Longtime, beloved marketing professor Bob Hamm left his mark on Oklahoma State, Spears School

Friday, February 7, 2014

Click to watch the Remembering Bob Hamm video

B. Curtis “Bob” Hamm, who taught in the Department of Marketing in Oklahoma State University’s business school for 30 years, passed away Wednesday at the age of 80. 

Services will be 10 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 12, at LifeChurch in Stillwater.

Hamm saw the young men and women in his classes as more than just names and faces trying to get a passing grade during his 38-year teaching career. The longtime business school faculty member said many former students became his friends.

Hamm was held in such high regard that when he retired in 2002 a group of former students helped fund a $250,000-plus endowed scholarship in his name.

Two former OSU students helped spearhead in recent years an effort to further honor Hamm. Vaughn Vennerberg and Frank Merrick wanted to recognize Hamm as OSU’s Spears School of Business plans to move into a new business building, which will break ground this fall.

 “There was no doubt whatsoever in our minds that Dr. Hamm needed to be honored, and I knew it would be a very successful fundraising effort because of the broad base of support for him from students for the many years he’s been involved at OSU,” Vennerberg said in 2012.

Hamm was overwhelmed with the outpouring of support in his honor. “One of my greatest fears is that people would ask one of my students, ‘Who did you have for marketing?’ And they would say, ‘I don’t remember, but I know we had a green book.’ I still get phone calls from students who will quote back to me things that I said in class many years ago, and they still remember it.

“It’s nice to know they haven’t forgotten you,” said Hamm, who taught at OSU from 1966 to 1990 and again from 1996 to 2002. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame in 2007.

In addition to influencing the lives of OSU business students, Hamm also traveled to 138 countries, helping plan curricula, design courses, teach professors and build business libraries for universities in China, the Czech Republic, Jordan and Argentina.

Since 2012, an additional $650,000 has been raised in his namesake for the B. Curtis Hamm Marketing Office and classroom, which will be housed in the new business building.

“It’s not about money; it’s about where he made his mark, and that was in the classroom,” said Steve Mackey, chief administrative officer and executive vice president of Tulsa-based energy company Helmerich and Payne. “That’s what we need to do because not only do I think it would please him more, but the most fitting honor we could give him is in the classroom, because that’s where he excelled.”