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Schill calls meeting on UO’s research enterprise and impact on society

Dear Campus Community,

The fall academic term is off to a fantastic start. I am proud to have welcomed to the University of Oregon our most diverse class of students ever, dozens of exceptional new faculty and staff members, and many additional graduate students—in addition to welcoming back our existing family of outstanding students, faculty, and staff members.

Last year at this time, I announced the Oregon Commitment to expand student access and increase on-time graduation. I am very excited that this initiative is off to an excellent start. Already we have seen an increase in the percentage of our students taking 15 credits or more. This is just one of our university’s accomplishments and just the beginning of how we will realize our aspiration for the University of Oregon.

It is time again to look to the future. I am eager to tell you about our latest hopes for our university related specifically to how we will enhance our research enterprise and accelerate our impact on society. 

I invite you to join me at 8:45 a.m. on Tuesday, October 18, in the Giustina Ballroom of the Ford Alumni Center for what I hope will be an exciting discussion.

Sincerely,

Michael H. Schill

President and Professor of Law

5 Comments

  1. honest Uncle Bernie 10/11/2016

    Ah, our impact on society. Sounds like the new campaign to sell “translational research.” I guess “applied research” didn’t cut it, hardly visionary sounding.

    Word in the inner sanctum of the celebrated faculty
    lounge is that a certain would-be Colossal Donor is holding back because UO just doesn’t have a suitably inspiring research “vision.”

    Time for our wannabe pres superstar, to start bringing home the lamb chops for all those bucks that UO agreed to pay him.

    And don’t forget about the coming PERS expenses.

    I guess tuition relief will not likely be part of the agenda.

  2. Hippo 10/11/2016

    Alas, the problem in many fields (departments) is that the incentive structure enforced throughout this (and most) Universities make “research enterprise” and “impact on society” orthogonal goals. You want to publish esoteric results in prestige journals as defined by narrowly focused department peers? Great, we love that. You want to invest in potentially higher relevance interdisciplinary work outside the scope of narrowly focused department peers? Terrible, we hate that (although deans and up love saying “interdisciplinary”). Even worse, you want to communicate to a wider public: don’t waste your time on non-research activities!

  3. Dog 10/11/2016

    Agree entirely with Hippo here – publishing in the Journal of Incremental Knowledge completely trumps outreach and interdisciplinarity – we are rewarded for the former (tenure, recognition, pay raises for number of incremental papers published, etc) and are definitely not encouraged or rewarded for doing the latter (and sometimes penalized)

    Orthogonal = ass backwards in my view

  4. zach V 10/18/2016

    I was checking in to see any reaction about the proposal to let UO screw around in the stock market. It is amazing how the RG hands everything to that one super-reporter who dummies down all issues into the cutest disgusting duck treats.

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