UO’s Dyke honored at retirement

This time there was no snowstorm, and no family emergency. Frances Dyke got a farewell from her Johnson Hall colleagues on June 14, then a campus-wide celebration of her 22 years of University of Oregon service later that day at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.

Dyke, the UO’s former vice president for finance and administration, announced in February 2011 that she would be retiring this month. Her send-off was originally scheduled for March 21, but was scuttled due to that month’s freak snowstorm; a follow-up attempt to honor her service was cancelled because of a death in her family.

But the June 14 events went off without a hitch, as Dyke told her longtime friends and colleagues that she sees exciting prospects ahead for the UO, with a new president expected to take office in August and several other recent administrative changes.

“This building represents a tremendous team,” she told those gathered in the Johnson Hall lobby for her retirement celebration.

Dyke was hired at the UO in 1991 as a research analyst in the budget office, and was promoted to associate director the following year. She became director of institutional research and co-director of the Office of Resource Management in 1995, and was promoted three years later to vice president for budget and finance and the university’s interim director of business affairs.

She was named vice president for finance and administration in 2005 – a key position responsible for campus operations, human resources, affirmative action and equal opportunity, campus planning, risk management, public safety, budgeting and finance, institutional research and emergency management.

After she announced her pending retirement more than a year ago, Jamie Moffitt – who had been the UO administrator in charge of finances for the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics – was chosen to succeed Dyke, beginning this January. Dyke then became an advisor to acting Provost Lorraine Davis and helped with Moffitt’s transition to the vice president’s post.

Dyke said during the Johnson Hall gathering that her senior advisor once suggested that she consider a career in higher education administration. She dismissed it at the time, but many years later came to see it as good advice.

“We often don’t know what’s going to happen the next day, or what’s going to happen the next minute,” Dyke said. “But as far as intellectual challenge, there’s nothing better.”

Before coming to the UO, Dyke worked as a certified public accountant for Jones & Roth, LLP, in Eugene and for Coopers and Lybrand.

She received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Simmons College in Boston, and a master’s degree in educational research from Boston University. She received her MBA in 1986 from the UO's Lundquist College of Business.