WINTER INSIDE 2020 OREGON NEWS FOR AND ABOUT THE PEOPLE SUPPORTING THE UNIVERSITY OF OREGON The Phil and Penny Knight CURIOSITY Campus for Accelerating COMES Scientific Impact TO LIFE UO track-and-field team Health and safety during Promoting financial literacy gets its first look at COVID-19, p. 14 for students, p. 19 Hayward magic, p. 10 Maya Agapito’s painting portrays civil rights figures Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Luther King, Jr. as African royalty ART OF SUCCESS MAJOR WORK For Maya Agapito, majoring in art was a matter Agapito’s latest project is big on many levels. At of course. 48” x 36”, it’s the largest work she’s painted. It portrays civil rights figures Malcolm X, Harriet “Art has been important to me since I was very Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Luther young,” she says. “I always knew that whatever my King, Jr. as African royalty. career was it would be surrounded with the visual arts. It’s where my talent “In the history I’ve been taught, we look back at lies—and what brings me the civil rights leaders through a smaller lens than they most enjoyment.” deserve. By making them royalty, I want to make them monumental.” As she wraps up her senior year at the UO, The painting also reflects Agapito’s ethnicity. Agapito is grateful Her ancestors come from Ghana, Mali, Benin, and for the support she’s Nigeria, and the work depicts traditions from each received. “Financial country. For example, Harriet Tubman’s coral aid meant the beading comes from the Beninese. difference between going to Agapito’s painting is among artworks school and not being considered for a new UO grant going to school,” that philanthropist Jordan Schnitzer she says. funded in response to Black Lives Matter. At press time, the judges representing the What’s her top Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and the Lyllye career choice after Reynolds-Parker Black Cultural Center planned to graduation? Visual announce winners before the end of the year. development director for films and videos. WINTER INSIDE 2020 OREGON Philanthropy Files Read about donors, gift announcements, 6 and the difference philanthropy makes Our Way Forward The UO steps up diversity efforts in 8 response to Black Lives Matter On Track UO track-and-field team gets its first 6 10 look at Hayward magic MAP to the Future Philanthropic contributions help launch 14 the UO’s innovative COVID-19 Monitoring 17 and Assessment Program Upward Trajectory Thanks to donors, the university is 16 looking forward to a new year and a bright future Ten Ways to Give 18 Highlighting opportunities for donors to 22 help the UO and transform lives Cover: The Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact (see story, page 12). Photo by Bruce Damonte giving.uoregon.edu Writers T 541-346-3016 Mailing Address WINTER 2020 twitter: UOGiving Monique Danziger F 541-346-2574 1720 E. 13th Ave. Editor Ed Dorsch E [email protected] Suite 312 Inside Oregon is published by Ed Dorsch, BA ’94, MA ’99 Steve Fyffe Eugene, Oregon University Communications Damian Foley 97403-2253 Melody Ward Leslie, BA ’79 CAMPAIGN UPDATE $3 BILLION DESPITE FORMIDABLE CHALLENGES, WE REMAIN RESILIENT, ABLE TO SUPPORT STUDENTS AND OUR COMMUNITY THANKS TO YOUR SUPPORT. $2.41 The global As the COVID-19 crisis worsened and BILLION pandemic has shortcomings in testing threatened our disrupted every nation and our community, Bill dropped corner of the everything and joined forces with Professor world, and yet Leslie Leve of the College of Education our mission and Greg Shabram, our chief procurement of teaching, officer, to establish a laboratory that • Student support: research, and dramatically expanded testing capacity $406 million service remains in Lane County and at the UO. This team as urgent as ever, successfully leveraged Cheryl and Allyn’s • Capital construction perhaps more so. gift to acquire more than $10 million in and improvements: Thanks to your state and federal funding, which will allow $640 million generosity and advocacy, the University of us to test tens of thousands of people • Faculty, programs, Oregon is rising to the many challenges of in our county. Soon the testing facility today. will expand into another donor-funded and Knight Campus: building—the Phil and Penny Knight Campus $1.37 billion As the reality of COVID-19 sunk in last for Accelerating Scientific Impact. spring and we sent our students home for the spring term, we asked you to help. You Your support for our university gives me Fundraising totals as of responded wonderfully and we raised more hope for the future. We cannot rely upon October 31, 2020 than $960,000 for our Students in Crisis the state to adequately fund us. Our Fund. We provided emergency assistance students cannot afford to pay more in for rent, food, books, and internet tuition. It is your generous giving that