College of Arts & Sciences

Sciences | Humanities | Social Sciences | General

Sciences

• Private gifts leveraged state bonds, federal grants, and industry investment for new equipment and facilities and major expansion of interdisciplinary research and teaching in the sciences. Here are a few examples:
• Lewis Center for Neuroimaging: Opened in 2002 in Straub Hall, the center houses the only functional magnetic resonance imaging machine in the Northwest devoted to basic research on the human brain.
• Lorry I. Lokey Laboratories: Houses the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute underground to shield instruments from vibration and allow the UO to collaborate with other Oregon universities to revolutionize the technology industry.
• Robert and Beverly Lewis Integrative Science Building: A $10 million gift from the Lewises will help launch construction of a $65-million, multi-story science building where professors and students will take interdisciplinary research and teaching to a new level. The five-to-six-story, 100,000-square-foot building will include expanded facilities for neurosciences, life sciences, geosciences, materials and physical sciences, and computational and information sciences.
• Environmental chamber: A gift to help fund a new environmental chamber that produces extremes of temperature, humidity, oxygen level, solar radiation, and human exertion helped propel UO environmental physiology studies to one of the top two or three programs in the country.

Faculty support

• Lorry Lokey’s generosity has also enabled us to retain two well-established senior faculty members and five rising faculty stars in brain research and to recruit four promising new faculty members in the sciences.
• Lorry I. Lokey Science Advancement and Graduate Education Initiative: About $55 million—part of the largest single academic donation in University of Oregon history—will dramatically transform science teaching and research at the UO. The gift includes $30 million for faculty support, $10 million for graduate student support, and $10 million for program support.
• Campaign donors funded seven new endowed chairs and professorships in the sciences.

Humanities

• The renovated James F. Miller Theater Complex expanded theater facilities for the first time since 1949 to add a new arena theater, replace the costume shop, expand the scene shop, and upgrade the Robinson Theatre.

• In 2004, Robert and Gloria Lee established a charitable trust and bequest that one day will fund the A. Kingsley Weatherhead Professorship of English, an endowed professorship in Shakespeare in the Department of English.

• Philip and Teresa Hansen Scholarship Fund and Graduate Scholarship Fund in German and Scandinavian: the first endowed scholarship funds in this department.

• Greenberg Judaic Studies Endowment: Originally created in 1998, this fund has been endowed through several distributions from the Greenberg estate totaling over $1.3 million.
• Ival McMains Philosophy Seminars Fund: created by Ival McMains in 2003, and augmented during the campaign, to support philosophy lectures, seminars and community and alumni outreach.

Social Sciences

• Rock 'N' J History Chair Endowment: established by Julie and Rocky Dixon in 2004 to provide support for a chair in the Department of History to focus on the study of history on Lewis and Clark and the opening of the West
• Spencer Brush History Faculty Endowment Fund: originally established in the late 1990s, the fund has been built up by alumnus Spencer Brush to more than $350,000 with several major gift commitments.

• Diana May Woodruff Scholarship in Sociology: established by Robert Woodruff in honor of his late wife, the scholarship is intended for outstanding graduate and upper-division undergraduate sociology majors with a particular interest in pursuing social work as a career. It was the first privately funded scholarship in sociology at the UO.

• James and Shirley Rippey Fund in Geographic Information Science: established to support the Department of Geography's Geographic Information Science initiatives and programs, including but not limited to support for GIScience instruction, research by faculty or graduate teaching fellows, and/or the director of the Infographics Laboratory.

General

• Thirty-four of the fifty-two recipients of Faculty Excellence Awards in 2006-2008 were from the College of Arts and Sciences.

• Rippey Society of College Scholars Endowment Fund: established to provide seed money and program funding for the Society of College Scholars Program, which brings about 250 top students together with prominent faculty in their freshman year, builds upon the existing Integrated Freshman Interest Groups and guides participants through each of their four years of education.
• Rippey College Scholars Scholarship Fund: established to support scholarships for students qualifying for and participating in the College Scholars program based on merit and financial need.