Riding the leading edge
Private gifts keep, attract world-class faculty members
Riding the leading edge of brain research used to mean climbing aboard an airplane
for Helen Neville, a University of Oregon psychology professor and one of the nation’s top brain researchers.
Neville, who joined the UO Department of Psychology faculty in 1995, found it difficult to do her research because she had to travel to Washington, D.C., and other locations several times a year to gain access to a powerful magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine that can take pictures of the functioning human brain. Most such machines were located in hospitals and were also used for hospital patients.
A $10 million gift from Robert and Beverly Lewis in 2001 changed Neville’s life and the future of brain research at the University of Oregon. The gift established the Robert and Beverly Lewis Center for Neuroimaging to house a new MRI machine devoted to university research. In 2007, Beverly Lewis committed an additional $13.67 million for a new integrative science building and an endowment for the neuroimaging center.
“The Lewis family made it possible for us to have our own brain imaging facility at the University of Oregon,” says Neville. “Private gifts have made the University of Oregon one of the leaders in the study of the developing brain.”
The Lewis gift also created an endowed chair in psychology and neuroscience that Neville now holds. It’s one of thirty-five new endowed chairs and professorships established by donors during the university’s recently concluded capital campaign, which raised a record-breaking $853 million, including more than $106 million for faculty support, while also funding numerous new and renovated academic facilities.
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Neville’s case is just one example of how Campaign Oregon: Transforming Lives has enabled the University of Oregon to recruit, retain, and equip world-class faculty members.
“What this means is that I can pursue my dream of going out into the community and bringing the knowledge that we’ve learned about human brain development to bear on fundamental questions of how to educate our children,” says Neville, whose research focuses on the interactions of genetics and experience on the development of the brain.