University of Oregon



The University of Oregon (UO) is a public, coeducational research university in Eugene, Oregon, United States. The second-oldest public university in the state, UO was founded in 1876 and graduated its first class two years later. The University of Oregon is one of sixty members of the Association of American Universities. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Oregon as a "very high research activity" university. Richard W. Lariviere is the current president of the university.

History
The Oregon State Legislature established the university on October 12, 1872 despite the new state's funding woes. The residents of Eugene struggled to help finance the institution, holding numerous fundraising events such as strawberry festivals, church socials, and produce sales. The doors officially opened in 1876, with Deady Hall its sole building. The first year of enrollment contained 155 students taught by five faculty members. The first graduating class was in 1878, graduating five students. In 1881, the university was nearly closed, over $8,000 in debt before Henry Villard donated $7,000 toward the payment of the debt.

During Prince Lucien Campbell's tenure as president from 1902 to 1925, the university experienced tremendous growth compared to its early years. The budget, enrollment, facilities, and faculty members all grew several times its amount prior to his presidency. Numerous schools were also established during his tenure, including the School of Music in 1902, the School of Education in 1910, the School of Architecture and College of Business in 1914, the School of Law in 1915, the School of Journalism in 1916, and the School of Health and Physical Education in 1920. However, the University of Oregon lost its School of Engineering to Oregon Agricultural College, now known as Oregon State University.

The Zorn-MacPherson Bill in 1932 proposed that the University of Oregon and Oregon State College (now "University"), to be merged into one university. The bill lost in a landslide vote of over 6 to 1. The University of Oregon Medical School, originally founded in 1887 in Portland and merged with Willamette University's program in 1913, officially became an independent institution in 1974 known as Oregon Health Sciences University.

With financial support from the state dwindling from 40% to 13% of the university budget, in January 2001, University President Dave Frohnmayer began Campaign Oregon with the goal of raising $600 million by December 2008, the greatest philanthropic fundraising campaign in the history of the state of Oregon. With total contributions exceeding $100 million from benefactors such as Phil Knight and Lorry I. Lokey, the campaign goal was exceeded by over $253 million.

Richard W. Lariviere is the current president of the university. He was a former provost at the University of Kansas and replaced David B. Frohnmayer on July 1, 2009. Lariviere received a salary of $414,397 in 2009.

Colleges and schools
The University of Oregon is organized into eight schools and colleges—six professional schools and colleges, an Arts and Sciences College and an Honors College.

School of Architecture and Allied Arts
The School of Architecture and Allied Arts (called "triple-A" or "AAA") was founded by Ellis F. Lawrence in 1914. The school offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture, art, including digital arts, arts and administration, art history, historic preservation, interior architecture, landscape architecture, and planning, public policy and management, and product design. The school also offers an architectural program, digital arts program, and product design program in Portland, Oregon.

The school offers the only accredited degree in architecture, landscape architecture, and interior architecture in Oregon. The National Architectural Accrediting Board accredits both the undergraduate bachelor of architecture five-year degree and the master of architecture. Other nationally accredited degrees include the planning and public administration, landscape architecture, and interior architecture programs. The undergraduate architecture program is consistently ranked among the highest in the country, and is currently ranked as the #1 public program for "Sustainable Design Practice and Principles" by DesignIntelligence magazine.

College of Arts and Sciences
The College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) covers a large array of departments in the arts and sciences. The creative writing graduate program is nationally recognized as being among the best in the nation—fewer than two percent are admitted out of 700+ applicants each year.

Charles H. Lundquist College of Business
The Charles H. Lundquist College of Business (LCB) was founded in 1884 and offers courses in fields such as accounting, decision sciences, entrepreneurship, finance, management, and marketing. It is also home to the University of Oregon Investment Group and the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center, one of the first programs to offer an M.B.A. in sports business and is noted as having the best sports business and marketing programs in the nation. Each year, the college's Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship presents the New Venture Championship, an investment competition for graduate students that draws competitors from all over the world. The College is housed in the Lillis Business Complex. The college's current dean is Cornelis A. “Kees” de Kluyver, who is himself an alumnus, having earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing and a master of business administration degree from the University of Oregon. Dean de Kluyver assumed his duties on September 1, 2010, taking over from Dennis Howard, who completed a two-year appointment.

