UO E-Clips is a daily report prepared by the Office of Communications (http://comm.uoregon.edu) summarizing current news coverage of the University of Oregon.
Media mentions for February 21
1. Pat Kilkenny's bet on 'arena district' real estate deal at the University of Oregon pays off
The Oregonian and The Oregon Daily Emerald: In July 2009, a distraught Steve Romania realized his student housing project was dead in the water. The longtime Eugene auto dealer was days away from breaking ground on the project just east of the University of Oregon campus. But his bank got cold feet, and his project became one of many stalled by the recession. Desperate, Romania called Tom Cody, a Portland developer who had wanted to build his own project on the same site, next door to the shiny new Matthew Knight Arena. Cody had a key asset Romania lacked: Pat Kilkenny. With the backing of Kilkenny, former UO athletic director, insurance mogul and uber-alum, the Courtside Apartments were a slam dunk. Kilkenny himself provided an $8 million loan, allowing construction to move quickly. In all, the developers invested $29 million in Courtside and a second, larger project they dubbed Skybox. Together, the buildings contain 123 units and some 400 bedrooms.
2. Research is teaching: mentors inspire lives of discovery
UT Dallas News: "Universities are centers for learning--learning for faculty as well as students," said Dr. Robert Berdahl, interim president of the University of Oregon, past president of the Association of American Universities, former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, and former president of The University of Texas. In evaluating the quality of a university, "the quality of teaching, how well the findings of research are transmitted to students, is an important component of a successful university, but first and foremost, it is the quality of research that defines the measure of success of a research university." This does not mean that all institutions of higher education need to be research universities, he said. "But the unique role of universities is to push back the frontiers of knowledge and to train others to join in the process of discovering new knowledge or gaining a greater understanding of the known world. The faculty must itself be actively engaged in this learning process." A faculty engaged in research creates an entire culture of learning for the university, Berhdal believes. "It defines the culture, which is one of open inquiry, curiosity-driven inquiry, challenging inherited knowledge in an effort to understand more or differently about the human and natural world." Without this culture, and without the effort to advance understanding, "what we teach stagnates."
3. Should Colleges Be Factories for the 1%?
Wall Street Journal: In his recently unveiled Blueprint for College Affordability, President Obama calls for "collecting earnings and employment information for colleges and universities, so that students can have an even better sense of the life they'll be able to build once they graduate." In other words, the government wants to publish statistics on what graduates earn after leaving Harvard or Ohio State or Duke. The results are unlikely to surprise. For all the costs of collecting and collating this information--for the sake of reducing the costs of education, no less--it will show what is intuitively obvious: On average, Ivy League grads earn more. But the information will be worse than useless for college-bound students because it will send them all the wrong signals. ... "The concept that only the most selective institutions prepare the highest earners is fictitious, and if the primary measurement of a quality education is the earning power of alumni, then I would argue the measure is misguided as well," says Roger Thompson, the University of Oregon's vice provost for enrollment management.
4. Allan Price's death a big loss for Oregon
Portland Business Journal: I first met Allan Price back in 2005, when Business Journal Publisher Craig Wessel and I began exploring ways to work more closely with the University of Oregon. We ventured to Eugene and had a productive meeting with Allan -- then UO's vice president of advancement -- and his team. Afterwards, he took us to lunch. The conversation ranged from families to politics to the then-controversial search for a new University of Oregon basketball complex to the Jordan Schnitzer Art Museum on the UO campus. Through it all, Allan was engaging, charming and someone I considered a friend, though we had just met. A lot of folks felt that way about Allan. ... Allan's death is a huge loss for Oregon's business community. Personally, it's hard to believe I won't bump into Allan around town anymore. I can only imagine how those closest to Allan must be feeling.
5. Defining an arboretum: Native or exotic?
The Register-Guard: Mount Pisgah Arboretum may be changing -- whether for better or for worse depends on your point of view -- as its board of directors weighs whether to limit plantings to native species or open some areas to more exotic trees. The 209-acre park within the Howard Buford Recreation Area southeast of Eugene was initially conceived as a traditional arboretum -- a living museum of trees from around the world. In fact, according to its longest-serving board member, the arboretum's initial mission described a "garden featuring plants from around the world growing together to symbolize international friendship." But some board members would like to limit new plantings to trees that are indigenous to the Willamette Valley, said board member Theodore Palmer, a University of Oregon emeritus math professor. That would be a shame, Palmer says, because it doesn't align with the vision of the park's founders.
6. Hands off higher ed
Mail Tribune: Amid the usual belt-tightening talk in Salem as the Legislature grapples with yet another budget gap is a bit of welcome news: The state's public universities are sitting on millions of dollars in reserves. The campuses should be able to keep that money, and they should use it to give students a break. The extra cash is the result of recent trends in the Oregon University System. ... Lawmakers say they have no intention of sweeping any reserves this year. That doesn't mean they can't still wreak havoc. The University System's budget already has been trimmed 3.5 percent. Legislators could decide to cut it further. They should not. The state has underfunded higher education for too long already. University administrators can hold up their end of the bargain by doing right by students. Spend that $200 million to keep tuition from rising any higher than it already is, not for new programs or facilities.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Late mentions for February 20
1. The failure of Right-to-Work laws
The Washington Examiner, by Gordon Lafer, associate professor at the University of Oregon's Labor Education and Research Center: An op-ed appeared recently in The Washington Examiner ("Indiana gets right-to-work just in time," Feb. 2) by Stan Greer celebrating Indiana's adoption of an anti-union law and questioning research that I and other scholars have performed documenting the law's failure. So-called "right-to-work" laws make it illegal for unions to ensure that each employee who benefits from a union contract pays his or her fair share of the costs of administering it. The aim is to weaken unions and cut wages. As the Indiana Chamber of Commerce explains, unions "increase labor costs," making a state "less attractive" for investors. Through RTW, employees are supposed to abandon unions, reduce wages and hope this attracts more employers. Only problem is, it doesn't work. Statistical research shows that RTW succeeds in cutting wages -- by about $1,500 a year -- but does nothing to boost job growth.
