Toward a Premier R1 Public

Research Confluences    |   PhD Programs: Operational Focus    |   Undergraduate Education: A Destination Strategy |   A Focused, Disciplined Strategy 

An Orienting Idea for the University of Oregon — A working draft · September 2026 

In the wake of President Scholz’s May 14, 2026, announcement that the University of Oregon faces a $65M structural budget deficit, we still have an obligation to advance and refine a vision of the University of Oregon as a premier public research university. In his message, the President named two principles that should animate our efforts.

We must: 1) offer undergraduate educational experiences that make the University of Oregon a destination of choice for more students and 2) advance distinctive research strengths. To refine the vision of the university even as we redress a $65M structural budget deficit will require discipline and focus. An orienting idea is needed to guide us toward the future we hope to create together:

The University of Oregon will be a public research university designed for human connection, animated by ambitious research concentrated in signature areas that push the boundaries of knowledge and enrich society, sustained by strong graduate programs, and enlivened by an undergraduate education rooted in distinctive learning experiences that lead to meaningful work and fulfilling lives. 

To offer the high quality, high engagement programs to which this vision aspires, the university must focus its educational and research scope. This document explores the possibilities this orienting idea opens for us. Organized by the three threads that tie the vision together—research, graduate programs, and the undergraduate educational experience—this is a working document designed to be further refined and developed in dialogue with the university community so a shared vision can inform the difficult budget decisions we have to make.  As a working document, the ideas developed here draw on and expand upon the Oregon Rising strategic plan.

The Humanities and the Arts at the Heart of the University 

The University of Oregon's commitment to the liberal arts is integral to our identity as a public research university. Within this tradition, the humanities and the arts play distinctive roles: they provide essential ways of thinking, questioning, interpreting, and creating that make interdisciplinary inquiry possible.  

The interdisciplinarity of the University’s research confluences springs, in part, from the humanities themselves. These fields ask foundational questions about what it means to be human, how societies understand themselves, how knowledge is created and contested, and what humanity needs to flourish.  

Through creative practice, performance, design, experimentation, interpretation, and embodied inquiry, the creative and performing arts generate distinctive forms of knowledge and explore questions that conventional analytical methods alone cannot fully address. They cultivate creativity, disciplined practice, collaboration, and the courage to imagine what does not yet exist. They also connect disciplines, communities, technologies, and ways of knowing, that foster innovation and deepen our understanding of the world. Together, the humanities and arts provide an intellectual and creative wellspring for the University’s research confluences, connecting questions of democracy, ethics, identity, culture, place, environment, health, performance, and sport.

The University of Oregon will not attempt to be comprehensive in every field. Instead, we will concentrate our investments in areas where we can achieve national distinction and where our strengths, geography, and history provide unique advantages. Research confluences name the signature areas of research where we at the University of Oregon aim to focus our ambition. Each is anchored by institutional infrastructure that already orients and organizes work across departments and interdisciplinary grants. The metaphor of confluence is adopted intentionally to evoke the way tributaries converge into rivers. The seven research confluences here draw on and expand upon the four signature research areas articulated in Oregon Rising, with the express intent to refine and further enhance the strong reputation the University has for cross-disciplinary and disciplinary research.  

We recognize that underpinning all the confluence areas are groundbreaking research and development in artificial intelligence (AI), computational science, data science and discovery along with advances in their responsible and ethical use. As these areas are rapidly changing and impacting almost every field of research and scholarship, the University of Oregon will intentionally weave them, as appropriate, into each confluence.

The confluences are meant to recognize that the way research at the University of Oregon spans a spectrum from the fundamental to the applied and extending into meaningful public impact. We aspire to pathbreaking collaborative research in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and the physical, biological, and mathematical sciences that pushes the boundaries of human understanding and has measurable positive impact on families, communities, our state, the nation and the world. 

While the confluences outlined below do not exhaust the full range of research pursued at the University of Oregon, they do point to the domains we will seek to strengthen and to the related PhD programs on which our investments will concentrate. The confluences offer us a shared understanding of the differentiating research strengths we have or need to develop. If our focus on these is to have credibility, we will also need to refine our approach to PhD education. These research confluences inform the tiered analysis of PhD programs in Part II.

