Joseph C. Ray

Hall of Fame Class of 1999

Joseph C. Ray came to continuing education after an already distinguished career in higher education administration. At the time of his death in 1998, he was Associate Vice Provost for the College of Continuing Education (CCE) at the University of Oklahoma. There he assisted in the overall administration of the University's $45 million primarily self-supporting continuing education effort. He had direct responsibility for budgets; personnel; computer networking; registration and records; the Washington, D.C. office; the Kellogg conference center; independent study; distance education, including television production; the contract with the Federal Aviation Administration for training air traffic controllers; and KGOU/KROU, the University's radio station. He also served as Executive Director of the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame, located at the Oklahoma Center for Continuing Education on OU's Norman campus.

Dr. Ray was an associate professor in political science at OU. In this capacity he taught courses in political science, public administration, and budgeting on the Norman campus; he also participated in the graduate level programs of Advanced Programs, for which he taught public administration and budgeting courses in Korea, Japan, and Hawaii as well as higher education administration courses in Italy and the Netherlands.

At the University, and prior to joining CCE, Dr. Ray held the positions of Associate Provost, Executive Assistant to the President, and Acting Provost. His academic degrees included a doctorate in higher education administration from the University of Oklahoma, a master of arts in political science from Stanford University where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a master of city planning from Harvard University where he was a Loula D. Lasker Scholar, and a bachelor of arts in government, history, and geography from the University of Oklahoma where he was a Robert Dean Bass Scholar and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In addition, he was an alumnus of both Harvard University's Institute of Educational Management and the Institute of Management for Lifelong Learning.