Donald Milton Erb

Donald Erb began his life after graduation with a Bachelor of Science degree in commerce from the University of Illinois. He entered into a Boston import export firm, where he stayed for almost a year and also worked at a retail store before he heeded the call to academia. He returned to the U of Ill. where he was an assistant of economics. In 1924, he earned his Master of Science degree. In the fall of 1925, he entered the Harvard's Graduate School and received his Master of Arts degree in 1927.

Erb first came to the U of O in 1927 as an assistant professor of economics, teaching mainly in the field of transportation. He took a year's leave from the university in 1929 and earned his Ph. D. from Harvard. He returned to Oregon in 1930 as a professor of economics, where he stayed until moving to Stanford in 1933. While at Stanford, he served for a year as the acting chairman for the department of economics.

In 1937, Donald Erb was selected to replace Clarence Boyer as university president. The decision was based largely on faculty opinion and preference and made Erb the youngest university president to-date.

Erb worked to restore upper-level science courses to the university, eventually seeing his work realized when the state board of higher education approved the re-establishment of major work in pure sciences in 1941.