1. Brain, Mental Health, Learning, and Prevention

Anchors: Biology, Psychology, The College of Education, Institute of Neuroscience (ION), Center for Translational Neuroscience, Prevention Science Institute (PSI), Knight Campus, The HEDCO Clinic, and the Ballmer Institute. 

Why this confluence? This confluence tackles some of the most pressing research of our time into the foundational biology underpinning human health and how to promote mental and physical health. This confluence includes the most scientists, the largest number of PhD students in Tier A programs and comprises the largest portion of federal research funding at the university. The philanthropic investment in the Ballmer Institute and Knight Campus also includes professional training in this confluence to undergraduates.

2. Biotechnology from Molecules to Therapeutics  

Anchors: Biology, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Bioengineering, Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB), ION, Knight Campus, Materials Science Institute (MSI) and Launch Oregon. 

Why this confluence? This theme advances outstanding UO strengths from discovery to translation in the molecular biosciences. The groundbreaking foundation and historical strengths and infrastructure at UO in fundamental science in genetics, genomics, molecular biology, developmental biology and biochemistry together with the material science in Chemistry/Physics/MSI and the molecular bioengineering in the Knight Campus present an opportunity to develop and advance this as a theme that moves from fundamental science to innovative application.

3. Global Citizenship, Democracy, and Information Ecology 

Anchors: School of Journalism and Communication, Law School, Political Science, Philosophy, Economics, School of Planning, Public Policy and Management, Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, the Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages, the Agora Journalism Center, the Center for Science Communication Research. 

Why this confluence? Communication is critical to public discourse. Information ecology is the interdisciplinary study of the creation, interaction, and use of information in complex human cultural environments. The University of Oregon has strengths in these areas according to citation trend data.  

Elevation of this theme provides us with an opportunity to support and integrate the work of the many faculty whose research focuses on global studies, science, technology, and society (STS) broadly understood, and the role of information and communication in democratic societies. 

4. Materials, Optics, and Emerging Technologies 

Anchors: Biology, Chemistry and Biochemistry, School of Computer and Data Sciences (SCDS), Bioengineering, MSI, Optical, Molecular and Quantum Science (OMQ), Oregon Advance Computing Institute for Science and Society (OACISS), Institute for Fundamental Science (IFS), Knight Campus Center for Biomedical Data Science (CBDS), Launch Oregon. 

Why this confluence? This theme promotes advanced materials and nanotechnology, quantum technologies, materials, sensing, semi-conductors & microelectronics, clean energy materials, cybersecurity, and the innovation of AI, computation and data science to advance research across confluences. 

This theme builds on our infrastructure for the semi-conductor industry including a UO’s partnership in an OSU-led NSF Frontiers of Advanced Semi-Conductor Technology (FAST) Regional Innovation Engine that includes over 100 partners across Oregon. 

5. Indigenous, Pacific, and Place-Based Arts and Humanities 

Anchors: Indigenous Race and Ethnic studies, Asian Studies, Anthropology, The College of Education, The Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages, the Northwest Indigenous Language Institute (NILI), the Northwest Native American Language Resource Center, Center for Asian and Pacific Studies (CAPS), the Oregon Humanities Center, Anthropology, and the Museum of Natural and Cultural History (MNCH). 

Why this confluence? It enhances and elevates UO’s strengths and reputation in the humanities and social sciences to deepen civic engagement and foster meaningful connections. 

UO's relationships with the nine federally recognized tribes of Oregon, the documentation work at NILI, the indigenous educator preparation occurring through the Sapsik’ʷałá  Education Program, and the Pacific Rim focus of our internationalization (see CAPS, and other programs housed under the Global Studies Institute) provide a base for this confluence. This is a confluence unique to Oregon, a mark of distinction from our peers. 

6. Earth, Environment, and Resilience 

Anchors: Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Biology, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Law School, Architecture, School of Planning, Public Policy and Management (PPPM), Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IE2), Oregon Institute of Marine Biology (OIMB), Oregon Hazards Lab, Institute for Resilient Organizations, Communities and Environments (IROCE), Tallwood Design Institute, Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center (CRESCENT), Center for Environmental Futures; Launch Oregon, and the Museum of Natural and Cultural History (MNCH). 

