Robert J. Witte is a fourth-generation Sooner, highly respected attorney and prominent civic leader in the Dallas metroplex. As a University of Oklahoma undergraduate, Robert was active in President’s Leadership Class and numerous other campus organizations, culminating as Campus Activities Council vice chair and Sigma Nu fraternity president. He graduated OU in 1990 with a bachelor of arts degree in communications and political science, with honors including the Carl Albert Fellowship, Cortez Ewing Fellowship, Pe-Et Honor Society, Phi Beta Kappa and Alexander Letzeiser Gold Medal.
Robert was a Hatton Sumners Scholar at Southern Methodist University School of Law, graduating in 1993. His law practice at the international law firm Clark Hill specializes in business litigation and nonprofit governance, having represented clients at the highest levels of state and federal courts, including oral argument to the Texas Supreme Court and briefing to the United States Supreme Court.
Robert is consistently honored by his peers for his professional acumen and ethical standards, including recognition annually in the Best Lawyers in America listing. He has served his profession in numerous Bar Association board and leadership roles on a local, state and national level, and was a 16-year lead facilitator for the Dallas Young Lawyers Leadership Class. A 1997 Leadership Dallas graduate, Robert has served as president or board chair for the Dallas Heart Ball, Make-A-Wish Foundation of North Texas, OU Club of Dallas, MDA Hot Hundred Who Care, State Bar of Texas Annual Meeting and Trinity Commons Foundation. Robert is active in the Dallas Assembly, and currently in board leadership positions with Broadway Dallas, the Dallas Historical Society and Trinity Park Conservancy. In 2009, the United States Junior Chamber named Robert one of the Ten Outstanding Young Americans.
He has served OU in numerous capacities as a member of the College of Arts and Sciences Board of Visitors, President’s Associates Council and Sigma Nu Fraternity Alumni Advisory Board, and as a founding Sooner Club volunteer. Robert is married to his OU PLC classmate Debbie (who won the female Gold Letzeiser Medal in 1990), and their children; Brandon and Courtney are both OU alumni (and thus, fifth-generation Sooners).
Dr. Jesse Coker is an emerging thought leader in academic and nonprofit drug discovery. Jesse graduated summa cum laude from OU in 2017 with dual degrees in Biochemistry and Economics, both from the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences. As an undergraduate, Jesse was a member of the PE-ET Honor Society, a Team Leader for The Oklahoma Group, and the Chair of the Withrow Leadership Scholars. Jesse was named the DFCAS’s Most Outstanding Senior in 2017, and he was nationally recognized as a 2016 Goldwater Scholar for his undergraduate research on the development of antibiotics in the Duerfeldt Lab.
Jesse completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford, where he was awarded a prestigious fully funded DPhil studentship from the Nuffield Department of Medicine. While at Oxford, Jesse was a leader in the serology testing group that assisted with the development of the Jenner Institute/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
Currently, Jesse is the Group Leader of Chemical Biology at the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Therapeutics Discovery, where he has worked since 2021 on the development of first-in-class small-molecule drugs for prostate cancer, kidney cancer, and glioblastoma. He has also served for six years as the Science and Strategy Consultant for Action Against Age-Related Macular Degeneration, a UK-based charity dedicated to finding low-cost treatments for AMD, the second leading cause of blindness globally. Jesse is an author on thirteen peer-reviewed publications and two granted patents, and he is an outspoken advocate for experimental rigor and reproducibility, open science, and affordable medicines.
Akash Patel has long been a leader and passionate advocate for others in his community. While at OU, he served as the President of the Oklahoma Intercollegiate Legislature, a re-chartering founding member and Philanthropy Chairman of OU’s Pi Kappa Phi fraternity, the Chief of Staff for the Student Government Association, a Carl Albert Center Capitol Scholar, a Cortez A.M. Ewing Public Service Fellow, a Fellow for OU’s Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage, and an appointee to the Interfraternity Council Judicial Board. Additionally, in his final semester at OU, Akash delivered a TEDxOU talk to bring awareness to the challenges and successes of undocumented immigrant families like his. Upon graduation, Akash was also awarded the prestigious Carl Albert Award, which is given to the outstanding senior in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences.
