Letter from UO President Frohnmayer to the UO Community September 24, 2007

September, 24, 2007

"No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace, as I have seen in one autumnal face." John Donne (1573-1631) Elegies

Dear Colleagues:

For many, spring suggests new life that takes full bloom in summer only to begin to fade in autumn. But those of us who have chosen the educator's calling greet each fall as a new beginning. So the poet's insight reminds me of our shared renewal of professional energies that accompany autumn's crisp air, nature's changing colors, the arrival on campus of students and colleagues, and the anticipated return to teaching, advising and mentoring. This fall these joyous feelings of renewal and anticipation are buoyed further for me by my awareness that we stand poised as an academic community to make decisions that will affect the shape of higher education in this state for the next half century. The confluence of a legislative session that reversed disinvestment in higher education, and a record-setting campaign for private funding provides us with rare opportunities to define the future of the University of Oregon for generations.

In July, Senior Vice President and Provost Linda Brady and I received the final report on our decennial accreditation review from the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. We had approached our self-study in a distinctive way. As an institution, we asked, "How do we maintain the attributes and qualities that place us among the membership of the prestigious AAU in the face of the continuous budget challenges of recent years?" We received a strong and affirmative review which praised our strategy for the study and commended our dedication, priorities, and progress. I want to again thank those many faculty and staff who labored so hard and effectively on our self-study. This work will form a part of the basis for new academic planning initiatives being initiated and led by Provost Brady. Such academic planning will position the university to couple world-class research with distinctive individual attention to student learning at both the undergraduate and graduate level.

During this summer, we unofficially surpassed the historic $600 million goal for Campaign Oregon, the largest fund raising effort ever pursued in this state. An astonishing $100 million pledge ensures that intercollegiate athletics will be self-sustaining. That gift has brought a stream of accolades from my colleagues around the nation who see the significance of the University of Oregon as one of only 17 institutions in the country that does not devote general university funding to intercollegiate athletics. Even before this splendid gift, Campaign Oregon was on track to exceed our very ambitious goals, setting records for academic fundraising along the way. Our fundraising efforts will not flag; indeed, they have been energized even further. We still have vital internal campaign targets for faculty support, program enhancement and student scholarships. These cornerstones of our campaign are at the top of the list as we talk with alumni, donors, and friends. We take seriously our campaign motto: "Transforming Lives."

Late in the summer, I shared with university leaders a review of the last decade of facilities construction and expansion on this campus. The total is $480 millionÑnearly a half-billionÑof present or immediately planned construction, with more than half of the funds coming from philanthropic sources. Slightly more than three fourths of that massive construction effort has been for facilities directly related to academic or student uses. I hope you rejoice, as do I, in the pending groundbreaking for the College of Education complex, the halfway point in the School of Music's doubling of its facility size, and the dedication in the next few weeks of the magnificent underground Integrated Science Complex.

Remarkably, this decade of enhancement of our physical facilities only heralds further opportunities. With legislative support to match private giving for capital construction, we are in a position to plan facilities that will measurably shape the future of the university and the community. With thoughtful faculty leadership, we have developed a housing plan that will strengthen and enhance our residential character. While keeping commitments to our east campus neighbors, we have opportunities to plan a new east campus neighborhood that emphasizes our focus on undergraduate teaching and learning communities that further distinguish us as a major research university.

We will also need to begin a thoughtful conversation about the future use of the property now occupied by McArthur Court. Its central location makes it ideal to consider as a site for academic purposes and I am consulting with faculty leaders on how best to begin campus discussions of this topic. At meetings with all department heads, Chris Ramey, our campus architect, explicitly solicited "big ideas" from all faculty and staff for the next round of capital construction. I hope that each of you will take time to articulate your visions for our university.

Finally, I have also asked a small group from facilities and academic leadership to prepare recommendations addressing the critical needs in renovating our faculty offices and I expect a report on this pressing subject yet this fall.

The next year will bring additional challenges and opportunities. Even as we labor intensively over allocating this year's resources among pressing priorities such as salary enhancement, graduate student support and infrastructure build-back, we will be working with the executive and the legislative branches to be certain that renewed commitments to higher education recognize our distinctive institutional mission and programs. We have continuing work to do within the OUS system to make certain that our critical role as Oregon's only AAU institution is reflected more fully in system-wide funding distributions. One specific example of success is in our recent technology transfer efforts. We set a new UO record in FY 2007 with $5.1 million in technology transfer revenue; our three new startups tie our former record; and the 45 invention disclosures tie our second highest performance.

We now stand just nine months ahead of a remarkable opportunity to showcase our University and our community. The 2008 Olympic trials will literally bring the world to our doorstep. The phrase that "the road to Beijing is through Eugene" could describe the specific steps to Olympic competition. Or perhaps it provides an inspiring metaphor for the role that our university can play in a new international community.

I am sure that you, too, begin this year with a sense of autumnal anticipation. I seek your participation in planning our bright future and, as always, I look forward to all forms of dialogueÑincluding e-mail at pres@uoregon.eduÑwith each of you.

Please know that you each begin this new year of discovery, teaching and learning with my very best wishes and my deep appreciation.

Sincerely,

Dave Frohnmayer President