DURANT, Okla. – The Southeastern women’s basketball team has claimed a share of the Great American Conference regular season championship – a first in program history.
The Savage Storm defeated Ouachita Baptist 76-55 Saturday afternoon, to finish the season 19-7 overall and 16-6 in GAC play. The sixteen wins in conference play are a program best since joining the GAC in 2011.
Southeastern will enter the GAC tournament as the number one seed and will play eight seed Southern Arkansas at 8 p.m. on Thursday in Bartlesville in the quarterfinals. The winner will advance to play on Saturday at 5:45 p.m. in the semi-finals.
Southeastern enters this week with a number six ranking in the NCAA Division II central region with two more sets of rankings still to be released. The top eight teams in each region will advance to the NCAA tournament.
OKLAHOMA CITY – Southeastern Oklahoma State University alumni-owned local business CrainCo has been honored with the 2026 Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education’s Regents Business Partnership Excellence Award (RBPEA) as announced Friday.
The RBPEA is designed to highlight successful partnerships between higher education institutions, businesses, and the community that create meaningful pathways between education and employment. Through these collaborations, institutions work directly with industry partners to align academic programs with employer needs, ensuring students gain relevant, in-demand skills.
Southeastern is proud to partner with CrainCo, a locally owned, Durant-based custom metal fabrication company serving commercial waste equipment and steel skid markets. CrainCo (formerly known as Texoma MFG) provides skilled manufacturing and fabrication jobs that strengthen Bryan County’s economy and support an essential workforce sector in southeastern Oklahoma.
The company’s leadership, including owner and Southeastern alumnus J. Scott Crain, sons Drew Crain (also a SE alumnus) and Chase Crain, maintain strong ties to the university through student support, scholarship funding via the SE Foundation, and engagement with campus events. This partnership helps expand educational access, promote workforce readiness, and retain skilled talent in the region.
“Partnerships between local businesses and our public colleges and universities strengthen our workforce, benefiting both our state and individual students,” said Chancellor Sean Burrage. “The State Regents are proud to recognize these collaborative efforts that drive economic growth, foster innovation, and expand career opportunities for Oklahomans.”
Information on all 16 of this year’s RBPEA winners can be found here.
For more information about RBPEA, visit https://okhighered.org/econ-dev/rbpea/.
DALLAS, Texas – Southeastern Oklahoma State University assistant professor of finance Dr. Arthur Tran was recently honored as the recipient of the “Best Paper” Award at the 65th Annual Meeting of the Southwestern Finance Association.
The SWFA conference is a respected academic finance conference and an important venue for presenting new research and receiving scholarly feedback. The 2026 participants represented more than 100 universities and institutions across 15 countries, including researchers from the Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve Banks.
In the paper titled “FinTech Small Business Lending: Do FinTechs Provide Business Loans to Under-banked Groups?”, Dr. Tran and Dr. Drew Winters of Texas Tech University examine whether financial technology (FinTech) lenders do a better job than traditional banks at serving under-banked small-business owners, especially minority- and female-owned firms. They find that, for minority-owned businesses, FinTechs generally do not outperform large banks and often appear to perform worse than community banks, though they do seem to be more favorable toward female-owned firms.
Dr. Tran joined the faculty of the John Massey School of Business in 2023 serving as an Assistant Professor of Finance in the Department of Accounting and Finance. His research area of emphasis is FinTech and community banking. Dr. Tran is a long-time Texan and Oklahoman who completed his Ph.D. at Texas Tech University and earned his BSBA and his MBA from the University of Central Missouri.
OKLAHOMA CITY – Three Southeastern Oklahoma State University students traveled to Oklahoma City on Tuesday to participate in the 2026 Higher Education Day and Oklahoma’s Promise Day at the State Capitol.
Higher Education Day is sponsored by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education to demonstrate the value and importance of the state system of higher education to Oklahoma’s current and future workforce development and economic growth and to celebrate the Governor and Legislature’s ongoing support of the Oklahoma’s Promise program.
The program opened with a recognition of the Oklahoma’s Promise Program, which offers qualified Oklahoma students an opportunity to earn a scholarship for college tuition.
The Southeastern contingent also met briefly with Sean Burrage, the Chancellor of the Oklahoma State System of Higher Education and former SE president.
The students then to the offices of local representatives, to thank them for their support of higher education in the state and hear directly about issues important to them.
“I was interested in speaking to the different representatives and their takes on the issues students in the higher education system face,” said Rodger Dixon, a junior computer science major from Armstrong, who also participates in Oklahoma Intercollegiate Legislature. “As a military veteran who is in college, it’s good to know what our representatives believe and learn how we can advocate for ourselves. This was a very educational day for me, and I hope it was for our representatives as well.”