connections to 1,200 students impacted allows us to achieve excellence and by COVID-19. Your generosity made it adequately support our faculty and our possible for these students to continue students. This support, in turn, gives us their education. Similarly, our advisors, the wherewithal to make an impact on our most of whom were hired as part of the community, state, and nation. You give me donor-supported Willie and Donald Tykeson hope for the future. We will emerge from Hall, called every student during the spring the coronavirus crisis because we are semester. This herculean effort to check in resilient, and that resilience has its roots in retained thousands of students who might our alumni and friends. otherwise have given up. When you give to the University of Oregon Philanthropy’s transformative impact is you reaffirm your commitment to our often immense and unexpected. A few university, to our students and faculty, and years ago Cheryl and Allyn Ford made a to the future. wonderful gift to renovate Pacific Hall, a building that hadn’t been touched since Thank you, Cheryl took classes there several decades ago. As part of the project, Professor Bill Cresko’s ground-floor genomics Michael H. Schill lab was renovated from top to bottom. President and Professor of Law 4 CAMPAIGN UPDATE Duck “It was a way of meeting a need.” — Connie Kulick was willing to look at all the science and protocols the school was following—made data.” her feel more confident about resuming in-person, individual lessons with opera They scoured online forums for mask students. patterns designed to give classically Masks trained singers the space to breathe As for Kulick, like any decent ER nurse, and open their mouths wide, while she said she enjoyed rolling up her DONOR AND SCHOOL OF MUSIC maintaining a tight seal. sleeves and helping people stay healthy. AND DANCE VOLUNTEER “When I worked in the ER, we actually “There was a need,” she said. “It was a CONNIE KULICK CREATES SAFETY had to fit each N95 mask individually, so way of meeting a need.” MASKS FOR OPERA SINGERS I knew that we needed to get a good fit,” Kulick said. “We wanted to make them the The masks were so popular that she When UO Opera Ensemble director best that we could possibly make them.” ordered 100 more for the UO Chamber Karen Esquivel needed advice about Choir and choral music faculty, and she’s how to make masks that could keep her Then Kulick got to work sewing a recruited a group of donors to share students safe from COVID-19, she knew prototype. The result, made with UO yellow- costs with the school. Kulick, who along exactly who to turn to—Connie Kulick, vice colored cloth, looked a lot like a duck bill–a with her husband Tom (BS ’70, political chair of the advancement council at the fact that wasn’t lost on students, who science) has given an annual scholarship School of Music and Dance. quickly started calling it “the duck mask.” to a UO opera student for the last six Kulick covered the costs years, said her latest collaboration An opera lover, Kulick had sewn many and gave the masks to with Esquivel has led to an even of the costumes for the ensemble’s students at no charge. deeper connection with the 2019 performance of the French program. opera The Tales of Hoffmann. She’d Esquivel said the also spent more than 30 years as an masks—along with all “This has been a very rewarding emergency room nurse, including a the safety relationship,” Kulick said. stint on the hospital ship USS Repose during the Vietnam War. And she couldn’t help giving students a “I gave her a call and I said, ‘Connie, I final word of advice, need some help,’” Esquivel said. “She from the voice of was like, ‘Let’s do this!’ experience: “Just wear a mask.” “The fact that she’s a retired registered nurse really helped, because she was —Steve Fyffe focused on keeping it safe, and she New this fall: Two majors, two minors Data Science Major: Data between the brain and behavior, Student Task Force Demands. and imperialism across the scientists are essential players in neuroscience offers course work Black Studies spans centuries, Diaspora. many industries, and data science in biology, human physiology, and crosses oceans, and is shaped by is one of the fastest-growing psychology. multiple geographies and cultural Latinx Minor: The minor in Latinx segments of the economy. practices. Students can immerse studies introduces students to the Black Studies Minor: Demands for themselves in histories of African diverse perspectives, histories, Neuroscience Major: For Black Studies from students and and African-descended people and contemporary experiences of undergraduates interested the community began in the 1960s rooted in and routed through the Latinx communities in the US and in studying the relationship and was part of the 2015 Black Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, Latin America.