Why this confluence? This theme includes better warning systems for earthquakes and fire, environmental resilience and sustainable building and design. It involves a large number of UO faculty as it crosses multiple departments and colleges. It includes numerous and long-established state and federal partnerships. 

There is potential to build on our location in the Pacific Northwest, and undergraduate programs that touch on this theme include some fast-growing CAS Natural Sciences majors, and a national reputation in the Law School with the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center. The Tallwood Design Institute — a joint venture with Oregon State — leads the Oregon Mass Timber Innovation Engine, built on an NSF planning award and advanced as a national semifinalist for the Regional Innovation Engines program; place-based, externally funded, and translational.  

7. Human Health, Performance, and Sport 

Anchors: Human Physiology, Lundquist College of Business, Bowerman Sports Science Center, Sports Product Design and Management at UO Portland, College of Education, Law School, Physics, Psychology, Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, Knight Campus with ION/PSI/IMB cross-affiliations; School of Journalism & Communication, Launch Oregon, UO Athletics. Adjacent assets — the Olympic Studies Hub at LCB, the Oregon Sports History Program, GSUN participation — extend its reach. 

Why this confluence? This theme takes advantage of many existing programs and emerging initiatives as well as the UO’s international athletic reputation. 

Sport is already an attractor for students, and even faculty, so we should build on existing research strengths in this area so that our scholarly reputation aligns with our athletic reputation. The emerging Peak Oregon initiative advances this confluence on the research side, and a coordinated approach to undergraduate offerings in this area would make the University of Oregon a destination of choice for growing undergraduate interest in studying the science and culture of sports.   

The research confluences of the University of Oregon must be supported and enhanced by a portfolio of strong PhD programs. Strong is not a synonym for large — smallness paired with high publication rate, short time-to-degree, and external grant support can be the signature of a healthy doctoral apprenticeship program. In addition, strong PhD programs must be rooted in excellent disciplines and departments.

Tier A — Currently Strongest 

These programs will have the following properties. 

Metrics indicate program strength. Metrics to consider are: 

• Time to graduation 
• Recruitment success 
• Post-graduation placement 
• 5-year enrollment trends 
• Scholarly success of students: publications, awards, fellowships 
• Quality of the Associated Department or Interdisciplinary Research Area 
• They are supported by campus research infrastructure. 
• They have a strong external reputation. 
• They support the research confluences. 

Tier B — Can be strong with Intentional Investment 

These are programs where the trajectory or the underlying assets suggest focused investment could move the program substantially, and in a way that reinforces the research confluences.  

Possible investment paths include the following: 

• Strategic hiring aligned with a strength that itself aligns with one of the research confluences. 
• Investment aimed at lowering time to degree (for example research fellowship support). 
• Narrowing programs to subfields aligned with program strengths or one of the research confluences. 
• Reduce cohort to increase the quality of admitted students. 

Tier C — Candidates for Restructuring or Sunset 

Focus means we cannot do everything. Eliminating programs that don’t add to strategic strengths opens an opportunity for the involved faculty to put more effort into undergraduate research, scholarship and creative life. Some funding freed from the closure of PhD programs can be strategically invested in faculty support for research and creative activity.  

Strategies will include the following: 

• Consolidation of related PhD programs into a single, smaller program of higher quality. 
• Sunsetting PhD programs and turning faculty focus to undergraduate education and to scholarship. 
• Sunsetting PhD programs where there is a better market demand for professional master’s programs. 

The Signature PhD Set 

The confluences are concentrated for focus; the signature PhD set should be intentionally broader. It should include all Tier A programs plus selected Tier B programs central to UO's intellectual identity, AAU breadth, or strategic trajectory. The minimum number of PhDs we can graduate a year is 70 to remain a Carnegie R1 university. Over the last 5 years, we have averaged 214 PhD graduates, so we have some room for consolidation and refined focus. We also need to sustain deliberate breadth to advance and develop the strengths we have in the humanities and social sciences.