2. Go green to save green? 'That's a big chunk of money'
KVAL News: Kirk Gebb has car payments that might give you pause: $450 per month. But for Gebb, the pay off is driving by all the gasoline pumps. And as for rising fuel prices, Gebb says, "Bring it on." "It's fine with me," he said. "It just makes my averages look that more attractive." Gebb was one of the first people in Eugene to take delivery on a fully electric Nissan Leaf. "I have no problem achieving 100 miles" per charge, he said, "and I'm by no means the most efficient driver." ... According to a University of Oregon study, if you hang on to that hybrid or EV long enough, the savings can be big. The UO planning workshop team figured the annual electrical cost to charge an EV costs $250. Fuel costs for a gas car, assuming $3.50 per gallon and 30 miles per gallon, add up to $1,400 per year for the same mileage.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Late mentions for February 19
1. Oregon discovery turns back the wheels of time
The Register-Guard: You might think, in a world covered by satellite photos and trampled hither and thither by billions of wandering feet, that few earthbound mysteries remain. But that is not the case. Pat O'Grady, staff archaeologist with the University of Oregon's Museum of Natural and Cultural History, beams when he talks about two Native American "medicine wheels" that a fellow archaeologist literally stumbled upon five years ago in Southeastern Oregon, near Burns. "I teach archaeology field schools in that area, so I'm friends with the district archaeologist for the Bureau of Land Management over there, and he's the one who first came across these medicine wheels and recognized what they are," O'Grady said. "Nobody's ever seen anything like that before in Oregon; medicine wheels are more usually found in the northern plains and farther east. We're not sure who created these, but they're probably somewhere between 110 and 340 years old." O'Grady and the medicine wheels will be featured this week on "Oregon Field Guide," a production of the Oregon Public Broadcasting television network.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Late mentions for February 18
1. Composer's originality questioned by critics
The Register-Guard: When the Eugene Symphony performed the Pacific Northwest premiere Thursday night of "Sidereus," a newly commissioned work by Grammy Award-winning composer Osvaldo Golijov, two members of the audience had a sudden sense of puzzlement. Tom Manoff, a National Public Radio classical music critic who lives in Eugene, and Brian McWhorter, a University of Oregon music professor and trumpet player, attended the concert together -- mostly to hear the F.J. Haydn trumpet concerto performed by the evening's featured guest, Andrew Balio. But when the concert opened with Golijov's "Sidereus," a 9-minute composition that premiered in 2010 in Memphis, Tenn., the two men looked at each other in shock. That's because, both said on Friday, they recognized large parts of Golijov's composition from a different composer's piece, one they both had been working with recently: accordionist Michael Ward-Bergeman's 2009 work, "Barbeich." Ward-Bergeman was credited in the symphony program notes only for his melody. Golijov alone is listed as composer of "Sidereus."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Media mentions for February 21
Pat Kilkenny's bet on 'arena district' real estate deal at the University of Oregon pays off
By Jeff Manning, The Oregonian And by Deborah Bloom, Oregon Daily EmeraldIn July 2009, a distraught Steve Romania realized his student housing project was dead in the water.
The longtime Eugene auto dealer was days away from breaking ground on the project just east of the University of Oregon campus.
But his bank got cold feet, and his project became one of many stalled by the recession.
Desperate, Romania called Tom Cody, a Portland developer who had wanted to build his own project on the same site, next door to the shiny new Matthew Knight Arena.
Cody had a key asset Romania lacked: Pat Kilkenny.
With the backing of Kilkenny, former UO athletic director, insurance mogul and uber-alum, the Courtside Apartments were a slam dunk. Kilkenny himself provided an $8 million loan, allowing construction to move quickly. In all, the developers invested $29 million in Courtside and a second, larger project they dubbed Skybox. Together, the buildings contain 123 units and some 400 bedrooms.
Both now earn a sizable profit and enjoy the support, both formal and informal, of UO. Kilkenny, by his own reckoning, figures he could earn as much as $10 million on the deal.
University Housing signed an exclusive "affiliation agreement" with Courtside in 2010, sending 70 freshmen to the complex that fall. The apartments also are home to dozens of athletes and international students, thanks to ongoing relationships with UO.
The story of Courtside and Skybox offers a rare glimpse into the business dealings of one of the university's most powerful boosters and the shrewd real estate bet he made even as the economic downturn wreaked havoc on the housing sector. Surging college enrollment made student housing a rare safe haven while the rest of the market was embroiled by chaos.
The lucrative investment is a touchy subject for Kilkenny.
"I have a lot of sensitivity to these things that could smack of my fingerprints being on them," he said in a lengthy recent interview. His tenure as athletic director ended months before he got involved with the apartments, he says, but he was employed by UO on an "on-call" basis until last spring. He was strictly a "passive investor" and had nothing to do with the UO housing agreement, he said.
After working with no salary as athletic director and giving UO what he estimates to be $15 million to $20 million in gifts over the years, he said he resents the implication that he would use his connections to boost his net worth.
"Why would I spend three years of my life (as athletic director) trying to make things better, only to act as a profiteer for nickels and dimes on a commercial real estate project?" Kilkenny asked. "I've tried to take the high road every step of the way."
PEARL-IZING EUGENE
In general, 2009 was miserable for the real estate industry. The mid-decade boom years had given way to a grim reality of foreclosures, bankruptcy and bank failures.
Paradoxically, the recession actually strengthened a corner of the real estate market: student housing. As more people chose college over the anemic job market and students lingered longer, colleges struggled to handle the load.
At the same time, universities, many suffering from deep cuts in state support, opted to boost their own revenues by pushing enrollment.
The University of Oregon was no different. Between 2007 and 2011, enrollment jumped by about 1,000 a year to 24,447. Yet, UO didn't build a single dorm in those years. It did squeeze a third bed into some existing rooms, adding space for 129 students.
Oregon also chose another path to increase revenue -- more out-of-state and international students, who can afford to pay three times as much tuition as in-staters. The more than 4,500 Californians at the UO this year -- far and away the largest number of out-of-staters -- made up 18.5 percent of total enrollment, more than double the percentage seven years ago.
Eugene housing developers say that along with these wealthier students has come demand for nicer, larger living spaces.
"Helicopter parents feel that Junior should not have to suffer the privations that they did living in the dorms," said Gordon Anslow, of Anslow & DeGeneault Inc., a prominent student housing developer. "And they're willing to fork the money over for it."
Against this backdrop, Cody proposed Courtside and Skybox. Unlike the motley collection of small garden apartments and duplexes that dominate UO's west side, Cody envisioned larger, urban, energy-efficient and more expensive units -- a bit of Portland's Pearl District right off Eugene's underdeveloped Franklin Boulevard.
"We wanted to create a new paradigm in student housing," said Cody, a principal at Portland's Gerding Edlen Development before going out on his own.
He hired Gene Sandoval of Portland design powerhouse Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects, who brought the same kind of modernistic, angular look that he designed into the Jaqua Academic Center. Sandoval also designed the expanded Casanova Center athletes' training facility.
Sandoval played another small but telling role in the history of Courtside and Skybox: He introduced Cody to Kilkenny.
DEAL-MAKER
A native of Heppner, the 59-year-old Kilkenny attended UO as a journalism student. He left before graduating and entered the insurance business, where he built a fortune.
In 2007, he was named athletic director for his beloved alma mater, launching a whirlwind of development that changed the face of UO sports. His first order of business: a state-of-the-art basketball arena to replace the decrepit McArthur Court. He got it done, in large part by persuading close friend Phil Knight to donate $100 million.
He also reinstated baseball, started work on a baseball stadium and hired Chip Kelly as head football coach, a crucial step in building UO into a national football power.
By 2009, the Matthew Knight Arena was taking shape. Developers hungrily eyed adjacent properties.
Romania was one of them. But when his bank scaled back support, he contacted Cody, who had been scouting the same neighborhood.
"He said, 'I can put a deal together,'" Romania recalled. "We contributed the land, Pat did the money, but this was all Tom's deal."
Said Cody: "It was a magical combination to get something out of the ground -- a good experienced developer, strong credit quality and very conservative, lucid underwriting."
Kilkenny said he informed then-UO President Richard Lariviere of his involvement in the project in the summer of 2010.
Time was of the essence.
