SHAWNEE — The sounds were familiar, but the moment was historic.
Students were talking in the corridors, classroom doors were opening and professors were settling in to teach. But on this day, history met the future.
For the first time since April 19, 2023—the night an EF2 tornado tore through OBU’s campus—the university’s original academic building is once again fully operational as a classroom facility. Nearly three years after it was heavily damaged, Shawnee Hall has returned to the center of daily campus life.
For Lane Cryer, a senior middle school education major with an emphasis in history, walking back into Shawnee Hall is inseparable from the night it was nearly lost.
On the evening of the tornado, Cryer was driving back to Shawnee from church in Bethany when a friend called to ask where he was. He pulled over near a gas station outside town to ride out the storm, then headed to campus once the storm passed.
“That night is just ingrained in my mind,” Cryer said. “Seeing Shawnee Hall’s porch roof not existing, Raley’s roof peeled back—I got out of my truck, put my work boots on and just stood there. Shawnee Hall was hit very hard. It was crazy.”
Cryer was a freshman at OBU at the time. As the extent of the damage became clear, he wasn’t sure he would ever see Shawnee Hall fully restored before graduating.
“For a while, we didn’t know if we were going to get to see it finished by the time we graduated,” he said. “To be in here now means restoration—what it really means to restore something.”
Built in 1910, Shawnee Hall is the oldest building on OBU’s campus and has served generations of students. The tornado rendered much of it unusable though limited classes were held in portions of the building last fall. Spring 2026 marks its full return to academic life.
Today, the restored Shawnee Hall blends its historic character with modern academic design. Exposed brick walls and reclaimed-wood bison artwork—crafted from wood salvaged from the original building—anchor gathering spaces that now sit alongside updated classrooms and advanced instructional technology. A 259-seat auditorium, the Mabee Lecture Theatre, features upgraded audiovisual systems and flexible configurations for lectures, events and academic presentations.
The building houses the Henry F. McCabe Family School of Education and the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences, including the Marriage and Family Therapy program. It also serves as a major hub for graduate health sciences programs and is home to the university’s admissions offices. The Lingo Lab on the second floor supports hybrid graduate programs in Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Speech-Language Pathology and Physician Associate Studies—programs that can be completed in two years or less.
For Cryer, the restored details carry deep meaning.
“You can’t talk about OBU without talking about Shawnee Hall,” he said. “You can’t talk about the history of OBU, you can’t talk about Civ, without talking about Shawnee Hall. Seeing the old wood on the second floor, seeing how far we’ve come since April 19, 2023—it gives you hope for where we’re going.”
That sense of transformation is shared by students who once filled the building before the storm.
Noah Steelman, a senior secondary math education major with a minor in history, spent many days in Shawnee Hall as a freshman. He remembers the eerie feel of the weather after exiting the Noble Complex late that evening.
“We rode out the storm in the basement of Agee,” Steelman said. “People were watching the weather on their phones and someone said, ‘It looks like it’s going to come through campus.’ We were like, ‘This might actually happen.’”
Seeing Shawnee Hall afterward was sobering. Returning now has been transformative.
“It’s a night-and-day difference,” he said. “I walked in after it was done and just thought, ‘This is crazy.’ Spaces that used to be storage are now offices. There’s the Lingo Lab upstairs. The classrooms, the technology—it’s incredible.”
Steelman said the redesigned learning spaces are directly shaping how he prepares for his own future classroom.
“We have rooms that actually simulate real school classrooms,” he said. “Flexible seating, immersive technology—education is hands-on. You’re teaching, presenting and managing a room. Being able to practice that in a space that looks like where we’ll actually teach is huge.”
During a STEM Day event, Steelman taught lessons to high school students inside one of Shawnee Hall’s immersive classrooms.
“With the interactive walls and activities, that’s the next level of education,” he said. “Being able to experiment with that technology now is so valuable.”
For Annie Keehn, chair of the McCabe Family School of Education, the building’s reopening carries both professional and personal weight. Keehn was a member of the education faculty when the tornado struck. Her office was on the second floor on the south side.
“My students were supposed to teach the next day at a STEM Day at the Early Childhood Center here in Shawnee,” she said. “They had worked so hard on those projects—and that building was hit, too.”
Seeing Shawnee Hall full again on Wednesday led Keehn to say that this is about more than replacement.
“This is an incredible opportunity that we know is only from God,” Keehn said. “The Lord took a natural disaster and turned it into a blessing. Our students are absolutely benefiting from that. What we’re hearing in here today isn’t just sounds in a building; there’s a buzz.”
She points to collaborative spaces, study areas and technology-rich classrooms as central to how students will learn and lead.
“These learning spaces are incredible,” she said. “Our students are teaching in rooms that simulate real classrooms. They’re becoming comfortable with technology that will enhance instruction, not distract from it. Some of them are going to create things we can’t even imagine right now.”
The reopening of Shawnee Hall represents a key milestone in OBU’s recovery from the 2023 tornado, which damaged or destroyed multiple campus facilities. OBU President Dr. Heath A. Thomas formally marked the building’s reopening during a public ceremony at The Weekend celebration in October 2025, calling the restoration a continuation of the university’s founding partnership with the city of Shawnee and Oklahoma Baptists.
Shawnee Hall was the first building constructed on campus and has long symbolized the university’s mission of Christian higher education. Its renovation was supported through a combination of private gifts and campaign funding. It has set an incredible tone for the Shape the Future Campaign that pushes purposefully forward with the renewal of other landmarks on Bison Hill, such as Raley Chapel.
As students settle into classrooms of Shawnee Hall this semester, it once again anchors the daily rhythm of campus — less than three years after standing broken.
“What Shawnee Hall taught me,” Cryer said, “is what resilience looks like on a grand scale. It taught me how you take something catastrophic and turn it into something good. We knew it was possible—we just didn’t know to what level. This shows me that no matter what we face, the Lord is going to provide. There’s always room for growth.”
To be a part of the Shape the Future Campaign, go to okbu.edu/giving/shape-the-future.