The Student Success and Enrollment Management (SSEM) Fall 2026 Structural Picture suggests that yield compression and competitive growth will continue to exert pressure on undergraduate enrollments. California, Colorado, Utah, and Washington are running deliberate non-resident growth strategies, and the demographic decline is now reaching Oregon and California simultaneously. As the President’s May 14 message makes clear, in response we need to invest in differentiating research strengths, and in the undergraduate student educational experience that makes UO a destination of choice. The destination strategy at the undergraduate level will need to be framed in a way that identifies and builds characteristics of the UO undergraduate experience that appeal to potential students and parents.  

Distinctiveness as a Competitive Position 

Distinctiveness must be a cornerstone of UO’s strategy. This will also need to be augmented by investments in signature undergraduate majors that others might have, but that we also do well. Below, we identify programs outside of majors that might prove attractive to potential students as we enhance their visibility and, possibly, our support. Two directions are suggested for further exploration: “Study Sport at Oregon” and a Core Ed Pilot that might be worth pursuing. 

Programs Outside of Majors 

Below are programs generally outside of majors that can be part of a strategy to draw undergraduate students to the University of Oregon.

A “Study Sport at Oregon” Strategy 

Oregon’s assets for the study of sport are exceptional and, unlike most distinctiveness strategies, already nationally legible—Hayward Field and the Bowerman legacy, the birthplace of Nike, a founding seat in the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, and the nation’s first sports-business center and the first Olympic Studies center. But they are dispersed across units rather than gathered into a single, visible pathway. A “Study Sport at Oregon” undergraduate-focused strategy would connect what already exists into one cross-unit experience built around four pathways:  

Sport and business: Students can explore how sport is marketed, managed, financed, branded, and grown through business, entrepreneurship, advertising, public relations, journalism, economics, and product design.

Sport and society: Coursework in journalism, media studies, sociology, history, anthropology, ethnic studies, political science, and related fields allows students to examine how sport shapes culture, identity, communities, media, and public life. 

Sport and design: Product design, art and technology, art, architecture, environmental design, and interior architecture enable students to create the products, spaces, stories, and experiences that shape participation in sport. 

Human performance and sport: Human physiology, biology, psychology, neuroscience, data science, physics, and related fields help students understand the body in motion and apply science to health, performance, recovery, and human potential.  

Across these pathways, students can connect coursework with research, laboratory and studio work, internships, client-based consulting projects, media production, student organizations, and engagement with alumni and industry. The goal is to help students combine existing opportunities into individualized, interdisciplinary experiences that connect academic learning with practical application.   

A named, cross-unit “Study Sport at Oregon” umbrella would give these opportunities a coherent and visible identity. A central web presence could serve as the front door, helping prospective students understand what they can study and do.  

Shared programming would reinforce this identity. By participating in one of the four pathways, students opt into a broader community that connects them to courses, events, research opportunities, internships, speakers, site visits, student organizations, and industry engagement related to sport. Visible markers of participation—such as digital badges, milestone recognition, networking opportunities, and graduation-related recognition—could create a sense of belonging, although over time a degree-program, certificate, or micro-credential could provide more formal ways to recognize and document the “Study Sport at Oregon” experience.  

Oregon’s opportunity is to connect its academic, experiential, research, and industry-facing assets into a sport ecosystem that is legible to students, families, alumni, employers, and partners. By presenting sport as a field that spans science, business, design, media, culture, history, and practice, the university can build on an identity it already holds and become a more distinctive destination for students. Sport becomes the organizing lens rather than the destination itself—a powerful context for learning that allows students to develop expertise in their chosen fields while taking advantage of Oregon’s unique assets, reputation, and industry connections. Those experiences prepare graduates for careers both within and beyond the sport sector.

Cultivating Human Dispositions in Core Education  

A core curriculum is the one place a university addresses every student it admits. It is the place where the institution says, in the medium of requirements, what it believes an educated person is. For most of the last century the answer was breadth of knowledge, and the machinery was distribution: sample the disciplines, write competently, count the credits. That answer assumed knowledge was scarce and its transfer was the university’s distinctive work. Neither assumption holds today. Information is free, and the familiar outcomes on which general education has long rested—fact-based, disciplinary knowledge, communication, quantitative literacy—describe work that AI can increasingly produce.  

