Hall of Fame Member Biographies

John Wesley Raley

John Wesley Raley was the eighth president of Oklahoma Baptist University, serving from 1934 to 1961. Under his strong leadership OBU grew from a small, four-building institution to a twenty-building campus with an endowment of $1.5 million. His tenure produced growth in student enrollment, size of faculty and academic reputation. Raley was a member of Oklahoma’s statutory coordinating board in the late 1930s. He served as president of the Oklahoma Independent College Foundation and was elected to the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1958. The towering John W. Raley Chapel on the OBU campus stands as his permanent memorial. Raley died in 1968, and was inducted into the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame in 1996.