2021 Academic All-Staters Announced

Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence Announces 2021 Academic Award Winners

100 Academic All-State Scholars Named

The Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence has announced the recipients of its prestigious 2021 Academic All-State Awards. These 100 top public high school seniors, selected from 379 nominations statewide, hail from 77 schools in 69 Oklahoma school districts.

The 2021 Academic All-State class is the 35th to be selected by the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence. Since the award program’s inception in 1987, some 3,500 high school seniors from 330 school districts have been named Academic All-State scholars. Four high schools will celebrate their first Academic All-Stater: Davenport, Porum, Soper and Stigler high schools.

Each of this year’s All-Staters will receive a $1,000 merit-based scholarship and a medallion. The All-Staters will be recognized at the foundation’s 35th annual Academic Awards Celebration on Saturday, May 22, at the Cox Business Center in Tulsa.

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Outstanding Public School Educators to Be Honored

The foundation will also recognize five innovative public school educators who were selected in 2020 as Medal for Excellence winners but were unable to be honored last spring due to the pandemic. Each of the five winners will receive a $5,000 cash prize and a glass “Roots and Wings” sculpture, designed by the late Oklahoma artist Ron Roberts and produced by Artistic Glass Studio of Edmond.

The Medal for Excellence honorees are: Michelle Rahn, a sixth-grade STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) teacher at Will Rogers Junior High in Claremore; secondary teaching honoree Shelley Self, an art teacher at Coweta High School; elementary/secondary administration recipient Chuck McCauley, superintendent of Bartlesville Public Schools; regional university/community college teaching recipient Dr. David Bass, professor of biology at the University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond; and research university teaching honoree Dr. Edralin Lucas , professor of nutritional sciences, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater.

Our Featured Keynote Speaker

Award-winning teacher and education activist Erin Gruwell will be our keynote speaker for the 2021 Academic Awards Celebration. Gruwell is collaborative writer of “The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them.” The book became the inspiration for a feature film starring Academy Award winner Hillary Swank.

Academic Awards Celebration

The Academic All-Staters and Medal for Excellence winners will be saluted at the foundation's 35th annual Academic Awards Celebration on Saturday, May 22, at the Cox Business Center in Tulsa.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s Academic Awards Celebration will have limited attendance for the safety of honorees and their guests. The awards ceremony will be televised statewide May 29 by OETA, the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority. For more information, call the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence office at (405) 236-0006 or visit its website at www.ofe.org.

Academic Awards Program

Since 1987, the foundation has awarded more than $5 million in merit-based scholarships and awards. Find out more about this prestigious program here.