College of Education
The College of Education was established in 1896 as a branch of the Department of Philosophy and later merged with the Department of Science and Arts in 1900. It wasn't until 1910 that the School of Education was established as an independent college. In 1908, this college was accredited by the Northwest Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. According to the U.S. News & World Report 2009 edition of "America’s Best Graduate Schools," the College of Education ranked 4th overall and 1st among public universities. For the 4th consecutive year, the UO special education program ranked third in the nation.

Robert D. Clark Honors College
The Clark Honors College is a small college intended to complement the existing majors already in place at the university by joining select students and faculty for a low student to teacher ratio (25:1 maximum). Admitted students in 2005 held a mean unweighted GPA of 3.93 and a mean SAT score of 1355 (out of 1600).

School of Journalism and Communication
The School of Journalism and Communication is one of the oldest journalism schools in the United States, beginning as a department in 1912 and later becoming a professional school 1916, receiving accreditation from the Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. It currently runs Flux magazine, a student-produced, award-winning publication. Eight of the nine Pulitzer Prize winners from the University of Oregon graduated from the School of Journalism and Communication. It also awards the annual Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism.

School of Law
The School of Law was formed in 1884 in Portland and relocated to Eugene in 1915. It was admitted into the Association of American Law Schools in 1919 and received accreditation from the American Bar Association in 1923.

School of Music and Dance
The School of Music and Dance was initially just the Department of Music in 1886, and developed into the School of Music in 1900. It was admitted to the National Association of Schools of Music in 1928. The school offers over 20 ensembles in vocal and instrumental music, giving approximately 200 public performances a year. Renamed in 2006, the MarAbel B. Frohnmayer Music Building is the physical home of the school, named after former University of Oregon President Frohnmayer's mother, a 1932 alumna of the School. Beall Concert Hall, the primary performance hall within the school, was designed by Ellis F. Lawrence.

Library system
The multi-branch University of Oregon Libraries serves the campus with library collections, instruction and reference, and a wide variety of educational technology and media services. The UO is Oregon's only member of the Association of Research Libraries. The main branch, Knight Library, houses humanities and social sciences, Learning Commons, Music Services, Government Publications, Maps and Aerial Photos, Special Collections & University Archives, Media Services, the Center for Educational Technologies, and a Cinema Studies lab to be available in Winter 2010. Other branch locations are the Architecture and Allied Arts Library, the John E. Jaqua Law Library, the Science Library, the Mathematics Library, the Portland Library & Learning Commons, and the Loyd & Dorothy Rippey Library at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology.

The UO Libraries hosts Scholars' Bank, an open access (OA) digital repository created to capture, distribute and preserve the intellectual output of the University of Oregon. Scholars' Bank uses the open-source DSpace software developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Hewlett-Packard.

The Libraries' Educational Video Group maintains the UO Channel, which uses streaming media to provide access to campus lectures, interviews, performances, symposia, and documentary productions.

The UO is the founding member and host of the Orbis-Cascade Alliance, a consortium of academic and research libraries in Oregon and Washington. The combined collections of the Alliance exceed 20 million volumes and can be searched via the Summit union catalog.

Oregon Bach Festival
The UO is the home of the Oregon Bach Festival, a donor-supported program of the University and the only major music festival affiliated with an American university. Founded in 1970 by German conductor Helmuth Rilling and UO professor (and past president of the American Choral Directors Association) Royce Saltzman, the festival has grown into an international program that draws hundreds of musicians and over 40,000 attendees annually. The festival's focus is choral and orchestral music, and it hosts a professional choir and orchestra each year to perform major works by Bach and other composers; it also sponsors a master class in conducting that draws participants from around the world.

The festival has presented such artists as Frederica von Stade, Bobby McFerrin, Garrison Keillor, and Thomas Quasthoff, who made his American debut in Eugene in 1995. The festival actively commissions and premieres new choral-orchestra works, including pieces by Arvo Pärt, Osvaldo Golijov, and Tan Dun. A Bach Festival recording of the world-premiere performance of Krzyztof Penderecki's Credo won the 2001 Grammy Award for best choral performance. 

Campus
The campus is spread over 295 acre and holds sixty major buildings, as well as providing a home for more than 500 varieties of trees. Eugene is located near many prominent geographic features such as the Willamette River, Cascade Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Also within a two-hour drive is the Portland metropolitan area.

Based on Ellis F. Lawrence's vision, many of the University's buildings are planned around several major quadrangles, many of which abut the 13th Avenue pedestrian mall. The university is known for being the site of a pioneering participatory planning experiment known as the Oregon Experiment, which is also the subject of a book of the same name that evolved into the well known book A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. The two major principles of the project are that buildings should be designed, in part, by the people who will ultimately use them with the help of an "architect facilitator", and that construction should occur over many small projects as opposed to a few large ones.

