By 1907, Kendall College had produced only 27 collegiate graduates. The Tulsa Commercial Club saw opportunity. Its members assembled a bid: $100,000, 20 acres of real estate, and guarantees for utilities and streetcar service. The college packed up and moved to Tulsa, opening to 35 students in September 1907 -- two months before Oklahoma even became a state. First classes met at the First Presbyterian Church while permanent buildings went up. In 1918, the Methodist Church proposed building a rival institution, McFarlin College, funded by oilman Robert M. McFarlin. Rather than compete, the two merged in 1920 to form the University of Tulsa. McFarlin's name lives on in the university's library, while Henry Kendall's survives in the Kendall College of Arts and Sciences. The School of Petroleum Engineering opened in 1928, tying TU's fate directly to the commodity that was remaking the city around it.

The Great Depression nearly killed the university. By 1935, debt had climbed to $250,000, enrollment had fallen to 300 students -- many unable to pay tuition -- faculty morale was dismal, and closure seemed inevitable. Oil tycoon Waite Phillips intervened, offering the presidency to Clarence Isaiah 'Cy' Pontius, a former investment banker whose primary mission was financial rescue. Pontius delivered. Beyond stabilizing the books, he oversaw the creation of the College of Business Administration in 1935 and set TU on a trajectory toward the research institution it would become. The university has since produced 67 Goldwater Scholars, 3 Rhodes Scholars, and 28 Fulbright Scholars. Its alumni include Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, The Outsiders author S.E. Hinton, Golden Girls actress Rue McClanahan, radio legend Paul Harvey, and Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receiver Steve Largent.

Under TU's management, the Gilcrease Museum in northwest Tulsa holds the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of art and artifacts of the American West. The collection was assembled by Thomas Gilcrease, a Native American oilman and passionate art collector, and includes works by Frederic Remington, Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, and John James Audubon. The university's literary connections run equally deep. The James Joyce Quarterly has been published at TU for decades. Feminist pioneer Germaine Greer founded Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature while on the faculty. Russian poet and dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko taught at TU until his death in 2017. In 2016, TU partnered with the George Kaiser Family Foundation to house The Bob Dylan Archive, which found its permanent public home at the Bob Dylan Center nearby in 2022.

TU holds a peculiar distinction: it has the smallest undergraduate enrollment of any Football Bowl Subdivision school in the nation. The Golden Hurricane -- originally called the Golden Tornadoes -- compete in the American Athletic Conference across Division I. The football team has played in 16 bowl games, including two Sugar Bowls and an Orange Bowl. The men's basketball program reached the Elite Eight in 2000 and won the NIT championship twice. Women's golf has claimed four national titles. Southern Hills Country Club, adjacent to the university's part of town, has hosted seven men's major golf championships -- three U.S. Opens and five PGA Championships, most recently in 2022 -- making it one of only two courses to reach that total.

In 2002, TU became home to the first mosque built on an American university campus -- a notable milestone for an institution with Presbyterian roots. The university also hosts a Hillel International chapter for Jewish students and multiple Christian organizations spanning Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox traditions. This interfaith embrace reflects TU's evolution from a denominational school to a genuinely ecumenical institution designated by the NSA as a Center of Academic Excellence in both Information Assurance and Cyber Defense. The Collegiate Gothic campus, anchored by McFarlin Library and Kendall Hall, sits in the heart of Tulsa, its Gothic towers and quadrangles a deliberate architectural contrast to the oil derricks and art deco towers that define the surrounding cityscape.