Students also had the chance to speak with representatives who serve on committees related to their academic and professional pursuits.
“I really enjoyed coming back for a second year to this event, as I felt more prepare for the questions I wanted to ask and the representatives I wanted to visit,” noted Cora McKinney, a junior fisheries and wildlife sciences major from Oklahoma City. “It was great to speak with representatives who sit on the wildlife committee, as there are a number of important issues they’re dealing with in this legislative session.”
“I appreciate the unique opportunity to represent an under-represented group within college students,” said Carson Joe Veenstra, who is a concurrent enrollment student taking a full course load at Southeastern while completing his senior year at Durant High School. “It was great to speak with representatives from our local area and from across the state about issues facing college students.”
The students completed the program from the floor of the House of Representatives for a panel of distinguished speakers from across the landscape of higher education in the state.
MOBILE, Ala. – Southeastern Oklahoma State University senior Kai Jones was recognized as the first runner-up for the Dr. Anthony Fauci Award in STEM and Classics at the annual conference of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South (CAMWS) over Spring Break.
Jones, a senior biology and history major in the Southeastern Honors Program from Durant, was one of a record number of applicants for the award, who were encouraged to discuss the ways in which the applicant has forged connections between the study of Classics and a STEM/pre-med/pre-health/social science field, in their academic careers to date.
Jones’ work across disciplinary boundaries – including in History, Biological Sciences, Chemistry and ancient languages – drew the attention of the prize committee. The committee considered the pursuit of the classes that would comprise a Classics major, above and beyond their already busy schedule, to be proof that Jones fulfilled the spirit of the prize. While at the conference, Jones presented a paper, “The Parthenon as a Symbol of Cultural Identities in Athens,” and was featured in the awards section of the plenary session at the conference.
“Kai Jones is a truly exceptional student whose work has shown how much a Southeastern student can achieve during their time. Whether on paleoanthropology excavations in Kenya or in archaeology courses in Athens, Kai has consistently shown that they will stop at nothing to earn a place in their field. The winners and runners-up in previous years studied at truly elite academic institutions, and Kai deserves their place alongside any of these fine young scholars. We know well that their majors’ faculty, the Honors Program and the Office of Study Abroad are proud to call Kai Jones one of their own.”
ORLANDO, Fla. – Southeastern Oklahoma State University was represented well at the 2026 convention of the Alpha Chi National Honor Society earlier this month. Seniors Adam Canler and Haley Langley presented their research at the event.
Langley, a psychology major from Durant, was awarded the $300 Mary Waterstreet Prize in Psychology for her presentation titled, “Exposure to Domestic Violence and Sexual Attitudes in Women: Implications for Trauma and Sexual Health.”
Canler, a psychology major from Atoka, was selected as second alternate for the $3,000 H.Y. Benedict Fellowship for his research paper titled, “Exploring the Relationship of Emotional Intelligence and a Growth Mindset.”
Alex Robinson, a graduate student from Bokchito who is pursuing his master’s in business administration, has served as the Alpha Chi Region II Student Representative for the last two years. He completed his term of service at the national convention by presenting the 2026 President’s Cup Award recognizing the outstanding Alpha Chi chapter.
Dr. Jennifer Hicks is the advisor for the Southeastern Theta Chapter of Alpha Chi. At the convention, Dr. Hicks received a pin in recognition of her fifteen years of service as a chapter advisor. She was also reelected as the Region II Vice President for a second two-year term.
Alpha Chi is an interdisciplinary honor society which offers membership to the top 10% of juniors and seniors in all disciplines at Southeastern. Chartered on more than 300 campuses nationwide, chapters induct approximately 8,000 students annually. Since the Society’s founding in 1922, Alpha Chi members, charged with upholding the tenets of Truth and Character, have dedicated themselves to “making scholarship effective for good.” Alpha Chi is a certified member of the Association of College Honor Societies.
For nearly 60 years, Southeastern Oklahoma State University’s Aerospace Sciences Institute has been preparing professionals who keep the aviation industry moving forward. Over its decades of delivering hands-on experience and training, the program has graduated thousands of men and women who have gone on to serve the aviation world as pilots, instructors, mechanics, aviation managers, and production engineers.
Southeastern State College was the second college in the United States to offer a professional aviation degree, beginning in 1966.
As the world has changed in the 60 years since Southeastern’s aviation programs began, so has gender representation within the program.
In the first pledge class photo of the Alpha Eta Rho aviation fraternity in the 1969 yearbook, one woman – Judy Congreve of Chicago, Ill. – was in the 16-member class.
Now, as of the 2025 fall semester, over 25 percent of the ASI – students, faculty, and staff – are women.
