Mark Norman, a 1974 graduate of Northwestern Oklahoma State University, will deliver the commencement address at the university’s fall graduation ceremony Sunday, Dec. 11, at 3:30 p.m. in Percefull Fieldhouse.
A reception for graduates, families and friends will be held in the Student Center Ballroom immediately after the commencement ceremony.
Originally from Fargo, Norman currently serves as the interim executive director for Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA) where he also has served as deputy director and the vice president of technology.
He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts from Northwestern with a concentration in television and radio along with minors in journalism and sociology. Norman received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Northwestern in 1995.
Norman went on to earn his Master of Science in Mass Communication, with a focus in broadcasting and journalism, from Oklahoma State University in 1975.
Norman spent three years furthering the broadcast program at Panhandle State University in Goodwell and five years at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. He was a general manager and partner for K101 in Woodward from 1983-1985 before leaving to establish a university broadcast program at Cameron University in Lawton where he spent 22 years as a broadcast professor before his retirement.
Throughout his experience in broadcast, Norman built a network of five, full-power public radio stations in Ardmore, Altus, Clinton, Lawton and Wichita Falls, Texas. He also supervised the reconstruction of the OETA networks 14 translators stations located across the state as the networks converted to digital broadcasting. He was responsible for technology and engineering projects to include a new OETA Tulsa area studio and the conversion of the network to a non-tape digital facility.
Norman has been the president of the Lawton Rotary Club; president of the Lawton Arts for All; president of Oklahoma Broadcast Education Association, a statewide organization of universities with broadcast programs; president of the Crimestoppers of Lawton and Fort Sill; vice president of the United Way of Lawton and Fort Sill; member of the Lawton and Wichita Falls Symphony Board of Directors; and chairman of PPRS Committee First United Methodist Church of Lawton.
He currently resides in Edmond with wife Sheree and has one daughter, Makenzie.