They needed to have the building ready for the 2010 academic year. But they didn't break ground until September 2009.
In part to save time, Kilkenny himself provided the crucial $8 million construction loan. The loan also made the deal more profitable for Kilkenny. "I could make a margin on it," he explained.
Kilkenny also provided an introduction to California Bank & Trust of San Diego, which offered permanent financing. As is typical in a development like this, Kilkenny's construction loan was paid off.
They completed Courtside in a lightning-quick nine months. But they missed the prime March-April leasing period and still had vacancies by mid-summer.
But then the university got on board.
NO ROOM AT THE DORM
In summer 2010, UO faced a serious housing shortage.
Mike Eyster, then director of University Housing, had watched Courtside take shape just blocks from existing dorms at the east edge of campus. He said he approached Cody about the potential of putting incoming freshmen into the building.
On July 22, the two sides signed an affiliation agreement in which UO would refer students to Courtside and feature the complex on its website and in other promotional material.
It was the only apartment complex in the city to get such coveted status.
Eyster said the university chose Courtside because it was close to campus and because Cody agreed to certain conditions, including having building managers available on-site.
Eyster said he dealt only with Cody. Kilkenny never got involved, Eyster said, adding that he didn't know Kilkenny was an investor.
The referral agreement has since lapsed. But Courtside and Skybox have an ongoing relationship with the American English Institute, part of UO's linguistics department, and houses 30 international students, Cody said.
The apartments also house 24 UO varsity athletes. Though there appears to be no formal agreement with the athletic department, it's routine for assistant athletic director James Harris to notify Courtside and Skybox managers how many athletes need housing.
Craig Pintens, assistant sports information director, said Courtside and Skybox are popular with athletes in part because of their proximity to the athletes-only Jaqua Academic Center.
GAMBLE PAYS OFF
Today, a flurry of private student housing development is reshaping parts of Eugene. The largest is Capstone Collegiate Communities' planned $85 million, 300-apartment complex at 13th Avenue and Willamette Street.
Cody and Kilkenny's 2009 gamble now seems ahead of its time. Both Courtside and the larger, adjacent Skybox complex are 100 percent occupied, marketing themselves as "anchors of the up-and-coming Arena District." Rents range from $625 to $1,250 per bedroom per month, making them some of the more expensive student housing units in the city.
As 50 percent owner, Kilkenny figures that he could eventually earn $7 million to $10 million.
There's nothing wrong or illegal about a public employee making a profitable investment, even a hugely profitable one. Ron Bersin, executive director of the Oregon Ethics Commission, said state law allows public employees to participate in private ventures.
What would constitute a violation is if Kilkenny made decisions in his public role from which he benefited. Kilkenny was no longer athletic director when the buildings were erected. But he remained employed until March 2011 as special assistant to the athletic director.
Oregon ethics laws also prohibit public officials from using confidential information gained in the course of their position to benefit themselves. Kilkenny obviously had inside information on construction and financing of the Matthew Knight Arena.
But, as Bersin pointed out, by the time Kilkenny's group purchased the land for the apartments, location of the arena was common knowledge. Construction of the arena began in February 2009, six months before Cody teamed with Kilkenny.
"The bigger issue," in Bersin's opinion, "is the agreement with the university in putting students into the building and whether he (Kilkenny) had any role in that"
Kilkenny insists he didn't, and he's backed up by UO housing officials.
Kilkenny said he's been approached many times to facilitate certain commercial ventures that involve UO and its athletic department. "I don't touch it. I won't make introductions. I won't go to meetings. It's not something I'm going to do," he said. "Everything I've done is to protect the institution's reputation."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Research is Teaching: Mentors Inspire Lives of Discovery
University Laboratories Where New Ideas Are Born Also Create New Generations of Scientists
It was pretty brazen of then-16-year-old Ray Baughman, drenched and wearing his Sunday best, to trek around the University of Pittsburgh one rainy summer day in 1958 making cold calls on various professors by knocking on doors.
But Baughman had an earnest request.
He was looking for a summer job in an honest-to-goodness laboratory. Maybe--if he was very lucky--he'd even get a chance to do some hands-on research.
Growing up on a turkey farm in western Pennsylvania, Baughman had a notion early on that he wanted to be a scientist. He figured, where better to look for work than at a research university?
Dr. George A. Jeffrey, the professor of chemistry and physics who answered Baughman's knock on the door that day, might have turned away a high school kid. Jeffrey might have said Baughman was too young, too inexperienced or simply too much trouble to train--that there wasn't enough time to devote to the task of helping him in the first place.
Fifty-three years later, Dr. Ray Baughman--the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Chemistry, director of the Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute, a recently elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, and one of the most cited scientific authors in the world--attributes his formidable success to the day Jeffrey allowed a skinny, rain-soaked kid from a tiny rural town into his lab.
"That experience crystallized my early desire to become a scientist," Baughman said. "And it was the kind of serendipitous event that made me aware of the importance of mentorship and academic research." Meeting Jeffrey changed the course of Baughman's life.
Research laboratories in academic settings are critical to efforts to better understand the world around us and beyond. These environments offer the building blocks and training grounds necessary to develop young scientists. Sometimes, such environments grow within a university setting over long periods of time as a result of the serendipitous accumulation of people and resources. But serendipity--while it makes for great stories and in Dr. Baughman's case, a great scientist--isn't enough. UT Dallas works to foster an environment that actively supports students and faculty forming research partnerships. By pairing excellent faculty with promising students, mentorships not unlike the one that shaped Baughman's career can flourish.
Teen Scientist
Take Max Grunewald. An outstanding student at St. Mark's School of Texas, Grunewald's opportunity to study in a UT Dallas lab came home to him with his dad.
"My dad sat next to Dr. Baughman at a banquet, and they began talking about their jobs," Grunewald said. "Dr. Baughman told my dad about his research. [My dad] told him about me, and Dr. Baughman said we should look into some of the programs for younger students."
The George A. Jeffrey NanoExplorers Program--named for Baughman's mentor--introduces high school students to nanotechnology and encourages them to pursue careers in science and engineering.
Grunewald, like all students accepted to the program, worked in a lab with UT Dallas faculty where he was encouraged to learn how the lab operated and to form his own research interests and projects.
"Before I even started, I knew I wanted to study alternative energy and ways we can transition to renewable energy," Grunewald said.
He came to the program the summer between his junior and senior years in high school. There, he listened to a presentation given by UT Dallas faculty members outlining their research.
"I heard a speech on super capacitors and hybrid energy storage devices," he said. "I knew right then and there I wanted to work in that lab."
That lab belongs to Dr. John Ferraris, a 36-year veteran faculty member at UT Dallas and head of the chemistry department. Grunewald treated his experience with Ferraris in NanoExplorers like a full-time job. He spent hours learning lab etiquette and procedures in preparation for college, which was still a year away.
"Our research here is very much at the interface of chemistry, biology, physics and engineering," Ferraris said. "We encourage collaboration between departments and among our students. There are so many areas that chemistry touches. We don't want to be closed off."
The opportunity to reach out to fellow NanoExplorers, UT Dallas students and faculty played a major role in convincing Grunewald to attend UT Dallas. He was accepted into the 2011 Eugene McDermott Scholars Program, the University's premier scholarship opportunity aimed at very high-achieving students in all areas of study.
