Campaign Oregon: Transforming Lives is the most important mission of my presidency. I wish I could spend a day or two talking with each of you to tell you why.

I would like to walk with you through our campus, pointing out what was, what is, and what can be, reminding you of the dedicated men and women who truly have changed lives—changed the world—from right here at the University of Oregon.

I would take you through the classrooms and laboratories where students are acquiring knowledge for careers that may not even have been invented yet, where talented professors are inspiring eager students, where researchers are unlocking the secrets of the human mind and the natural world.

This isn’t just CliffsNotes™ and coffee. It is a transforming experience—for students and the world they will shape.

I know I would be a very different person if it were not for the University of Oregon. I think many of you would say the same. The university transformed the lives of my parents, whose values and interests shaped my life and greatly enriched their community.

Because of his University of Oregon education, my father, the newborn son of a German immigrant who settled in Portland in 1906, was able to join a successful law firm in Medford and make a good life for his family. Because of her University of Oregon education, my mother was able to work as a music and English teacher at small rural Oregon schools before her marriage.

My parents instilled in me and my siblings not only a love of literature, music, and law but also a strong public service ethic. I grew up with a real sense that an individual can make a difference, and that, if you can, you should.

That is why I regard this campaign—which will raise $600 million or more in private gifts for the university—as the most important legacy of my UO presidency. The university is at a turning point. It is increasingly clear that, in the years to come, philanthropy will be the source of investment capital that will move us to new levels of distinction.

Transforming lives. I can think of no finer legacy that you and I can establish for future generations.