Ottawa University (OU) is a private Baptist university with its main campus in Ottawa, Kansas, a second residential campus in Surprise, Arizona, and adult campuses in the Kansas City, Phoenix and Milwaukee metropolitan areas. It was founded in 1865 and is affiliated with the Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma and the American Baptist Churches USA. The residential campus in Ottawa has a student enrollment of more than 850 students, while the OUAZ campus in Surprise boasts more than 900. In total, Ottawa University serves more than 4,000 students across all of its campuses and online. History The origins of Ottawa University date back to the 1860s when Baptist missionaries established the First Baptist Church in the area that would eventually develop into Ottawa, which at the time was occupied by Native Americans. Elsewhere, Kansas Baptists had managed to charter an institute of higher learning that they were planning on calling the "Roger Williams University" after Roger Williams, the founder of the First Baptist Church in America. In the early 1860s, they were looking for a place to establish it and at the 1860 Baptist State Convention in Atchison, Kansas, Rev. John Tecumseh "Tauy" Jones made a case for the university coming to Ottawa; he proposed that the Baptists work with the Native Americans in the area, who had land that they might be willing to sell for the purpose of creating a college. After discussions with the Native Americanswho were amenable to the ideait was agreed that 20,000 acres of land would be set aside for the express purpose of constructing a college. On August 20, 1862, the first board of trustees (made up of four Native Americans and two white Baptists) met and decided to purchase 5,000 acres of the aforementioned land so as to establish a campus. In 1865, the name "Roger Williams University" was decommissioned and "Ottawa University" was adopted. Eventually, the campus was whittled down to about 640 acres. Rev. Isaac Smith Kalloch, a Baptist minister from New England, served as the first president from 1866 to 1868 and oversaw the construction of Tauy Jones Hall, the oldest surviving building on campus. Campuses The original campus, founded in 1865, is in Ottawa, Kansas. It is referred to as OU. A second residential campus opened in 2017 in Surprise, Arizona, and is referred to as OUAZ. In addition to the residential locations, OU has adult campuses in Overland