How to describe the importance of the College of Arts and Sciences to the University of Oregon?

It’s Elemental.

The university’s largest college is redesigning its communications efforts to emphasize its fundamental role at the UO. A fresh look is coming to websites, magazines, newsletters and multimedia communications from the college and its 44 departments, programs and centers—all organized around the “elemental” theme, Acting Dean W. Andrew Marcus said.

The college describes itself as the academic hub of the university, with 865 faculty, 46 undergraduate majors and 23 doctoral programs. Virtually all undergraduates take their core courses through the college and about two-thirds of them –10,000-plus students – are majoring in CAS fields at any given time; the college trains 75 percent of all UO doctoral students.

As enrollment at the UO has surged over the past five years, the role of the college in providing the backbone of liberal arts and sciences studies has become especially clear: The total number of credits taken by all students in the college – 630,000-plus – has increased almost three times that for all of the professional schools combined.

“Part of the challenge with communicating the value of the College of Arts and Sciences is our diversity and our size,” said Marcus, a geography professor. “The elemental design concept deliberately embraces the size and complexity of CAS. It gives us the opportunity to show how all of its elements — namely, those 40 departments and programs and 46 fields of study — can operate as distinct units while also forming a whole that is more than the sum of the parts.”

A completely redesigned college website now features the “It’s Elemental” concept in a striking, color-coded design. It leads to a page in which each department, program, center or institute is represented as an element in a style roughly approximating a periodic table. Humanities departments and programs are grouped in shades of blue, the social sciences have green accents and the natural sciences, yellow and red.

The design enables departments—ranging from anthropology to medieval studies to computer science—to showcase the elemental nature of their field while also placing them within the larger arts and sciences family. At the same time, the design helps convey how dynamic and flexible the arts and sciences “elements” can be, Marcus said.

In the initial rollout, three departments have adopted the design for their websites: philosophy, folklore and women's and gender studies, with more to follow.

The public debut of the elemental theme was DUKTalks, an annual event that features the best and the brightest of CAS faculty, students and alumni who give presentations styled on the popular TED Talks.

Future projects will include a redesign of Cascade magazine and the Cascade website. For more information on any aspect of the college redesign, contact Lisa Raleigh, director of communications for the college.

- by Matt Cooper, UO Office of Strategic Communications