A broad spectrum of UO faculty members attended a Research Faculty Breakfast with President Michael Gottfredson on Wednesday in the Knight Library Browsing Room. Sponsored by the office for Research, Innovation and Graduate Education, the event was part of October Research Month.
Kimberly Andrews Espy, vice president for research and innovation and dean of the graduate school, said the annual breakfast offered a special opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of the past year.
“In my experience, excellence in our faculty is more often recognized away from our campus at professional meetings – and we don’t adequately recognize or celebrate such excellence internally on our campus,” she said. “This breakfast is (an opportunity) to stop, take a moment together as an academic community, and recognize the talent and successes of our colleagues here at home.”
Prior to the event, UO faculty members were asked to submit mementos of their research successes. Those selections – printed pages from journals, books and other publications from the past year – were on display at Wednesday’s breakfast.
Published papers on everything from the “Web Based Training in Family Advocacy” to “The Politics of Science Recreation and Environmental Change in Twentieth Century Peru” hung on poster boards. Also on display was a computer visualization representing the dynamics of climate change using the UO’s high performance computing cluster, ACISS.
President Gottfredson pointed to the research displays as a strong illustration of the breadth of scholarly activity at the university in his opening remarks. He spoke about the value of research and said it was important to remember the educational component of the research endeavor.
“The experience that our students get in attending a research university is profoundly different than the kind of experience that they could get at lots of other kinds of higher education institutions,” the president said. “To be in the company of faculty who share their passion for scholarship and knowledge generation and who do that every day and then think about that and bring it to the classroom … makes for a different kind of experience, the kind of experience for which we are deservedly well known."
Upcoming October Research Month events include an Oct. 24 open house at the UO research facility the Bowerman Sports Science Clinic, an Oct. 30 presentation on Patenting in the New Innovation Ecosystem and the Presidential Research Lecture featuring Edward Kame’enui on Oct. 30. A full listing of events is available online.
- by Lewis Taylor, UO office of Research, Innovation and Graduate Education