David M. Jacobs, UO director of orchestral studies and assistant professor of conducting, will conduct the University Symphony on Sunday, Feb. 3. The concert is from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. in Beall Hall and features Sibelius’ Symphony #2.

Jacobs, in his first year at the UO, says the orchestra has been focusing this year on standard masterworks. Symphony #2 is Sibelius' most significant large-scale work for orchestra.  

Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer during the Romantic period.

Kyu-ho Ahn, an assistant professor in interior architecture at the University of Oregon, hands a visitor eyewear designed to simulate what it’s like to have macular degeneration.

“That one is very disorienting,” he says.

The low-vision goggles allow vision only at the outer edges of the eyes, forcing wearers to turn their bodies sideways to view reading material, a store aisle, a bus doorway or a large room, making daily navigation anything but simple.

The University of Oregon-based Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) is continuing to cultivate its relationships with universities and education networks in Morocco, which grew out of a training and engineering trip to the northwest African country last spring.

The NSRC has been asked by the Moroccan Research and Education Network (MARWAN) director to provide engineering assistance to additional Moroccan universities and to organize a joint training session – this one on advanced routing, peering and building Internet Exchange Points (IXP).

Columbia University political scientist Dorian Warren – a frequent commentator on CNN, NBC Nightly News and other television and radio networks – will lecture at the University of Oregon on Feb. 7 as part of the Department of Political Science's speaker series.

Warren's talk, "Boxing Out: Chicago and the Politics of Race, Labor and New City Trenches," will be from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the Knight Library Browsing Room. It is free and open to the public.

The University Counseling and Testing Center (UCTC) and the UO Suicide Prevention Team are offering suicide prevention trainings to faculty, staff, departments, individuals and groups. These trainings will teach participants how to recognize the warning signs associated with suicides and how to intervene effectively to steer at-risk students toward professional help. 

The UO Libraries will soon acquire four of the new digital database archives that form the popular Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) database.

Each archive adds more than one million full-text, fully searchable pages, enhancing historical scholarship and unlocking one of the most exciting centuries with greater depth.

The new archives include:  “Women: Transnational Networks;” “Europe and Africa: Commerce, Christianity, Civilization, and Conquest;” “Photography: The World Through the Lens’” and “Science, Technology and Medicine, 1780-1925.”

After more than 35 years of service to the UO, Curt Lind, currently the Director of Academic Extension, is retiring.

Lind’s most recent accomplishment has been providing critical leadership during the reorganization of Distance Education and other units and services within Academic Extension. In addition to guiding the development of the unit, Lind contributed to its administrative and financial stability.

Couples seeking a Valentine's Day check-up for their relationships can sign up for sessions with graduate student therapists at the University of Oregon.

The College of Education's Couples and Family Therapy (CFT) Program will host a “Relationship Check-In” from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 9, at the HEDCO Clinic, 1655 Alder St., on the UO campus.

Campus Copy, a branch of UO Printing and Mailing Services, held an art contest last year to promote the business’s location and to “add some creativity to the stark EMU walls and showcase the talent we have at the university,” says Printing and Mailing Services Assistant Director John Boytz.

“Without knowing what to expect,” Boytz adds, “We had almost 100 entries, 1,100 ‘likes’ on Facebook and two of the top winners were interviewed on the local news. We were proud and pleased at the response.”

Sharon Block, a respected historian of gender, sexuality and race in colonial America and associate professor of history at the University of California–Irvine, will deliver a free public lecture, “Rape: Race, Power and Politics in Early America,” from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. today (Thursday, Jan. 31), in the UO Knight Library Browsing Room.