Mary Pauline Lanoy, of Coalgate, has a passion for higher education and a love of the teaching profession.
It’s only fitting that the Lanoy name - to honor Pauline (who is known as Polly by family of friends) and her late husband Leon - will soon adorn the Education Building on the East Central University campus. The naming ceremony for the facility will be conducted on Tuesday, March 29.
A ribbon-cutting will take place at 9:30 a.m. in front of the building and a naming ceremony will soon follow at 9:40 a.m. Those are just a couple of the activities scheduled for the day as inductions for the Gene and Evelyn Keefer Educators’ Hall of Fame will follow at 10:35 a.m. in the Linscheid Library Atrium. The Education Department’s Scholarship Luncheon will be at 11:30 a.m. in the Stanley Wagner Ballroom of the Memorial Student Union and Education Career Day will take place at 1 p.m. in Foundation Hall of the Chickasaw Business and Conference Center.
Pauline and Leon, both alumni of ECU, dedicated more than 40 years of their lives to the education of young people in Oklahoma and Wyoming.
Pauline attended Horace Mann Training School while at ECU and spent most of her career as kindergarten through eighth grade classroom teacher in Wyoming. In later years, she taught home economics and library skills classes. In 2000, she was awarded the Wyoming Alpha Xi State Achievement Award.
Leon was a World War II veteran, 8th United States Army Airforce, 389th Bomb Group. He majored in mathematics and spent 37 years as an educator in Wyoming, serving as a bus driver, classroom teacher, volunteer coach, principal and superintendent. He passed away July 2, 2015, at the age of 93.
Both Leon and Pauline were inducted into the Keefer Educators’ Hall of Fame in 2009 and were recognized as ECU’s Distinguished Philanthropists in 2008.
The Lanoys have been generous with donations to the university and the ECU Foundation, Inc. The Leon and Pauline Lanoy Centennial Graduate Education Endowment is awarded to an ECU student each year.
Their belief is “Once a person's attitude is right, mapping out the step-by-step process to attain a goal can lead to success and can be attained no matter what the obstacles."
The Lanoy Education Building was remodeled and opened at the start of the 2015 fall semester. An innovative teaching center, installed with the latest technology, as well as tablets and robotics equipment for professional development for area teachers, education faculty and education students were added to the updated, state-of-the-art facility.
Other amenities include 13 classrooms with new technology, with short-throw projectors (which makes every whiteboard a smartboard), new speakers and new podiums. The building also features new seating in the computer lab, along with new faculty desks and office furniture. Additionally, three classrooms had additional monitors installed on the walls for better visibility of projected images and all classrooms have WiFi capabilities for use of mobile devices in the classroom.
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