"I already knew that UT Dallas allows you to be more directly involved in work and research," Grunewald said. "Undergraduates are exposed to interconnectedness in all different fields, and it made perfect sense for me to come here."
Now a freshman, Grunewald is weighing his options carefully. His diverse research interests include economic policy, Chinese studies and, of course, renewable energy.
Investing in Research
The infrastructure necessary for experiences like Grunewald's is expensive. And creating a robust university research engine that can power scientific breakthroughs requires a fairly specific set of parts, say those with experience in the field.
"Universities are centers for learning--learning for faculty as well as students," said Dr. Robert Berdahl, interim president of the University of Oregon, past president of the Association of American Universities, former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, and former president of The University of Texas. In evaluating the quality of a university, "the quality of teaching, how well the findings of research are transmitted to students, is an important component of a successful university, but first and foremost, it is the quality of research that defines the measure of success of a research university."
This does not mean that all institutions of higher education need to be research universities, he said. "But the unique role of universities is to push back the frontiers of knowledge and to train others to join in the process of discovering new knowledge or gaining a greater understanding of the known world. The faculty must itself be actively engaged in this learning process." A faculty engaged in research creates an entire culture of learning for the university, Berhdal believes. "It defines the culture, which is one of open inquiry, curiosity-driven inquiry, challenging inherited knowledge in an effort to understand more or differently about the human and natural world." Without this culture, and without the effort to advance understanding, "what we teach stagnates."
As research environments throughout the world become more competitive, Berdahl said, universities are judged by the quality of research being done, which begins with teaching.
"We live in a knowledge-based environment, where the level of economic development is based on innovation," Berdahl added. "Paradigmatic breakthroughs, like the discovery of the structure of DNA or any other such revolution of understanding, require public investment."
Recruiting and cultivating top faculty and students at UT Dallas often begins with grants for top-tier research projects. In only one year, from 2009 to 2010, UT Dallas received 572 new grant awards--more than double the number of the previous year. Funding awarded also increased by more than $20 million.
"Funding allows us to improve our infrastructure and equipment," said Dr. Bruce Gnade, vice president for research. "It also enables us to recruit new students."
Gnade points out that supporting these students with fellowships and research stipends is crucial in providing the best training and programs available.
One such student, Francisco Garcia, applied for the most basic funding opportunity available through UT Dallas: an Undergraduate Research Scholar Award sponsored by Gnade's office. Garcia was among 46 students in 2010 to receive $500 to cover costs related to his scientific interests. His latest research earned him a second Undergraduate Research Scholar Award in 2011.
Garcia's path to UT Dallas began more than two decades ago with his family's arduous journey from Mexico to a new life in the United States. These days, Garcia immerses himself in science every day. He revels in the high-tech surroundings of the UT Dallas campus and in the laboratories he frequents as he delves into the mysteries of neuroscience.
"My family and I came here as immigrants when I was very young, and when I first started college, I worked in restaurants and construction to pay for school," Garcia said. "The whole time though, I always had a passion for studying the brain." His passion and clear aptitude for neurobiology paired perfectly with exceptional research opportunities and scholarships available to underclassmen at UT Dallas.
Garcia's project was guided by Dr. Marco Atzori, associate professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
"I'm especially interested in studying disorders such as autism, brain cancer and others, and that's why I really appreciated this opportunity," Garcia said. "I'm thankful for the opportunities given to me by Dr. Atzori to join his lab and be part of his research team."
The research scholar award provides funding for a single semester for each student researcher. The program is paid for in part by support from corporate sponsors that have included Raytheon and Ericsson. The number of undergraduate projects sponsored under the annual program has more than doubled since its beginning in 2007. This fall, 70 students received funding for 69 undergraduate research projects.
"Without a doubt, [part of] what attracts students to UT Dallas is the research opportunity here--specifically in the sciences," Atzori said. "The mentorships available here, particularly for undergraduate students, are unparalleled."
Unique Opportunities
Sussana Elkassih, a senior who is double majoring in biochemistry and chemistry, began her lab work at UT Dallas much earlier than peers at other universities.
"I have friends at schools all over the state and country," she said. "And when I tell them that I'm already in a research lab, they are so surprised. I know almost all of the faculty very well and I have an undergraduate mentor."
Elkassih works under the wing of one of UT Dallas' National Science Foundation Career Grant recipients--Dr. Mihaela Stefan, assistant professor of chemistry. Stefan is researching new semiconducting polymers--plastic electronics--with adjustable energy levels. The use of semiconducting polymers in solar cells is considered a promising avenue of research aimed at making solar cells less expensive and more efficient. Elkassih's weekly schedule includes 12 hours of lab work and meetings with Stefan and fellow students in a sort of round table where they present their work. It can be intimidating, Elkassih said, but it increases her awareness of her peers' work and, by requiring her to explain her ideas, helps her think more deeply about her own research.
"Dr. Stefan really cares about her students and spends as much time with us as she can, making sure we work on publishing papers and helping us find fellowships," Elkassih said. "It's been an amazing experience."
Stefan expects her undergraduates to publish at least once before graduation and to have several published papers by the time they finish. Elkassih recently met that expectation by publishing a paper in the Polymer of Science Journal on a complex aspect of solar cell polymers.
"I want to help create a new generation of scientists who are able to think across disciplines--the scientists of the future," Stefan said. "I think the most important thing is that I never compromise teaching for research--they both have to go hand in hand."
The Next Generation
At the graduate level, UT Dallas attracts students from around the world on the strength of faculty and, as in undergraduate programs, access to laboratories and mentorships. Although many plan for careers in industry and with private companies, others will ultimately pursue careers in academia and will bring new students into the research endeavor.
One of these doctoral students, Prakash Sista, came 8,800 miles from his home in Mumbai, India, to work in the field of polymer chemistry. During his three years at UT Dallas, he has learned how to make organic polymers and investigate how electric charges move inside them.
In 2011, Sista was asked to present a poster detailing his research at the Excellence in Graduate Polymer Research Symposium organized by the division of Polymer Chemistry at the 241st National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society. Only a handful of students are invited to present posters in this symposium.
Among the perks of attending the conference, Sista said, was the opportunity to meet with his peers at dozens of other academic institutions. "I shared the work we are doing right here at UT Dallas," Sista said. "Meeting so many other scientists and sharing ideas and research was a wonderful opportunity. Who knows? Maybe someday we will get to work together. I definitely plan to teach and research in an academic center."
Beyond peer collaborations, UT Dallas students also follow the lead of their mentors and share their love for the sciences with pre-collegiate students.
Angeline Burrell, a doctoral candidate in the William B. Hanson Center for Space Sciences, makes time each year to inspire younger students through her portrayal of a comic book character developed to explain UTD's research in space sciences. It's a lighter complement to her high-level studies in atmospheric modeling and ionosphere physics, and it serves to increase awareness of research efforts at the University.
Working in conjunction with NASA, Dr. Mary Urquhart, director of the Department of Science/Mathematics Education, and Dr. Marc Hairston, a research scientist at the University, designed two graphic novels featuring the character "CINDI." Burrell's role is to dress up as CINDI and appear at public events to talk to young students about the University's research in a way they can understand.
