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It’s hard to imagine Charlie Kittrell without a worldly
perspective. He and his wife Faye’s children live all
over the globe. He was an oil industry spokesman during the
1970s Arab oil embargo and has climbed to the 21,500-foot
point of Mt. Everest. But he says he missed out on a valuable
resource as an undergraduate student at the University of
Arkansas: a stronger liberal arts component in his engineering
curriculum.
“I would have appreciated the world a lot more,”
Charlie says, “and I would have been a better professional
had I taken more classes in Fulbright College.”
For that reason, the Bartlesville, Okla., couple chose to
designate the University of Arkansas as the beneficiary of
Charlie’s IRA retirement account, earmarking $200,000
to establish an endowed scholarship fund. It was important
for Charlie and Faye to provide incentive and assistance to
students majoring in a technical or scientific discipline,
such as Charlie did, to pursue coursework in the arts and
humanities. The Charles M. and Faye J. Kittrell Endowed Scholarship
will be awarded on the basis of academic merit.
They had another important motive as well. The Kittrells want
to do their part to help the J. William Fulbright College
of Arts and Sciences attract and retain outstanding students
while at the same time helping the University meet The
$300 Million Challenge. When the Walton family challenged
University of Arkansas benefactors to match their $300 million
gift by raising another $300 million, Charlie and Faye took
the challenge seriously.
“Over 52 years ago, I graduated from the University of
Arkansas with an engineering degree and joined Phillips Petroleum
Company. My Arkansas education has certainly served me well
during the ensuing years. However, I do have one regret about
it: I didn’t have the resources to spend another year
at the University to supplement my technical degree with courses
offered by the College of Arts and Sciences,” Charlie
said.
In retrospect, Charlie is convinced he would have profited
in innumerable ways from exposure to the arts and humanities.
“It’s hard for me to believe, but during the past
52 years I have visited over 50 countries in six of the seven
continents on business or for pleasure. Practically nothing
in my education prepared me to appreciate or understand the
diverse cultures and activities I encountered. I’m convinced
I would have profited greatly, professionally and personally,
from exposure to subjects such as music, art, and especially
history. Sadly, I had no background to appreciate an opera
at La Scala, art at the Louvre or Hermitage, or the history
behind the pyramids, the Taj Mahal, or the Great Wall.
“Today, as the world continues to shrink, our country
faces ever greater responsibilities and opportunities for
peace and prosperity worldwide. Therefore I am convinced that
our leaders of tomorrow must be better equipped than I was
to appreciate and work with an ever growing number of countries
and cultures.”
The Challenge was created in response to the Walton family’s
condition that the University raise an additional $300 million
dollars for academic support programs to match their $300
million gift announced this past spring. The Walton’s
gift will endow an undergraduate Honors College and the Graduate
School.
“Faye and I hope this modest scholarship will provide
the means and encouragement to others graduating with a technical
degree to broaden the scope of their educations by availing
themselves of the incredible variety of offerings in the J.
William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences,” he said.
“We are also hopeful that other friends of the University
will find merit in our thinking and create comparable scholarships
of their own,” he continued.
After Charlie received his bachelor’s degree in industrial
engineering from the University of Arkansas in 1950, he joined
Phillips Petroleum Co. in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. He retired
in 1987 after a career spanning almost 37 years with the company,
15 of them as a member of its board of directors. At retirement,
he was an executive vice president and member of its board.
When Charlie joined Phillips, it had already embarked on an
aggressive expansion of its operation overseas. For several
years during his career, Charlie was the executive responsible
for most of the company's international operations.
He served as chairman of the Committee to Restore Old Main
and is a member of the National Development Council, the organization
that supports and advises the University of Arkansas fund-raising
programs, and the Campaign for the Twenty-First Century Steering
Committee. He serves as Co-Chair of the Fulbright College
Campaign Committee.
He has been honored by the University many times, receiving
an honorary doctor of laws degree, the Distinguished Alumni
Citation, and the Chancellor’s Volunteer Award . He has
also been named to the College of Engineering’s Hall
of Fame. Charlie considers being asked by then-Chancellor
Willard Gatewood to chair the committee to save Old Main one
of the greatest honors he received from his alma mater.
Faye Kittrell was raised on a family farm near Prairie Grove,
attended the University of Arkansas, reared three children
in Bartlesville, Okla., and managed to accompany Charlie on
32 of the 52 visits he made to other countries.
She has spent the past few years restoring her family's pre-Civil
War era home, The William Wilson House, which she inherited
in the early 1990s. The home, which was built by her great-grandfather,
became the subject of a book titled The Wilsons of Excelsior:
The Family, the Land and the House by Gary Battershell
with a foreword by Willard Gatewood.* The book chronicles
Faye’s family history, the changes in northwest Arkansas
over the past 100 years, and the actual restoration of the
home.
Faye has hosted a number of University-sponsored events and
family reunions at the restored Wilson House. Currently, she
spends most of her time being a traditional mother and grandmother
for her family, which is scattered around the world, from
Prairie Grove to London, England and Margaret River, Australia.
The Kittrells, who are charter and gold members of the Chancellor’s
Society and Towers of Old Main, have supported the College
of Engineering, the history department, the William J. Fulbright
Fund, and the Alumni House Campaign.
*Published by Phoenix International in Fayetteville www.phoenixbase.com
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Strabanger, Norway: Faye and Charlie Kittrell prepare
to helicopter to a Phillips oil and gas producing platform
in the North Sea.
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