Although academic buildings are spread throughout the campus, the majority are located along East 13th Avenue, with heavy pedestrian traffic at the intersection with Kincaid Street. Student recreation and union centers are located toward the center of the campus, with residence halls on the east side of campus. Sports facilities are grouped in the southern-central part of campus with the Autzen Stadium complex across the Willamette River. The university also owns and/or operates several satellite facilities, including a large facility in the White Stag Block of downtown Portland.

There has also been a push for sustainable buildings on campus with a development plan that requires any new building or renovation to incorporate sustainable design. The Lillis Business Complex was the catalyst for the policy. The building, completed in 2003 has earned a LEED Silver rating, the highest rating of any college business building in the United States.

Old campus and memorial quad


The oldest section of campus is located in the northwest area of the current campus. The university’s first building, Deady Hall, opened on October 16, 1876, when the University had an enrollment of 177 students. It was originally known as “the building” before being named after Judge Matthew Deady in 1893. The second building on campus is known as Villard Hall and is home to the Theater Arts and Comparative Literature Departments. Completed in 1886, the hall was named after railroad magnate Henry Villard, who provided financial aid to the university in 1881. Before its naming, it was known as “the new building.” Both Deady and Villard Halls were designated National Historic Landmarks in 1977.

Just south of Old Campus is the Memorial Quad, which runs north and south along Kincaid Street, capped at both ends by the main campus library, Knight Library, on the south side, and the Lillis Business Complex on the north. It is flanked on the west by the tallest building on campus, Prince Lucien Campbell Hall, also known as “PLC,” and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art on the east, which was remodeled and reopened on January 23, 2005. Also adjacent to Memorial Quad is Chapman Hall, which houses the Robert D. Clark Honors College on its third floor.

Central campus
The center of campus houses a mixture of academic buildings, an administration building, and student recreation buildings. Just to the east of Memorial Quad, facing 13th Avenue is Johnson Hall where offices for higher administration and trustee offices are found, including the offices of the University President. Directly across 13th Avenue, facing Johnson Hall is the Pioneer statue, a likeness of a bearded, buckskin-clad pioneer cast in bronze by sculptor Alexander Phimister Proctor in 1919. In 1932, Proctor's "Pioneer Mother" statue was dedicated in the Women's Memorial Quadrangle on the other side of Johnson Hall; the two statues are aligned so that they can "see" one another through the large windows of the hall's main floor.

Lawrence Hall is located at the end of hardscape walkway, directly north of the intersection of 13th Avenue and University Street. It houses the School of Architecture and Allied Arts and is named after its first Dean, Ellis F. Lawrence in 1957. Allen Hall, opened in 1954, is located adjacent to Lawrence Hall and houses the School of Journalism and Communication.

The Erb Memorial Union is the student union, which provides many various student life amenities and sits on the southeast corner of 13th and University. It contains a food court, restaurants and cafes, a post office, student groups, meeting rooms and performance spaces, the campus radio station 88.1 KWVA, and offices for administration.

South of the Erb Memorial Union across a small quad is the Student Recreational Center which is an exercise and recreation facility. It includes fitness equipment, rock climbing walls, a swimming pool, racquetball courts, an indoor elevated running track and basketball courts. Covered tennis courts and several turf fields, and outdoor tennis courts within a running track are located near the recreation center.

Lorry I. Lokey Science Complex and east campus
The Lokey I. Lokey Science Complex comprises multiple science buildings to the east of Lawrence Hall, on the north side of 13th Avenue. Willamette Hall's Paul Olum Atrium is the center of the university's hard sciences complex. The construction of the $45.6 million additions of Willamette, Cascade, and Streisinger Halls to the complex was completed in 1989. Within the Lokey Science Complex are two facilities focused on integrative science. One is the Lokey Laboratories, which is a shared-use facility with state-of-the-art characterization instrumentation. Lokey Laboratories is associated with the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI) and was dedicated to Lorry I. Lokey on February 19, 2008 for his $25 million donation toward the project. It is located underground to minimize vibrations, beneath the quad between Heustis and Deschutes Halls. The other is the Lewis Integrative Science Building, which is currently under construction and is slated for completion by fall 2012.

East campus is the primary location for residence halls on campus. However, the north edge of east campus is the future home of the Alumni Center and the new basketball arena. At the north edge adjacent to the Lokey Science Complex is Oregon Hall, which houses administrative offices including the Office of the Registrar and Office of Admissions.