"I think it's important to encourage young people, especially girls who tend to be underrepresented in the field, to pursue science," Burrell said. "We try to find many ways to reach out to the community and hopefully garner lots of interest in our research."
Another way faculty assist pre-collegiate students is through the UTeach Dallas program housed in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. The UTeach program aims to educate the next generation of highly qualified science and math teachers in an effort to provide excellent teachers to primary and secondary schools. UTeach students major in the discipline they intend to teach, and learn pedagogy experientially, through early exposure to professional teachers and work in classrooms with young students.
"Through professional development, we are fostering relationships among students in the UTeach program," Urquhart said. "They will go on to establish best practices in their own classrooms and districts and share the information with others. It's a unique way to disseminate best practices among teachers--who will then go on to inspire younger students to embrace research."
Discovery and Impact
Research efforts are alive in every corner of the University from brain sciences and engineering to the humanities, business, and emerging media. Increasing enrollment and successful recruitment of research-active faculty (30 in the last year) also point to the growth and wisdom of prioritizing excellence in research.
"The lifeblood of a great research university is the innovative work done by faculty members, researchers and graduate students from many disciplines across the campus," Gnade said. "We are all working toward enhancing and expanding the research environment beyond the UT Dallas campus."
UT Dallas faculty routinely collaborate with major organizations worldwide, such as the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, and establish research partnerships with NASA and major global companies.
This outreach and contribution to research communities worldwide builds relationships that enrich and strengthen the experiences offered to students and faculty at UT Dallas. Undergraduates moving on to other institutions often find they are received more readily because of the University's reputation as a cultivator of young talent.
Dr. Sheila Amin Gutiérrez de Piñeres, professor and dean of undergraduate education, said the kind of undergraduate research opportunities offered at the University can be a defining experience in a student's academic career.
"It allows them the opportunity to explore new ideas and concepts while learning how to test them," she said. "We have students who after participating in undergraduate research decide to pursue advanced degrees in a discipline. Undergraduate research at UT Dallas provides opportunities that only graduate students have at many other universities."
Many of these promising undergraduate researchers also are rewarded with fellowships and nationally and internationally competitive scholarships. The Green Fellowship program for undergrads nearly doubled last year to 17 students who dedicated a full semester to doing individual research in labs at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
And since 2005, five UT Dallas students have received nationally competitive Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships. Designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering, the Goldwater is the premier undergraduate honor of its type. It's also a good harbinger of future success: More than 75 recent Goldwater scholars have gone on to win Rhodes Scholarships for postgraduate study.
Austin Swafford, a 2010 UT Dallas graduate and McDermott Scholar, was a recipient of a 2008 Goldwater Scholarship. Swafford leveraged his research experience at UT Dallas and is now continuing his studies at Cambridge University as a member of the National Institutes of Health Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program where he is developing highly sensitive diagnostic procedures and therapeutic strategies to fight diabetes.
Dr. Walter Voit, another UT Dallas grad, completed his graduate work at Georgia Tech and was recruited back to the University as an assistant professor in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science.
"I began research starting my junior year in Dr. Hal Sudborough's lab. I did work, attended his weekly lab meetings and felt at home in that research environment," Voit said. "It was a lot of work and involved lots of problem solving, and it really prepared me for graduate school.
"All of my experiences in the lab--delegating responsibilities, building protocols and writing--have helped me create a sustainable environment for research," Voit said.
Voit said the entirety of his experience, first as a student researcher, then as a graduate student, prepared him for his eventual career as a professor. Like George Jeffrey, Ray Baughman and Sudborough before him, Voit is teaching through research. Since returning to UTD, two of his own undergraduate students from Georgia Tech have begun working on their doctoral degrees in his lab. At UT Dallas, research is teaching.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Should Colleges Be Factories for the 1%?
Obama wants the feds to report what a college's graduates earn. That's no way to judge an educational institution.
By Robin Mamlet and Christine VandeveldeIn his recently unveiled Blueprint for College Affordability, President Obama calls for "collecting earnings and employment information for colleges and universities, so that students can have an even better sense of the life they'll be able to build once they graduate." In other words, the government wants to publish statistics on what graduates earn after leaving Harvard or Ohio State or Duke.
The results are unlikely to surprise. For all the costs of collecting and collating this information--for the sake of reducing the costs of education, no less--it will show what is intuitively obvious: On average, Ivy League grads earn more. But the information will be worse than useless for college-bound students because it will send them all the wrong signals.
The Obama administration decries the privilege of the top 1%, yet the president is suggesting that the likelihood of joining that 1% should be a top factor in college selection. That puts the government's imprimatur on the idea that earning potential trumps learning potential--and it runs counter to everything most educators believe in.
Earnings power is not a good proxy for educational excellence. Is a college that produces bankers and businesspeople better than one that produces teachers and musicians because graduates of the former are likely to make more money? If so, everyone should be a trial lawyer, nobody a teacher.
To be sure, the college-bound need to think about how they may earn a living, and how different schools can help prepare them for that challenge. But unless students are already set on particular careers, they should choose their college based on the best fit for their particular capabilities and personalities--a place where they will thrive and emerge with the greatest set of life choices appropriate to them.
Even if the goal were simply to make the most possible money, it doesn't necessarily follow that students should attend the college with the highest-earning average graduate. The surest path is to find the best personal fit. If a student would thrive at Wayne State, that student will probably achieve his or her highest potential--in earnings and in every way--by attending Wayne State.
Simply warming a seat at Harvard will not imbue you with earnings power, yet Mr. Obama's initiative will feed Ivy League frenzy, though among those eight schools the median acceptance rate is only one in 12.
The vast majority of Fortune 100 CEOs attended public universities, state colleges and regional schools. And Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't become rich because they graduated from Harvard--they both dropped out.
"The concept that only the most selective institutions prepare the highest earners is fictitious, and if the primary measurement of a quality education is the earning power of alumni, then I would argue the measure is misguided as well," says Roger Thompson, the University of Oregon's vice provost for enrollment management.
In looking for the best fit, more information is almost always better. So it's good that Mr. Obama is pushing colleges to help families see clearly what school will cost, what are a student's chances of graduating in a timely fashion, and what the ultimate student-loan burden may be.
But for the government to publish earnings statistics turns colleges into mutual funds, to be ranked on narrow financial performance. Colleges already compete to win higher and higher rankings of various sorts. They'll even cheat to win. Witness Claremont McKenna College's submission of false SAT scores for incoming freshmen to U.S. News & World Report's widely-followed rankings.
What will be the unintended consequences if colleges now have to compete to boast "richest grads"? Will they turn themselves into trade schools instead of the centers of learning and acculturation that they ought to be? In reducing college selection to a mere financial scorecard, the Obama administration is promoting a false value that has a high price indeed.
Ms. Mamlet, a former admission dean at Stanford, Sarah Lawrence and Swarthmore, is leader of the admission practice of Witt/Kieffer. Ms. VanDeVelde is a journalist. They are co-authors of "College Admission: From Application to Acceptance, Step by Step," (Random House, 2011).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Allan Price's death a big loss for Oregon
Portland Business Journal by Rob Smith, EditorI first met Allan Price back in 2005, when Business Journal Publisher Craig Wessel and I began exploring ways to work more closely with the University of Oregon.