Southeastern is ahead of the professional norm in this regard, as data from the Federal Aviation Administration shows only 15.9 percent of student pilots in the United States are women, while at Southeastern that number is 23.9 percent.
Hannah Stout, who is training to become a Certified Flight Instructor and is the chapter president of Women in Aviation at Southeastern, shared her perspective: “Once you feel that love for the sky, it opens a pathway for a whole lot of opportunities. There are some people who don’t want women to be up in the air, which is the unfortunate reality. However, here at Southeastern, it has been uplifting.
“Being a woman in a predominantly male-dominated field can be challenging… but we are all very highly motivated and I think our positive attitudes and uplifting spirits definitely help us get through.”
Breanna Reynolds, a student from Beaumont, Texas, echoed these sentiments, saying, “I didn’t want to get treated differently just because I was a girl. I can do the same things, and I can fly even better than some of these other guys. My favorite thing about being here is that we are all treated just the same. We have a lot of leadership roles, but we’re also all friends. We are all connected with everything that we do, and all of our instructors are amazing and inclusive.”
Recent graduate and current flight instructor Tatiana Beach has found that certain traits have helped herself and female students as they train. “Women have a sense of understanding of how to tackle big situations. I think a lot of times when you get into a stressful situation or when you’re dealing with people, women just have such a good grasp on how to walk into those situations and have a conversation with somebody or understand how somebody’s feeling and then really tackle it from there, which sometimes can be a little left out of the aviation industry – the people aspect versus the machine side.”
In the non-pilot categories, Southeastern’s 32.1 percent female representation is above the national average of 29.0 percent.
This includes Janeva Maxson, who was named the Chair of the Aviation Management program prior to the fall semester in 2025. Maxson, a two-time Southeastern graduate, returned to the ASI after 29 years of civil service to the United States Air Force.
“One of the key things we do here well is empowering women to realize that there’s so many things you can do in the aviation field outside of being a pilot. Aviation is such a great wide area for you to explore. You could be a pilot, or you could be in aviation management. You could run an airport. You could work for a defense contractor. There are so many things that you can do in aviation besides be a pilot. I think that’s one thing that’s important is to realize that aviation is a huge world out there and there’s so many things that you could do with it.”
Female leadership is extended throughout the ASI’s academic structure, as the Institute is contained in the John Massey School of Business, which has been led by Dr. Rhonda Richards as Dean since the Fall of 2025.
The program’s support for women extends to the professional staff as well.
Mechanic Layla Sheffield, who supports the flight operations at Eaker Field, shared, “I have never been told here once that I couldn’t do something or that I was incapable. I’ve always been pushed to do better, to be better. We’re all working together. The mechanics are working to keep the planes up. Your pilots are working to keep everybody safe. No backhanded compliments, things of that nature. We all just work together.”
Mechanic Leslie Matthews, who previously worked at other facilities, echoed this sentiment, saying, “I would say that it’s a very rewarding career. I get to learn and be around airplanes in a way that I normally wouldn’t have been able to. Here I’ve been treated as equal where I wasn’t at other places. Our ideas have been heard here as opposed to ignored.”
Southeastern is paving the runway for an incredible group of female aviators ready to take off into the world of Aerospace Sciences. Their passion and dedication represent the future of aviation and the growing impact of women across the industry.
Sydney Reardon, a professional pilot student from Roanoke, Texas, who is vice president of the Women in Aviation chapter, summed up the overall experience, saying, “Southeastern is truly such an aviation family, and there has not been a second where I have doubted that I belong here and that I am just as cut out as anyone for this career.”
The top three placers in each subject as well as the team standings for all five divisions of the 111th Annual Inter – High School Curriculum Meet at Southeastern Oklahoma State University have been announced.
All told, 65 schools attended with 1,854 students competing in 37 different subjects.
Tests were proctored in three sessions, with team points awarded to each school for a top placement. Schools were placed in five divisions with Division 5 denoting the largest schools participating.
This event dates back to 1910, when it was first held and known as the Southeastern High School Track Meet.
Full results can be found at https://results.SE.edu.
