Oregon will be a different and better place thanks to a historic gift to the University of Oregon, UO President Michael Schill writes in an op-ed article in The Oregonian.

With word of the pathbreaking gift still reverberating, Schill reflects on how the $500 million investment by Penny and Phil Knight will change the way science is done and the speed at which it can be used to improve lives. While many of the details remain to be worked out, Schill notes that the potential is staggering.

“The Knight Campus will allow us to recruit the world's best researchers to Oregon — engineers, data scientists, robotics experts, entrepreneurs and clinicians — and to pair them with our exceptional faculty,” the president writes. “Scientific discoveries will be more quickly refined, tested — leaping traditional hurdles — to become life-changing medicines, products or solutions.”

He also points out that once fundraising is complete, the new Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact will take nothing away from other parts of campus or be a burden on students.

“We fully intend that this structure will ensure that the Knight Campus remains financially sustainable without drawing from other campus resources or student tuition,” Schill writes.

For the full article, see “Historic gift will transform our state, University of Oregon” in the Oct. 23 issue of The Oregonian.