We ventured to Eugene and had a productive meeting with Allan -- then UO's vice president of advancement -- and his team. Afterwards, he took us to lunch.
The conversation ranged from families to politics to the then-controversial search for a new University of Oregon basketball complex to the Jordan Schnitzer Art Museum on the UO campus.
Through it all, Allan was engaging, charming and someone I considered a friend, though we had just met. A lot of folks felt that way about Allan.
In late 2008, Allan announced he was leaving UO for Oregon Health and Science University to become senior vice president for advancement and president of the OHSU Foundation.
OHSU officials wanted Allan to duplicate the tremendous success he had at UO, where he oversaw a staggering $853 million fundraising campaign called "Campaign Oregon: Transforming Lives." The campaign's goal was $600 million.
Allan told me the decision to leave was very emotional for several reasons. Foremost, he had recently donated a kidney to one of his two sons, and was so impressed with the care and quality of his experience at OHSU that he considered it an honor to work there. One of the perks of his new job was dealing with so many intelligent, cutting-edge medical professionals. He said every day was like an education.
Allan laid a strong foundation at OHSU, but never got to see his work to fruition. He died last Friday while vacationing outside Puerto Vallarta. He was snorkeling, and speculation is that he suffered a heart attack.
He was only 56 years old.
When he moved to OHSU, he took several top UO colleagues with him. They jumped at the chance to continue working with Allan, even though, in some cases, it meant uprooting families.
One person flat out told me, "I love Allan. Best boss I've ever had."
I ran into Allan periodically after that: at business functions, at a Portland Business Journal Power Breakfast, on the MAX line after a Trail Blazers game, where his wife, Susan, and my wife were so engrossed in conversation we almost missed our stop.
Allan's death is a huge loss for Oregon's business community. Personally, it's hard to believe I won't bump into Allan around town anymore.
I can only imagine how those closest to Allan must be feeling.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Defining an arboretum
Native or exotic? For Mount Pisgah board, that is the question
By Susan Palmer -- The Register-GuardMount Pisgah Arboretum may be changing -- whether for better or for worse depends on your point of view -- as its board of directors weighs whether to limit plantings to native species or open some areas to more exotic trees.
The 209-acre park within the Howard Buford Recreation Area southeast of Eugene was initially conceived as a traditional arboretum -- a living museum of trees from around the world. In fact, according to its longest-serving board member, the arboretum's initial mission described a "garden featuring plants from around the world growing together to symbolize international friendship."
But some board members would like to limit new plantings to trees that are indigenous to the Willamette Valley, said board member Theodore Palmer, a University of Oregon emeritus math professor.
That would be a shame, Palmer says, because it doesn't align with the vision of the park's founders.
Converting the land from its earlier state -- a poison oak-, blackberry vine- and scotch broom-infested nightmare of invasive plants and tumbledown buildings -- has been a decades-long proposition, he said.
Palmer should know. A founding member of the nonprofit arboretum, he estimates he's spent 27,000 hours working in the park, pulling invasive weeds, cutting down Douglas fir so that white oak could thrive on the open hillsides, and building trails.
Now, with walkable trails crisscrossing the park, a protected pavilion for weddings and other gatherings, and benches and picnic tables that draw people year-round, the focus has turned again to planting trees.
The long-term plan was for some small specific areas -- about 20 acres' worth -- to be dedicated to trees from around the world, Palmer said.
The current nonnative trees in the park are redwoods -- a grove near the caretaker's house and a lone sentinel redwood in the turnaround next to the parking lot.
But a Lebanon cedar could make a good addition to the arboretum, Palmer said. An important tree in commerce going back thousands of years, it was sold all over the Mediterranean, he noted.
Such a tree would make an interesting part of an educational display in a state whose first wealth came through commercial tree harvesting, he said.
The exotic trees would be in out-of-the-way places that wouldn't change the current feeling of the park, he said.
"They will be easy to find, but they will not change the view," he said.
But other board members think moving to a native-species focus would better serve the park and more accurately reflect what is happening there now, said current board chairman Jonathan Stafford, a Eugene architect, who noted that he was speaking for himself and not the entire board.
"We haven't been able to plant exotic species, because it takes staff and time and money," Stafford said.
Bringing in exotic species could pose a risk, taking up space once occupied by native plants and potentially altering the local ecology in unintended ways, he said.
"The real function of an arboretum is educating its visitors, and the question now is, 'What should we be teaching them?' " he said.
Rather than expanding the plantings to species from around the world, Stafford thinks what's here now -- especially with climate change creating future uncertainty -- should be preserved.
"Let's study carefully what's there, watch it change and let people know about it," he said.
Stafford hopes people who visit the arboretum will take the opportunity to share their thoughts with the board and comment on the proposal to change the arboretum's mission. The differing views are explained in documents on the nonprofit group's website.
"We're doing this to find out how our members and other interested parties feel," Stafford said. "It's not a vote, but we're going to pay attention."
Even on a rainy February afternoon, there were many people visiting the arboretum, and some expressed the same ambivalence that exists among board members.
Autumn Maker, a teacher at Lincoln Middle School in Cottage Grove, runs in the park several days a week; she said she embraces the long-term goal of preserving native species.
But her mother, Rebecca Maker, who joined her daughter on Monday for a rainy walk, could also see a reason to bring in more species from other places.
"As an education tool there is some value to it," she said.
Aleta Katra, scoping out the park's pavilion with her fiance, Jason Lafferty, as a possible site for their wedding, could also see both sides.
"When I think of Mount Pisgah, I definitely think of an old oak forest," Katra said. "I don't think of it as a place of exotic species."
Katra said she spent almost every weekend of her summers as a child at Mount Pisgah. She'd come with her father for a picnic lunch, and they'd often swim in the Coast Fork of the Willamette, which skirts the park.
"I loved the oak trees and the skunk cabbage," Katra said.
But she says she'd continue to support the board whether it opted to keep the arboretum as it is or to add more species from other places.
"It wouldn't decrease my enjoyment," she said.
MOUNT PISGAH Arboretum
Online: Learn about and comment on the proposal at www.mountpisgaharboretum.com/
Deadline for comment: March 2
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hands off higher ed
Lawmakers should leave surplus alone; campuses should use it to limit tuition
Amid the usual belt-tightening talk in Salem as the Legislature grapples with yet another budget gap is a bit of welcome news: The state's public universities are sitting on millions of dollars in reserves. The campuses should be able to keep that money, and they should use it to give students a break.
The extra cash is the result of recent trends in the Oregon University System.
First, the recession has driven more students into college because of the weak job market.
Second, while tuition has soared here, it has gone up even faster in California, making even nonresident tuition a relative bargain for California students, who have flocked to Oregon campuses. Out-of-state students pay $27,000 a year to attend the University of Oregon, compared with about $6,000 for in-state students.
Finally, Oregon tuition has soared as campuses made up for money they weren't getting from the Legislature. Tuition at Oregon's big universities has risen 70 percent in the past four years.
The bottom line: The Oregon University System should have nearly $200 million in reserve by the end of the fiscal year June 30.
