The Associated Press

TULSA, Okla. — A trustee of Oral Roberts University and his wife have given a $1 million gift to the school’s scholarship fund that, when matched through a fundraising campaign, will whittle its debt from more than $50 million to around $2.5 million, school officials said Thursday.

The gift was made Wednesday at the evangelical school’s board of trustees meeting by Michael Hammer, chairman and CEO of the Armand Hammer Foundation and grandson of the late industrialist Armand Hammer.

“God is doing some amazing things at Oral Roberts University and it truly is the best time to give to the university,” Hammer said in a statement Thursday. “We are overjoyed to provide the opportunity for more students to attend ORU and receive an outstanding, whole-person education.”

Hammer gave to the school’s Whole Person Scholarship fund, where contributions are matched dollar for dollar by the family of billionaire Oklahoma City businessman Mart Green, heir to the Hobby Lobby craft store fortune.

Green took the reins as trustees chairman of the financially struggling school last year after his family donated $70 million. His family’s scholarship fund will match gifts up to $4 million a year over the next four years.

After the first match, the now-$2 million gift will be again matched through the school’s Renewing the Vision campaign, which was launched last year and has collected about $21.5 million in cash and pledges from nearly 15,000 people and groups.

The result: the school’s debt will be reduced to around $2.5 million, officials estimated Thursday.

“This gift not only provides us the ability to attract the best whole-person students from around the world, but, because of the match by the Board of Trustees, it also allows us to bring the university debt down that much closer to zero,” Mart Green said Thursday. “This all helps strengthen ORU financially for the future.”

Since 2007, the Tulsa-based school, known for its 60-foot-high bronze sculpture of praying hands, has slowly emerged from a financial scandal that tarnished its reputation.

The university’s former president, televangelist Richard Roberts, stepped down in November 2007 amid allegations he and his wife, Lindsay, spent school money on home remodels, lavish vacations and shopping sprees at a time when the school was massively in debt. The couple have denied any wrongdoing.

He will be replaced by Mark Rutland, president at Southeastern University, a Christian liberal-arts college in Lakeland, Fla.

When Rutland takes over on July 1, it will mark the first time in the school’s history that its president will not have the surname of Roberts.

Earlier this week, Rutland pledged that ORU would be debt-free “very soon.”