Letter from UO President Frohnmayer to the UO Community September 12, 2006

September 12, 2006

Dear Colleagues:

It is always a pleasure to write this letter of greeting to welcome newcomers to the campus and to greet once again those whose continuing service is a joy to observe. This lull between Labor Day and the return of our students is still a time of productivity and excitement. We are blessed by summer temperatures and the blooming flower baskets that have been a new gift early this summer from our dedicated facilities crew.

It is hard to accept the onset of shortened days and to anticipate that the glories of autumn will sometime give way to damper weather cycles. And it is still harder to imagine that the rhythms of an election-year cycle will come to some thunderous conclusion less than 60 days from now. We are reminded again that our fates are significantly affected by the governor's budget and state finances - the latter are the direct subject of several upcoming ballot measures on which we need to be informed and active voters.

For the first time in more than a dozen years, we have a new occupant in the provost's office. Dr. Linda Brady, with us since late spring, has placed special and deserved emphasis on maintaining and building the academic quality of this institution. This concern, always at the heart of our institutional identity, needs to be renewed and revitalized by periodic examination, and Dr. Brady has made this her highest priority, one which I support with both urgency and enthusiasm. Our academic quality is not something we can assume with smug complacency. It requires a standard of performance in which our expectations of quality must be matched by the personnel and productivity that prove that excellence in the eyes of our peers, our public, and our prospective students. Setting ambitious, even seemingly impossible, goals and then meeting or exceeding them is the business we are about.

The summer planning retreats with my own executive staff, with the academic deans, and shortly with the department heads and our university senate governance leaders all have had the enhancement of academic quality as a primary theme. I am pleased that the groundwork for our institutional conversation on this subject - one that is focused even more by this year's decennial accreditation visit - is well advanced. Summers have long since lost their reputation, if indeed that reputation was ever justified, as times of repose and reflection. My own summer involved extensive travel to Asia and the Pacific on university missions, and, closer to campus, engagement with our world-famous Oregon Bach Festival and the formal state visit of Princess Bajrakitiyabha Mahidol of Thailand, celebrating the 60 years of enlightened leadership of her grandfather King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The visible progress over summer in completing the Living Learning Center and the addition to our University Health and Counseling Center are the latest heartening evidence of our commitment to upgrade our facilities and services for our students.

The end of the fiscal year in June also showed us and our larger public that our ambitious fund-raising for Campaign Oregon is on schedule and that the productivity of our scholars continues to set new records. University of Oregon research is thriving. It feeds the state's economy, it expands the frontiers of knowledge and it offers ever expanding opportunities for students to develop the creative and organization skills that will help them become tomorrow's innovative leaders. UO research has reaped record amounts of external funding and is growing in visibility through the translation of inventions into spin-off companies and products that benefit our larger society. Since fiscal year 2001, research funding from external sources has increased by 67 percent, from $57.8 million to a record $96.5 million in 2006, an upward trajectory that few top-tier institutions can equal. Annual income from technology transfer increased from a few hundred thousand dollars in fiscal year 2000 to $4.3 million just six years later. The University of Oregon now ranks among the top American institutions in both technology transfer income and new start-up companies per research dollar. I congratulate our colleagues in a wide variety of disciplines who have contributed to this enormously positive social impact of our work.

On September 8, we dedicated formally a building in Portland devoted to yet another aspect of our social outreach. The University of Oregon Portland Center, in the former White Stag building, will collect sixteen different University of Oregon outreach functions in one historic and appealing locale and further develop our impact within the state's largest metropolitan center and beyond.

As I write, I am pleased with the strong early indications of a healthy enrollment and a diverse and talented student body from Oregon, the region, and the world. Our campus will be filled momentarily with dedicated returning students and eager new ones, ready for the challenges of the classroom, laboratory, studio, and the social and intellectual interactions that can be found only at a university of this special caliber. I expect that each of us will be occupied productively, both in the continuing challenges of the educational process and the emerging challenges shared with our larger society. These challenges include engagement with the implementation of our diversity plan in ways that give rise to healing and growth rather than division and conflict.

I conclude this greeting with words of gratitude, both to a specific person and to others more generally. In two years, the philanthropy of Oregon native and California entrepreneur Lorry Lokey has been nothing short of spectacular. The range of his knowledgeable engagement - from the School of Music to the College of Education to the Integrative Science effort to the well being of our faculty - has been breathtaking both in insight and in magnitude. When Mr. Lokey next visits campus with University Foundation trustees in November, I hope you have the opportunity to thank him.

My gratitude extends also to those who labor to make this the best university of its kind in the world. My Labor Day message to classified staff was pointed in this regard, but my appreciation extends to everyone who works to fulfill our mission. Despite the recent cynical efforts of out-of-state financed political groups to demean public employees, neither the work ethic nor the outstanding productivity of our faculty and staff can be denied. We have seen the positive consequences of your work in the lives of tens of thousands of students in recent years, and I know that ethic will carry you undaunted to even greater accomplishments this year and into the future. I am profoundly grateful for your dedication and hard work.

I remind those who may be new to our community that voter registration for the November election must be completed within the next few weeks. The ASUO will facilitate registration efforts among us for faculty and staff, as well as students. As always, I welcome your concerns and comments on any issue at pres@uoregon.edu.

Best regards,

Dave Frohnmayer President