In the past, lawmakers had a hard time keeping their hands off surpluses like that, especially when the rest of state government was scraping for every nickel. The Legislature would "sweep" reserves from the universities and use it to patch holes in other parts of state government.
Last year, the Legislature agreed to restructure the university system so that it is no longer a department of state government on a par with prisons or transportation. The resulting autonomy is intended to give universities the freedom to invest reserves and keep a lid on tuition so students and their parents know in advance what four years of college will cost.
Lawmakers say they have no intention of sweeping any reserves this year. That doesn't mean they can't still wreak havoc. The University System's budget already has been trimmed 3.5 percent. Legislators could decide to cut it further. They should not. The state has underfunded higher education for too long already.
University administrators can hold up their end of the bargain by doing right by students. Spend that $200 million to keep tuition from rising any higher than it already is, not for new programs or facilities.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Late mentions for February 20
The failure of Right-to-Work laws
By Gordon LaferAn op-ed appeared recently in The Washington Examiner ("Indiana gets right-to-work just in time," Feb. 2) by Stan Greer celebrating Indiana's adoption of an anti-union law and questioning research that I and other scholars have performed documenting the law's failure.
So-called "right-to-work" laws make it illegal for unions to ensure that each employee who benefits from a union contract pays his or her fair share of the costs of administering it.
The aim is to weaken unions and cut wages. As the Indiana Chamber of Commerce explains, unions "increase labor costs," making a state "less attractive" for investors. Through RTW, employees are supposed to abandon unions, reduce wages and hope this attracts more employers.
Only problem is, it doesn't work. Statistical research shows that RTW succeeds in cutting wages -- by about $1,500 a year -- but does nothing to boost job growth.
In large part, globalization has rendered RTW impotent. In the 1970s, companies may have moved to southern states in search of lower wages. But in 2012, companies looking for cheap labor are moving to China or Mexico, not South Carolina.
Employer surveys confirm that RTW is not a significant draw; in 2010 manufacturers ranked it 16th among factors affecting location decisions. For higher-tech, higher-wage employers, nine of the 10 most-favored states are non-RTW.
Greer, who is a National Right to Work Committee employee, works hard to deny these findings. His column complains about my objecting to one of his recent claims, in which he touted the job growth of Midwestern "RTW states" without admitting that the growth was driven by North Dakota's discovery of oil.
Indeed, since the bottom of the recession in mid-2009, non-RTW Indiana added twice as many manufacturing jobs as all Midwestern RTW states combined. Unfortunately, this is only one of numerous misstatements that promote RTW by concealing important facts.
Greer's organization likewise celebrates Texas' job growth as evidence of RTW's success, without mentioning that 100 percent of Texas' recent growth is in government jobs -- nothing to do with RTW.
There are many ways to lie with numbers, but only one way to tell the truth. It's called "regression analysis" -- the statistical science of holding "all other things equal." Everyone knows Texas has grown faster than Michigan, for instance.
But how do we know if that growth is due to warm weather, the oil industry, or Mexican immigrants? The only honest way to measure the impact of RTW is by holding everything else equal in order to identify the particular impact of this one policy.
This is the fundamental requirement of any meaningful research. And when done right, the results are clear: RTW lowers wages and benefits without boosting job growth.
Unfortunately, none of Greer's publications meet this fundamental standard of scholarship; that's why they are disregarded by scholars and unhelpful for lawmakers.
The Greer op-ed attacked my work in personal terms. But it's really not personal: The failure of RTW has been documented by numerous scholars. Separate studies by business professors at the University of Kentucky and industrial relations professors at Michigan State both concluded that RTW had no discernible impact on job growth.
A Hofstra University economist found that RTW decreased wages but "has no effect on economic growth." Economists at University of Nevada and Claremont McKenna College determined that the 2001 adoption of RTW in Oklahoma resulted in lower wages for non-union workers, but had no impact on job growth. All of these are professional studies carried out by independent scholars.
If Greer is going to write bitter op-eds denouncing everyone whose research discredits RTW, he's going to be a busy man.
Gordon Lafer is associate professor at the University of Oregon's Labor Education and Research Center, and a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which is funded in part by organized labor.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Go green to save green? 'That's a big chunk of money'
By Tom Adams KVAL NewsEUGENE, Ore. - Kirk Gebb has car payments that might give you pause: $450 per month.
But for Gebb, the pay off is driving by all the gasoline pumps.
And as for rising fuel prices, Gebb says, "Bring it on."
"It's fine with me," he said. "It just makes my averages look that more attractive."
Gebb was one of the first people in Eugene to take delivery on a fully electric Nissan Leaf.
"I have no problem achieving 100 miles" per charge, he said, "and I'm by no means the most efficient driver."
Electric vehicles and gas-electric hybrids are taking a larger share of the Oregon car market, with a little help from the taxman: Gebb said federal and state tax credits totaling $9,000 were a huge factor in his decision.
"Personally I would have done it even with out it, but for those on the edge, that's a big chunk of money," Gebb said.
According to a University of Oregon study, if you hang on to that hybrid or EV long enough, the savings can be big.
The UO planning workshop team figured the annual electrical cost to charge an EV costs $250.
Fuel costs for a gas car, assuming $3.50 per gallon and 30 miles per gallon, add up to $1,400 per year for the same mileage.
What about hybrids and their batteries?
KVAL News took a look at a Toyota Prius with well over 100,000 miles on it at the Lane Community College Automotive Centers.
"People worry about the maintenance costs of the hybrid," said Egan Riordan in the LCC Car Service Department. "There really isn't anything outstanding about the hybrid that they should worry about."
And replacing the batteries?
Riordan said those costs have dropped in recent years to about $2,300.
Bottom line for Gebb: it all pencils out.
"It's been a great vehicle," he said. "Zero issues so far."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Late mentions for February 19
Oregon discovery turns back the wheels of time
By Randi Bjornstad -- The Register-GuardYou might think, in a world covered by satellite photos and trampled hither and thither by billions of wandering feet, that few earthbound mysteries remain.
But that is not the case.
Pat O'Grady, staff archaeologist with the University of Oregon's Museum of Natural and Cultural History, beams when he talks about two Native American "medicine wheels" that a fellow archaeologist literally stumbled upon five years ago in Southeastern Oregon, near Burns.
"I teach archaeology field schools in that area, so I'm friends with the district archaeologist for the Bureau of Land Management over there, and he's the one who first came across these medicine wheels and recognized what they are," O'Grady said.
"Nobody's ever seen anything like that before in Oregon; medicine wheels are more usually found in the northern plains and farther east. We're not sure who created these, but they're probably somewhere between 110 and 340 years old."
O'Grady and the medicine wheels will be featured this week on "Oregon Field Guide," a production of the Oregon Public Broadcasting television network.
Although the function of medicine wheels -- rocks deliberately placed in circles and sometimes divided with more rocks into segments -- is not known, the assumption is that they were used in some kind of traditional or religious ceremonies, O'Grady said. The larger of the circles, found in 2007 in the Stinkingwater Mountains, is roughly 80 feet in diameter, and the smaller one is 60 feet in diameter.