TEAM STANDINGS
Division 5 – McAlester (159), Durant (113)
Division 4 – Plainview (86), Lone Grove (77), Dickson (75), Broken Bow (21), Madill (21), Kingston (19), Sulphur (18), Ada (15)
Division 3 – Colbert (36), Latta (35), Silo (35), Wilburton (32), Antlers (29), Hugo (23), Davis (22), Vanoss (22), Atoka (17), Calera (16), Tishomingo (16), Coalgate (15), Tushka (13), Holdenville (11), Hartshorne (5), Valliant (5)
Division 2 – Savanna (51), Rattan (47), Clayton (38), Wright City (38), Roff (33), Haworth (29), Rock Creek (23), Stonewall (20), Wilson (19), Healdton (15), Allen (12), Dewar (7)
Division 1 – Coleman (44), Battiest (33), Legacy Christian (28), Haileyville (26), Kiowa (22), Asher (18), Bennington (16), Springer (16), Wapanucka (15), Caney (13), New Lima (13), Sasakwa (12), Boswell (10), Achille (10), Tupelo (10), Moyers (8), Stuart (8), Fort Towson (5), Smithville (4), Mill Creek (3), Pittsburg (3)
INDIVIDUAL RESULTS at https://results.SE.edu.
Southeastern Oklahoma State University associate professor of Educational Instruction and Leadership Dr. Mila Zhu’s new book, The StrataPlay Methodology: A Lorekeeper’s Game Design in Postqualitative Inquiry, will be the highlight of a Faculty Feature: Research Edition event.
This new “Faculty Feature” event series hosted by the department of Academic Affairs is designed for Southeastern faculty to showcase their publications to a wider audience. The event will be held at 2 p.m. on Thursday, April 2, in the Native American Commons in the Henry G. Bennett Library. Dr. Zhu will host a brief presentation on the publication and refreshments will be served.
Dr. Zhu was a 2025 “40 Under 40” honoree by Oklahoma Magazine and is in her sixth academic year at Southeastern. In addition to her faculty role, she serves as the EDUC Program Coordinator and is the Founding Director of the Center for Interconnected Curriculum and Networked Learning (ICoN Learning). Her research integrates health-science–informed pedagogy and ethical decision-making with ludic and narrative-based approaches to curriculum and inquiry. She is the series editor of Ludic Scholarship: Games, Learning, and Innovative Pedagogy (Peter Lang), where she advances work that bridges game design, learning sciences, and educational philosophy.
The StrataPlay Methodology: A Lorekeeper’s Game Design in Postqualitative Inquiry presents StrataPlay, an innovative post-qualitative methodology that blends academic inquiry with playful, narrative-driven gameplay. Grounded in posthumanism, post-qualitative research, and psychoanalytic theories, the book guides readers through a series of game-like challenges designed to explore fluid, fragmented identities, the intersections of power and autonomy, and the absurdities of modern academia.
Each chapter invites readers to step into immersive worlds where they confront complex philosophical questions through narrative and metaphor. By offering an interactive approach to knowledge creation, this book pushes boundaries and encourages a dynamic and ever-evolving relationship between theory, identity, and storytelling.
The book is published by Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers of New York and will be available for purchase and signing at the event. The book is also available on Amazon and other online booksellers.
Southeastern Oklahoma State University will host the 111th Annual Oklahoma Inter-High School Curriculum Meet on its Durant campus on Wednesday, March 25.
Over 1,800 students in grade 9-12 from 65 area high schools are currently registered to compete in 37 different subject areas: art (figure drawing), accounting, general business, personal finance, computer concepts, integrated productivity software, English, algebra, calculus, plane geometry, trigonometry, Spanish, music fundamentals, music literature, general safety, psychology, anatomy and physiology, biology, chemistry, conservation, earth and space science, physical science, physics, economics, geography, government and politics, Oklahoma history, U.S. history, world history, and a newly-added theatre performance competition.
This event dates back to 1910, when it was first held and known as the Southeastern High School Track Meet.
More information on the event can be found at https://contest.SE.edu.
OVERLAND PARK, Kans. – The Southeastern Oklahoma State University Honors program was represented by five students at the Great Plains Honors Council’s 2026 Convention – “KC Disrupted: Wicked Problems and Creative Solutions” at Johnson County Community College last week.
These students used research in their honors topics for the following presentations:
- Emma Hamblin, a junior history and art major from Caddo, gave an oral presentation entitled “The Silence of Assimilation”
- Kai Jones, a senior biology and history major from Durant, gave an oral presentation on “The Origins and Effects of Racism Towards Chinese People in the United States”
- Haley Langley, a senior psychology major from Durant, presented a research poster on “Sexual Attitudes and Depression Among Women Exposed to Domestic Violence in Childhood”
- Samantha Scott, a sophomore biology major from Fort Towson, presented a research poster on “Flora of the Ecopark in Durant, Oklahoma”
- and Macie Wells, a sophomore biology major from McAlester, gave an oral presentation on “Stray, Feral, And Outdoor Cats – Problems and Solutions”
The Great Plains Honors Council serves collegiate honors programs in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas. Coordinating its activities with the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC), the Great Plains organization promotes the flow of information, ideas, fellowship and professional encouragement throughout its member programs. Our spring regional conference always emphasizes student presentations and the region-as-text.