In the coming year, we plan to engage our faculty in a conversation about how our Core Education needs to evolve. What competencies and capacities, or what we are calling “dispositions,” represent those distinctly human qualities that empower graduates to exercise discernment where reasonable people disagree, to make and defend consequential choices, to build relationships and work well with others, to exercise ethical judgment, and to act from a settled sense of who they hope to become and what they owe to the world in which they live. Dispositions of this kind cannot be transmitted through traditional coursework alone. They are cultivated through sustained experience, rigorous feedback from faculty and outside audiences, and repeated iteration over the full span of an undergraduate education. The educational task, then, is not to teach them but to create the conditions under which they reliably develop. 

Students, families, employers, and accreditors are asking a sharper question about the value of a degree, and the universities that answer it well will be advantaged. By anchoring core education in dispositions rather than distribution, UO can respond to the emergence of AI creatively, designing an undergraduate education for the whole person that cultivates capacities that remain distinctly human. 

Career Communities: The Post-Graduation Arc 

The University of Oregon is poised to launch eight Career Communities and establish a new model for career readiness that is aligned with groups of related industries and interests, powered by meaningful relationships with UO alumni, and designed to engage every student. Each community functions as a focal point for students exploring a field regardless of their major, for alumni who work in that field and want to mentor and recruit, and for employers who want a sustained partnership with a university that understands their talent needs. 

Students interested in careers in public policy or in environmental resources, for example, can study any major the UO offers. Career Communities provide them with a coherent set of curated experiences oriented toward careers in these fields: internship and job postings filtered for relevance, student organizations that build capacity and foster connections, alumni matched by industry and by geography, faculty who teach in adjacent areas, employers who actively recruit from that community, and the industry-specific advising that generalist career services cannot provide at scale. 

The UO will create eight Career Communities, chosen to cover the key industries our students will need to navigate: 

• Creative Arts, Design, and Communication 
• Entrepreneurship, Investment, and Consulting 
• Environment and Natural Resources 
• Government, Policy, Global Affairs, and Law 
• Health Care and Well-Being 
• Education, Human Development, and Service 
• Applied Sciences 
• Data Science, Analytics, and Technology 

Each community is intellectually connected to schools or colleges with natural affinities for the field, but each is expected to serve students from across the campus. A sociology major drawn to health policy might find a home in Health Care and Well-Being, not because this career community is intellectually connected to their college, but because it is designed for the career they seek. 

What sustains a Career Community 

People animate and sustain the career community ecosystem. Three roles anchor each community: 

• Program Directors serve as student-facing, industry-informed career coaches. They help students discover what inspires them, connecting coursework to career applications, and ensuring the community's advising is genuinely tailored to the field. 
• Industry Engagement Staff cultivate employer partnerships, activate alumni networks, and build the internship and experiential-learning pipelines that distinguish a well-connected community from a well-intentioned one. This is relationship work; it takes time, coordination, and trust. 
• Faculty and departmental liaisons ensure the community's work is woven into the academic experience rather than parallel to it. 

Technology will support this human work but does not substitute for it. We have adopted PeopleGrove to allow students to find alumni connections with relevant career experience, and to connect engaged alumni with students to mentor and advise. This technology allows us to cultivate and manage meaningful relationships between students and alumni at scale. But to be successful, the technology needs to be curated by experienced and caring staff. 

The Cascade of Mentorship Is a Substantive Differentiator 

Although not every undergraduate will come to Oregon with an interest in research, those who do will find that the confluence framework makes possible a faculty → doctoral student → undergraduate cascade of research mentorship that supports their aspirations. Faculty in confluence areas mentor doctoral students in apprenticeship rather than throughput; doctoral students support institute activity and mentor undergraduate researchers; undergraduates participate in confluence-aligned research from early in their degrees. PURA is an operational vehicle through which this could scale, and PURA placements could be mapped deliberately against the confluences and the programs that anchor them.  

