At first glance, a recent string of successes at the University of Oregon may seem fundamentally unrelated: the launch of a data science major with about 50 students-double the projection. A landmark $4.7 million Mellon Foundation grant to examine environmental futures across various academic fields. New student startups in maternal health, sustainable skin care, digital currency, and more, all finalists in the Provost Innovation Challenge. The completion of a reimagined Hayward Field-outwardly, a gleaming symbol of UO excellence in sport, and inside, the home of world-class laboratories for studying human performance.
What ties them together? They exemplify a university that is drawing on its strengths to better serve the state, region, and world.
One of the principal architects of this idea-building on strengths to maximize service-is Patrick Phillips, who became provost in 2019.
The university's chief academic officer has launched a campus-wide effort to build on strengths in academia, with initiatives in data science, diversity, environment, innovation, and sport and wellness. The goal: enabling more of the knowledge and research generated in labs and classrooms to reach all Oregonians.
"We must move forward and be more than just the University of Oregon," Phillips says. "We must redouble our efforts to be a university for Oregon, and for our region and the world. We have an opportunity to draw together strengths in a wide variety of areas and think about how we can do both the internal work of the university and fulfill our mission as a public institution to make sure that we're contributing to a greater good."
A ROADMAP TO IMPACT
In an era of unprecedented competition, says Phillips, the best public universities must increase their contributions to society, their relevance to students, and academic collaboration on their campuses.
Backed by donor support, the provost's initiatives align research and scholarly strengths with student interests to enhance the UO's academic impact. They are founded on the commitment of the university to fulfill its mission as a public institution and address the problems of our time.
The Data Science initiative, which capitalizes on world-renowned faculty, will prepare students to understand data and chart careers relevant to the drive in the marketplace to make better decisions, faster. Faculty members are engaging with researchers statewide to leverage data science to address society's biggest challenges, from curing cancer to fighting global climate change.
With the Environment initiative, the university is responding to the crisis of climate change with a focus on interdisciplinary pursuits that meet the desires of an engaged student body and the higher calling of a public institution to help address societal ills.
With the Innovation initiative, the UO will build on its identity as a place where research is increasingly connected to impact, as exemplified by the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact. University researchers are developing new ways to expand the role of the UO as a major driver of economic activity in the state.
The Sport and Wellness initiative will build on research in healthy living and environmental quality to help residents of the state live longer, healthier lives, while applying professional expertise to the state's important sports product industry.
Spurred by last year's upswelling of awareness of racial injustice, the Diversity initiative is an affirmation of the UO's intent to use research and funding to address the complex realities of racial inequity. This includes long-simmering tensions around the experience of underrepresented groups in majority-white Oregon, according to Phillips.
"Last year's events-with all the lives lost, the pandemic's disproportionate impact on BIPoC communities, and the polarizing election cycle-advanced our desire to be an antiracist campus," he says. "All of these pushed us to ask ourselves: What's our role as an institution to not only be antiracist in how we conduct ourselves, but in how we are bringing our scholarly and educational work to bear on making our communities antiracist?"
