Southern Nazarene University

Southern Nazarene University is the central institution around which Bethany was founded — the town and the university were planned together in 1909 as a community for the Church of the Nazarene. Today the campus has about 2,000 students and occupies a leafy oval of mid-20th-century brick buildings on the south side of Route 66.

The campus is open to visitors and pleasant to walk. The Royce Brown Auditorium and the Centennial Plaza are the main architectural landmarks. The Sawyer Center, a 5,000-seat indoor athletic arena, hosts the Crimson Storm basketball games. SNU's library is open to the public on weekdays, and the campus coffee shop is one of the few good places in town for a sit-down drink.

things to do sight
A story
Southern Nazarene University began in 1899 as the Texas Holiness University before being relocated to a treeless patch of central Oklahoma in 1908. The early college was so poor that students were paid in scrip rather than wages, and one early president lived in a tent on campus during construction.