Akash’s and his family’s story is one of persistence and it has guided his career path, as he was forced to spend multiple years as undocumented before being granted citizenship. After leaving OU, Akash put his advocacy skills to use, launching a new non-profit, Aspiring Americans, to serve other undocumented students in Oklahoma, which raised nearly $350,000 and trained thousands of educators throughout Oklahoma on serving this vulnerable population. In 2016, Akash earned the national Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans to attend graduate school, which marked the first year that anyone from Oklahoma had won the prestigious award in its 20-year history. Akash then attended law school at the University of Michigan, where he had the opportunity to work at the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C., extern at the Michigan Immigrants Rights Center, and lead multiple delegations of volunteers to the border to help women and children apply for asylum during the height of the family separation crisis and border influx in 2018 and 2019.
Following graduation from Michigan Law in 2019, Akash maintained a robust docket of asylum cases—earning him awards for his representation from the National Immigrant Justice Center and Kids in Need of Defense—until he joined the Biden Administration in 2021 as a Senior Advisor in the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where Akash now serves as Regulatory Counsel to assist with critical regulatory, oversight, and policy efforts to serve unaccompanied children seeking asylum in the United States. Akash credits his accomplishments to the numerous opportunities at OU that allowed him to gain the skills and knowledge he still uses to this day.
Gary Bates served as the director of technology services for the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences for 30 years, retiring in March 2025 after a distinguished career marked by dedication, innovation and unparalleled service. Overseeing a small team, Gary provided IT support for over 2,000 faculty, staff and graduate students, consistently going above and beyond to meet the college’s complex and ever-evolving technological needs.
Known for his deep institutional knowledge, Gary implemented a strategic four-year technology rotation cycle and developed systems that significantly increased efficiency and reduced costs. He was a problem-solver, a mentor and a trusted partner to every department he served. Whether personally delivering equipment during a pandemic or making house calls to support remote instruction, Gary never hesitated to meet challenges head-on with grace, professionalism and good humor.
Across departments, chairs and faculty consistently describe Gary as the heart of the college’s IT operations—someone whose technical expertise was matched only by his empathy and commitment to service. From salvaging critical research data to modernizing instructional technology infrastructure, Gary’s fingerprints are on virtually every corner of the college’s academic mission. Gary leaves a legacy of service excellence, and his impact on the University of Oklahoma will be felt for years to come.
David Wrobel, a historian of the American West and American thought and culture, served as the Merrick Chair at OU from 2011 to 2024, and became the inaugural David L. Boren Professor in 2016. He is the author of four books, The End of American Exceptionalism, Promised Lands, Global West, American Frontier and America’s West, and is working on a fifth, John Steinbeck’s Country. He served as president of the Western History Association from 2019-2020 and has worked closely with public school teachers across the country for most of his career.
Wrobel served briefly as faculty director of OU’s Western History Collections in 2017, prior to being asked to step in as interim dean of the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences later that year. He subsequently served as DFCAS dean from 2018-2024. Wrobel played a key role in helping secure support for the establishment of the Center for Quantum Research and Technology, the naming of the college for the Dodge Family, the new science teaching and research labs building, and the naming of the Math Department for David and Judi Proctor. Deeply devoted to both the research/scholarship/creative activity mission, and to student success, he is also grateful to have had the opportunity to play a role in the establishment of the Student Success and Advising Center, “the DODGE”.
With their three teenagers planning to attend college on the East Coast, Wrobel and his wife, Janet, left OU in the summer of 2024 to begin new positions at Stony Brook University, on Long Island, as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and associate provost for arts, humanities and social sciences initiatives, respectively.
Wrobel said it has been ”the greatest honor of my professional career to have served as dean of Arts and Sciences at OU and the hardest decision of my life to leave the university and college that I care so deeply about.”