Carson Hall, located near the Erb Memorial Union, provides dining services along with dormitories. Just south is the Living-Learning Center, opened in 2006. It is a collection of functions including dormitories, classrooms, study areas, dining rooms, and recreational rooms to provide a single location for many student activities.

South campus
The center of south campus is where much of the on-campus athletic facilities reside. McArthur Court, the home of the Ducks basketball team, sits just south of the Recreation Center. Hayward Field, home to the Ducks track and field program, sits in the eastern area of the athletic facilities. It has hosted a number of prominent track and field events such as the US Track and Field Olympic Trials, the NCAA Track and Field Championships, and USATF Championships.

To the west of the athletic facilities lies Pioneer Cemetery and further west is where the current facilities for the College of Education exists, in the southwest corner of campus. The Education Annex and the Frohnmayer Music Center in the vicinity are expected to be completed in 2008. The Knight Law Center is located just opposite of Hayward Field in the southeast corner of campus. Also in the area are the Many Nations Longhouse and the Museum of Natural and Cultural History.

Other areas and satellites
The controversial Riverfront Research Park is a small facility maintained by the university, located across Franklin Boulevard from the main campus, next to the Willamette River. The park is used for creating new technologies, such as research about artificial intelligence at the Computational Intelligence Research Lab, and it is the home of the Zebrafish Information Network (ZFIN), the zebrafish model organism database. Local controversy has existed since before the development and approval of the site master plan by the City of Eugene in 1989. Controversy stems from the lack of citizen involvement in the planning process for the use of public lands, and the potential for multi-story office buildings and parking lots to replace open space, civic space, and wildlife habitat along the Willamette River. The University and Student Senates have each passed resolutions against construction on the banks of the Willamette River under the current development plan, yet plans for development persist. In March 2010, the issue of a conditional use permit extension for the Research Park was appealed to the Land Use Board of Appeals by a group of citizens, students, and faculty.

The complex for the Ducks football and baseball team is located north across the Willamette River. It includes the football stadium (Autzen Stadium),the baseball park (PK Park), an indoor practice football field (Moshofsky Center), an outdoor practice field (Kilkenny Field), and the Casanova Center which includes offices, the athletics Hall of Fame, locker rooms, weight rooms, a film review theater, and a treatment center.

The university also leases space in Old Town Portland in the White Stag Block. UO-Portland provides an urban study environment for the School of Architecture and Allied Arts, the School of Journalism and Communication, the School of Law, and the Lundquist College of Business. Additionally, the Division of Continuing Education, the Labor Education Resource Center, and the Department of Athletics have active offices there. The Duck Store has an outlet in the building.

University media
The University of Oregon has a diverse array of student-run and student-created media, including the Oregon Daily Emerald, Flux Magazine the Oregon Voice, the Oregon Commentator, the Insurgent, "Ethos Magazine", "Global Talk," and the "Comic Press."

The University is also home of two radio stations: KWAX and KWVA.

Athletics
The University of Oregon is a member of the Pacific-12 Conference and the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision of the NCAA. The athletic programs have garnered 14 NCAA team championships, as well as 60 NCAA individual champions in various track and field events. The two primary rivals of the Oregon Ducks football team are the Washington Huskies and the Oregon State Beavers. The football rivalry with Oregon State University, known as the "Civil War", is one of the nation's oldest. Every year, the two teams face off in the last game of the regular season. The two teams have faced each other nearly every year since 1894 with the exception of five years. Games were not held in 1900, 1901, 1911, 1943, and 1944.

The university competes in 14 sports: football, men’s and women’s basketball, cross country, track and field, baseball, softball, men’s and women’s tennis, men’s and women’s golf, women’s soccer, women’s lacrosse, women’s volleyball, and acrobatics & tumbling. This does not include club sports which competes at the Division I level in Rugby, Soccer, Rowing, and Waterpolo. As well as women's Division I club athletics in Rowing, Rugby, and Waterpolo.

With 12 NCAA championships between them, cross country and track and field are the two programs at the university that have enjoyed the most success. The programs have produced many world-class athletes including Steve Prefontaine and Alberto Salazar. Nike had been formed by the former track and field head coach Bill Bowerman and former University of Oregon track runner Phil Knight. The successes of the programs have given the name of Track Town, USA to Eugene.

