generation of leaders who will shape how technology serves humanity.
That philosophy shapes every aspect of the educational experience. Students learn through active engagement. Hands-on laboratories, undergraduate research, design projects, internships, collaborative problem-solving, and a required capstone project for every student are not elective enrichments. They are the substance of the education. Faculty engage students through methods such as Socratic dialogue, project-based learning, laboratory experiences, and collaborative design challenges, pushing them to participate in creating, testing, communicating, and applying knowledge rather than simply receiving it. Whether developing AI applications, conducting cancer research, designing engineering solutions, promoting human performance, or studying human behavior, students are challenged to integrate technical excellence with sound judgment, ethical leadership, and a commitment to serving others.
The college bridges classroom learning and professional practice through internships, industry partnerships, undergraduate research, professional certifications, guest speakers, and project-based learning. By graduation, students have not only mastered their disciplines, but they have also learned to apply their knowledge in settings where their decisions matter.
Who Gets to Come, and What They Find
Admission runs through Oral Roberts University’s holistic review process, which considers academic preparation, leadership potential, character, and a student’s commitment to personal growth. The college is looking for students who are academically motivated, intellectually curious, and genuinely eager to make a meaningful impact through science, technology, engineering, healthcare, and research.
What those students find, once enrolled, is a community built intentionally around support. Small class sizes and close faculty mentorship define the texture of daily life, and students gain early access to undergraduate research, hands-on laboratory work, industry partnerships, and internships. Faculty mentors provide not only academic guidance and career advice but also personal encouragement throughout the college experience.
The support extends well beyond academics. As a Christ-centered institution, ORU emphasizes spiritual formation, service, and community. The goal is to help students thrive academically, professionally, socially, physically, and spiritually, and to leave as confident, capable leaders prepared to make a meaningful impact in the world.
The Students Who Are Already Proving It
The most persuasive argument for any educational program is what its students actually go on to do. Over the past several years, ORU students have consistently distinguished themselves in competitions, research, entrepreneurship, and graduate education. Their stories reveal a pattern rather than a collection of isolated successes.
Natalia Ramirez-Sotelo, a Medical Molecular Biology student, earned first place at Oklahoma’s Research Day at the Capitol for her cancer research, a distinction that placed her work before policymakers and scientific peers across the state.
In Behavioral Sciences, Emily Castille earned first place in the Oklahoma Psychological Society’s undergraduate research competition and has since been accepted into a prestigious Ph.D. program. Her trajectory reflects something the college highlights with understated pride: the depth of faculty mentorship here produces graduates who do not merely complete degrees but go on to build academic careers.
Then there is Anna Wilson, who founded ORU’s Bioethics Team. In its very first appearance at the National Bioethics Bowl, the team advanced to the Final Four, competing alongside institutions including Stanford, Georgetown, and the University of Georgia. That debut was not a footnote. It was a statement about what a college committed to the ethical dimensions of science can produce when it takes that commitment seriously.
In Computing and Mathematics, Scott Alons received the R. B. Deal Award at the regional Mathematical Association of America conference, earning top honors among student presenters from both Oklahoma and Arkansas. Notably, he accomplished this as a sophomore.
Engineering students brought home two awards from the prestigious Love’s Entrepreneur’s Cup Competition, demonstrating a capacity to translate technical expertise into real-world solutions with genuine commercial potential.
These are not isolated events. They form a pattern.
Success Is Who You Become
At many universities, student success is measured primarily through grades, graduate school acceptance rates, job placement figures, and professional licensure. These things matter at the College of Science & Engineering, too. But they do not tell the whole story.
The college looks beyond academic performance to something harder to quantify: human agency, judgment, responsibility, and character. It measures success through indicators like undergraduate research participation, leadership development, innovation, community engagement, internship experience, and the ability to solve meaningful real-world problems.
In an era where information is abundant, and technology can perform an increasing number of technical tasks, the question is not simply whether a graduate can use the available tools. The question is whether they can lead, create, serve, and make wise decisions with those tools in the service of others.
The Man Who Leads Across Boundaries
To understand what drives the College of Science & Engineering, it helps to understand Dr. Andrew Lang, its Dean.
Dr. Lang is not the kind of administrator who manages from a comfortable distance. He is a working scholar who has published over 45 unique research papers, each drawing contributions from over 25 collaborators. His body of work is internationally recognized, and the shape of that output, wide in its reach and deeply collaborative in its method, says something essential about how he leads.
He has long been recognized as the ‘ultimate team-player’ and a leader at the intersection of faith and science. In research as in administration, his instinct is consistent: the best outcomes are never achieved alone, and the most important work happens at the intersection of different disciplines, perspectives, and forms of expertise.
That instinct found its most recent expression in his co-chairing of ORU’s newly formed AI task force, an initiative designed to extend the campus-wide approach to artificial intelligence beyond the walls of any single department or program. The task force is not a College of Science & Engineering project in isolation. It reaches across the university, consistent with Dr. Lang’s conviction that the challenges ahead require collaboration at every level. The newly formed task force is positioned to help drive some of the most significant breakthroughs in higher education.
It is the kind of ambition that, in Dr. Lang’s case, tends to be backed by a sustained record of collaborative achievement.
What Comes Next
The college is entering what it describes as one of the most exciting periods in its history, and two major building projects give some measure of the scale behind that description.
The first is a Cancer and Science Research Building, which will expand the college’s capacity for groundbreaking research in healthcare, biomedical sciences, and biotechnology, while creating unprecedented opportunities for students to work directly alongside faculty and industry partners. It is an investment in both discovery and access.
The second is an AI & Emerging Technologies Building, envisioned as a hub for AI research, innovation, and industry collaboration. Together, these facilities represent a serious commitment to the fields that will define the next generation of scientific and technological advancement.
Alongside these projects, the college is expanding student opportunities in artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, autonomous systems, advanced computing, and technology entrepreneurship across multiple disciplines, leveraging the advanced high-performance computing infrastructure already in place. The expansion is interdisciplinary by design, bringing together computing, engineering, healthcare, behavioral sciences, ethics, and human flourishing research in a shared vision of what science education must look like going forward.
And even as these investments accumulate, the college remains clear about something that more technology-focused corners of higher education can sometimes lose sight of: the future is not simply about developing more powerful technologies. It is also about understanding how those technologies affect people, organizations, and society.
The Whole Person, in a World That Needs Them
There is a phrase that runs through every conversation about the College of Science & Engineering at Oral Roberts University: whole leaders for the whole world. It appears in the mission statement and in the language faculty’s use to describe their work. It shows up in how students talk about their experiences and in the quality of conviction that the college seems to cultivate in its graduates.
In the labs where cancer research is being conducted, in the classrooms where AI applications are being built and debated, in the competition halls where ORU students have gone up against Stanford and Georgetown and held their own, that phrase has begun to sound less like an aspiration and more like a description of something already underway.
The College of Science & Engineering at Oral Roberts University is not simply waiting for the future to arrive. It is actively preparing the people who will shape it.
Quote
“Success is measured not only by a student’s ability to use powerful tools but by their ability to lead, create, serve, and make wise decisions with those tools in service of others.”
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