It is the third largest university in Oklahoma, with almost 13,000 students and approximately 430 full-time and 400 adjunct faculty.

It is home to the American branch of the British Academy of Contemporary Music in downtown Oklahoma City.

On October 1, 1891 Richard Thatcher was elected the 1st President of Territorial Normal School of Oklahoma.

The first class, a group of 23 students, met for the first time November 1, 1891, in the Epworth League Room, located in the unfurnished First Methodist Church.

On December 29, 1919, the State Board of Education passed a resolution making Central a four-year teachers’ college conferring bachelor's degrees.

According to the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, the school was routinely affected by state politics.

In 1950, President Max W. Chambers banned solicitations of campaign donations from faculty members.

[11] On March 11, 1941, Central State became part of a coordinated state system of post-secondary education overseen by the Oklahoma Regents for Higher Education, and joined institutions with similar missions as a regional institution.

"[13] The University of Central Oklahoma’s official coat of arms was created in 1966, when yearbook student editor Dorthy Forbes wanted to feature the visual design in the 75th anniversary of the Central State University yearbook.

When Forbes discovered there was no official coat of arms, four students serving on the yearbook staff, Donna Castle, Charles Tweed, Russ Lackey, and Forbes professionally designed a coat of arms and presented it to President Garland Godfrey, who approved the submission.

Since it opened, The Jazz Lab has won "Best Place for Live Music" multiple times in the Edmond Life & Leisure's Reader's Choice annual poll, and has been repeatedly won the award for The Best Live Music Venue in the Oklahoma Gazette's Best of OKC readers' poll.

UCentral television programming is available online at ucentralmedia.com and in the city of Edmond, Oklahoma on Cox Cable digital channel 125.

The Vista newspaper, founded in 1903, is distributed free of charge on the UCO campus and designated off-campus locations and also available online at ucentralmedia.com.