The two medicine wheels are about 600 feet apart. O'Grady first saw the circles in 2009.
Their authenticity is established by the lichen growth on the rocks; the way they have been misshapen by wind, water and animal activity; and the fact that there are few signs of modern disturbance nearby, he said.
"What we've found in the area is mostly prehistoric artifacts, such as obsidian points, rather than recent stuff, like tin cans or bottles," he said. "And there was another significant archaeological site discovered nearby around the same time as the medicine wheels that we believe is wickiup (aka wigwam) depression. That's a site waiting to be explored.
"We don't want to assume too much, but we believe they may be related in time."
The big question for archaeologists is who made the circles, he said.
"The greatest presence of Native Americans in that area probably would have been the Burns Paiute, but I don't believe they usually created medicine wheels," he said.
"That general area attracted a lot of people to spring root camps -- it would have been one of the first places to find fresh green shoots of bitterroot and Indian carrot -- so people would have come from a wide radius to camp there, even from as far away as what is now Idaho," O'Grady said. "It seems likely that someone must have brought part of a tradition here that they had practiced elsewhere."
O'Grady and his fellow archaeologists feel an urgency to photograph and map the area, do the required research, get the medicine wheels onto a historic registry and protect them with fencing.
"When I first saw the medicine wheels, there was no disturbance of the area at all," he said. But when I came back in 2011, the circles had been cut and rutted by all-terrain vehicles.
"There is a real immediacy here to document what has been found."
Besides intrusion by people, the medicine wheels also are vulnerable to natural forces.
"The larger circle is more subtle, the smaller one more pronounced because it sits on a low rise, in a kind of protected amphitheater. But at any time, there could be a slide or a flash flood, and these amazing structures could disappear off the map in an instant. Once they go away, there's no way to get them back."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Late mentions for February 18
Composer's originality questioned by critics
They say a work the Eugene Symphony partly paid for borrows more than its melody from another piece
By Bob Keefer -- The Register-GuardWhen the Eugene Symphony performed the Pacific Northwest premiere Thursday night of "Sidereus," a newly commissioned work by Grammy Award-winning composer Osvaldo Golijov, two members of the audience had a sudden sense of puzzlement.
Tom Manoff, a National Public Radio classical music critic who lives in Eugene, and Brian McWhorter, a University of Oregon music professor and trumpet player, attended the concert together -- mostly to hear the F.J. Haydn trumpet concerto performed by the evening's featured guest, Andrew Balio.
But when the concert opened with Golijov's "Sidereus," a 9-minute composition that premiered in 2010 in Memphis, Tenn., the two men looked at each other in shock.
That's because, both said on Friday, they recognized large parts of Golijov's composition from a different composer's piece, one they both had been working with recently: accordionist Michael Ward-Bergeman's 2009 work, "Barbeich."
Ward-Bergeman was credited in the symphony program notes only for his melody. Golijov alone is listed as composer of "Sidereus."
Neither composer could be reached for comment on Friday.
Manoff says Golijov used much more than Ward-Bergeman's melody.
"At least half of the piece I heard played by the Eugene Symphony is known to me as Ward-Bergeman's 'Barbeich,' a work for accordion and ensemble which, according to the artist's website, was composed in 2009.
"The musical content of 'Sidereus' includes substantial sections of Ward-Bergman's composition, including melodies, harmonies, counterpoint, and notable musical structures," he wrote Friday on his blog.
"My gut reaction is this kind of thing reflects the general decline of the classical musical culture, a dumbed-down culture with few professional music critics, which has reduced music to pure commerce in the guise of high culture," he later elaborated by e-mail.
McWhorter also was disturbed by the similarities he heard.
"Oh my God, it was like verbatim," he said on Friday. "I can't begin to describe how surreal it was to hear."
McWhorter has been working with Manoff recently to finish a recording of a trumpet version of Ward-Bergeman's "Barbeich," performed with his ensemble, Beta Collide. Thus, both men were intimately familiar with "Barbeich."
"What I worry about is the credit," McWhorter said. "It's an amazing piece of music that Michael wrote."
Eugene Symphony was one of 35 orchestras that chipped in, aided by a grant from the League of American Orchestras, to commission the Golijov work in honor of Henry Fogel, the league's esteemed former leader, now retired.
Ryan Fleur -- president and chief executive of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, which coordinated the commission -- said Friday that the orchestras contributed between $1,500 and $4,000 each, although much of the total went for associated costs, such as producing scores for musicians and marketing the work.
Fleur downplayed the idea that the similarities between the works represented anything underhanded. For one thing, he said, musical borrowing is part of the classical tradition; Ludwig van Beethoven borrowed from Wolfgang Mozart.
Besides, he said, there are no clearly agreed on standards for crediting work by a composer.
"The amount you can quote from a work can be quite extensive."
Fleur added that he had watched the development of "Sidereus" under Golijov's direction in New York in the months before its premiere and then in final rehearsals. He said he was confident that it was ultimately Golijov's work.
"We watched the piece come to fruition. And it was transformed into a very different piece," he said.
The Eugene Symphony had no complaints with the work it helped commission, interim executive director Maylian Pak wrote in an e-mail.
"We were very happy with the concert, as was the audience, judging from their response," she said.
Ward-Bergeman did not respond to an e-mail asking for comment.
Golijov was busy working on a new composition and was unavailable for comment, his New York agency said Friday.
"I certainly don't have anything to comment since frankly I haven't heard the piece live or seen the score," Jonathan Brill, executive vice president at Opus3 Artists, said in an e-mail. "Just to say as a personal note that Michael and Osvaldo are and have been close colleagues, collaborators, friends, since many, many years.
"Mr. Golijov is now in midst of composing another piece and has asked not to be disturbed, and I am honoring that request."
On the website of Boosey & Hawkes, his music publisher, Golijov elaborated on the use of Ward-Bergeman's music.
"In 'Sidereus,' the melodies and the harmony are simple, so they can reveal more upon closer examination," Golijov wrote. "For the 'Moon' theme, I used a melody with a beautiful, open nature, a magnified scale fragment that my good friend and longtime collaborator, accordionist Michael Ward Bergeman came up with some years ago when we both were trying to come up with ideas for a musical depiction of the sky in Patagonia."
Golijov, who teaches music at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, is the winner of a MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called "genius award." He won two Grammys in 2007 -- for best opera recording and best classical contemporary composition -- for his opera "Ainadamar: Fountain of Tears."
The Oregon Bach Festival commissioned his "Oceana" and premiered it in Eugene in 1996; The Bach Festival also performed the Northwest premiere of his "La Pasión Según San Marcos" to open the festival in 2005.
Golijov, who is often said to be a perfectionist in his work, has apparently had trouble completing recent commissions on time.
Last year, he was late in delivering a string quartet that was to have been performed in March by the St. Lawrence String Quartet at Carnegie Hall. The premiere was put off until October.
In May, the Los Angeles Philharmonic canceled the premiere of a violin concerto that the orchestra had commissioned from the composer because it wasn't ready. And in 2010, he failed to deliver another new work to the L.A. Philharmonic. It was to have been performed by soprano Dawn Upshaw, pianist Emanuel Ax -- and his friend and collaborator, accordionist Ward-Bergeman.