Created in 1893, the football team played its first game in 1894 and won its first Rose Bowl in 1917 against the University of Pennsylvania. The 1938-39 men's basketball team, nicknamed the “Tall Firs,” won the first-ever NCAA basketball tournament by defeating Ohio State in the March 28, 1939 championship game.

Originally recognized as an official sport at the university in 1908, baseball was disbanded in 1981 due to concerns with Title IX. In 2007, the athletic director Patrick Kilkenny announced plans to reinstate baseball and to drop wrestling while adding women’s acrobatics & tumbling.

The mascot of the University of Oregon is the fighting duck. The popular Disney character Donald Duck has been the mascot for decades, thanks to a handshake agreement made between then-Athletic Director Leo Harris and Walt Disney in 1947. The mascot has been challenged more than a few times in its lifetime. The first came in 1966 when Walt Disney died and the company realized there was no formal contract written for the use of Donald’s image. A formal contract was written up in 1973. Potential heirs "Mallard Drake" and "Mandrake" challenged Donald’s position in 1978 and 2003 respectively, but both were unpopular and discontinued.

The fight song is ‘’Mighty Oregon," written by student Albert Perfect and professor John DeWitt Gilbert in 1916. It has undergone several changes since its original performance.

ASUO
The Associated Students of the University of Oregon (ASUO) is the student government at the University of Oregon. It is a non-profit organization funded by the University of Oregon. Its purpose is to provide for the social, cultural, educational and physical development of its members, and for the advancement of their individual and collective interests both within and without the University. The ASUO is the student government and is run by students for students and works on campus, city, state, and federal-level campaigns. Membership consists of all students at the University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, who have paid the current term or semester student incidental fee.

EMU Board of Directors
The Erb Memorial Union Board of Directors is responsible for making general policy decisions and long-range plans for the operation of the EMU. The board allocates the EMU's multi-million dollar budget, assigns space for student groups and advises staff in the management of the EMU. The sixteen-member Board consists of twelve students (seven elected in a campus-wide election and five direct appointments from either EMU programs or the ASUO), three faculty members appointed by the University of Oregon President and one EMU staff member elected by their peers.

Every fiscal year, the EMU Board prepares a benchmark increase to the ASUO Senate for approval. After the benchmark process, the EMU presents its final budget to the Senate, requesting a decrease, increase, or no change in Incidental Fees to be allocated to the EMU. If the budget request is approved, the budget must be signed by the ASUO President and then the UO President. Unlike the budget process, any general policy decisions by the EMU Board do not require Senate oversight or approval.

Forensics
In addition to its athletic teams, the university also has a competitive intercollegiate Speech and Debate team. The University of Oregon Forensics program was founded in 1876, at the same time as the university. Initially the program consisted of two student-formed forensic societies, which developed into "doughnut league" inter-dorm competitions in the 1890s. In 1891, the UO began intercollegiate competition. Forensics continued to grow as a staple of the university's community and by 1911, the team was so successful that it began charging admission to debates. Money raised during these events was often donated to the fledgling University of Oregon football program.

Parliamentary debate was integrated into UO Forensics in 1998-99 and the team has been competitive since. In 2001, the UO's Alan Tauber and Heidi Ford claimed a national title, winning the first ever National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence (NPTE). As of 2007, the team is coached by Aaron Donaldson, who debated for Carroll College 1999-2003, and Luke Landry, who won the 2007 NPTE while debating for William Jewell College. In the 2006-2007 season, the team won first place in the Northwest Forensics Conference's overall sweepstakes, due to regularly strong showings in both individual events and parliamentary debate.

In film
The film National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) was filmed on the university campus and the surrounding area. The building used as the exterior of the Delta House (which belonged to the University of Oregon Phi Sigma Kappa chapter) was demolished in 1986, but the interior scenes were shot in the Sigma Nu house, which still stands today. The Omega house belongs to the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and still stands today. The sorority house where Bluto climbs the ladder to peek in on the coeds was actually the exterior of the Sigma Nu fraternity. Other buildings that were used during filming include Johnson Hall, Gerlinger Hall, Fenton Hall, Carson Hall, and the Erb Memorial Union (EMU). The EMU dining facility known as "The Fishbowl" was the site of the famous food-fight scene. The Knight Library and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art can also be seen in the movie.

Other films shot at the university include Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), Five Easy Pieces (1970), How to Beat the High Cost of Living (1980), Personal Best (1982), Stand By Me (1986) (shot primarily in nearby Brownsville, Oregon), and Without Limits'' (1998).