UO Portland as a Distinctiveness Strategy 

UO Portland is the strategic-distinctiveness vehicle for work that is best done in the metro Portland area.  The strategy in Portland should be to expand revenue-generating master’s, two plus two or two plus three degrees, and a professional and executive education portfolio. The focus should be in new sectors with demonstrated workforce demand as well as domains tied to UO Portland’s existing strengths: sustainability, architecture, and design via the College of Design; behavioral health via the Ballmer Institute, Prevention Science Institute, and the College of Education; communications and information environment via the School of Journalism and Communication; the study of the law via the UO School of Law, and business acumen via the Lundquist College of Business. The master’s, transfer programs, and executive education work are the vehicles through which UO Portland expands its impact as a strategic asset.

A Focused, Disciplined Strategy 

The vision then weaves three threads into a unified strategy that concentrates our efforts on what we already do well: we provide leading-edge research in signature areas that are connected to elite graduate programs and we offer undergraduate students distinctive experiences that empower them to discern who they are and what difference they hope to make. Its premise is that focus on strengths, existing and emerging, is the best response to the current challenges we face: a university designed for human connection cannot be all things, and the path to becoming a premier public research university requires deliberate concentration on the work we do best.  

Research confluences identify the signature areas where our ambition and our infrastructure already align, and where focused investment will most enhance our reputation. A refined PhD portfolio gives those confluences integrity, concentrating doctoral education where it is strongest and, where focus requires it, eliminating programs our strategy can no longer sustain. And a compelling undergraduate experience, enlivened by distinctive educational experiences and carried forward through the Career Communities, turns that research strength into the destination of choice the moment demands.  

This remains a working document, offered to advance a shared vision rather than to settle it. The discipline it asks of us is real, and many of the choices ahead are difficult. But a coherent and compelling vision makes hard choices strategic rather than reactionary. This is the spirit, in dialogue with the university community, with which we hope to carry this work forward.

The vision then weaves three threads into a unified strategy that concentrates our efforts on what we already do well: we provide leading-edge research in signature areas that are connected to elite graduate programs and we offer undergraduate students distinctive experiences that empower them to discern who they are and what difference they hope to make. Its premise is that focus on strengths, existing and emerging, is the best response to the current challenges we face: a university designed for human connection cannot be all things, and the path to becoming a premier public research university requires deliberate concentration on the work we do best.  

Research confluences identify the signature areas where our ambition and our infrastructure already align, and where focused investment will most enhance our reputation. A refined PhD portfolio gives those confluences integrity, concentrating doctoral education where it is strongest and, where focus requires it, eliminating programs our strategy can no longer sustain. And a compelling undergraduate experience, enlivened by distinctive educational experiences and carried forward through the Career Communities, turns that research strength into the destination of choice the moment demands.  

This remains a working document, offered to advance a shared vision rather than to settle it. The discipline it asks of us is real, and many of the choices ahead are difficult. But a coherent and compelling vision makes hard choices strategic rather than reactionary. This is the spirit, in dialogue with the university community, with which we hope to carry this work forward. 

Glossary of Abbreviations 

• CAPS — Center for Asian and Pacific Studies 
• CBDS — Center for Biomedical Data Science (Knight Campus; UO–OHSU initiative) 
• CRESCENT — Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center 
• GSUN — Global Sport University Network (UO is a founding member) 
• HEDCO — HEDCO Clinic and HEDCO Institute for Evidence-Based Educational Practice (College of Education; the name derives from the HEDCO Foundation) 
• IE2 — Institute of Ecology and Evolution 
• IFS — Institute for Fundamental Science 
• IMB — Institute of Molecular Biology 
• ION — Institute of Neuroscience 
• IROCE — Institute for Resilient Organizations, Communities, and Environments 
• MNCH — the Museum of Natural and Cultural History 
• MSI — Materials Science Institute 
• NILI — Northwest Indian Language Institute 
• OACISS — Oregon Advanced Computing Institute for Science and Society 
• OIMB — Oregon Institute of Marine Biology 
• OMQ — Oregon Center for Optical, Molecular, and Quantum Science 
• PPPM — School of Planning, Public Policy, and Management 
• PSI — Prevention Science Institute 
• PURA — Provost's Undergraduate Research Assistantship 
• SCDS — School of Computer and Data Science