Some well-spent time with faculty
February 11th, 2011A long-scheduled day in Portland was taken off my calendar last week and it was a windfall opportunity for me to have some informal time with faculty. My impromptu coffees and lunch gave me an opportunity to see some of our faculty involved in moving their respective disciplines to new areas of focus.
After spending time with Professor Jeff Stolet from Music and Dance, I’m now really looking forward to some upcoming performances where I get to hear and see his ideas around the digital generation of music actually performed.
Professor Doug Kennett is working in the intersection of evolution, ecology, anthropology and archaeology. He is harnessing new scientific methods to ask some very old questions. It was a fascinating, exciting conversation.
I had a remarkably interesting conversation with some of our newer law school faculty: Stuart Chinn, Michael Fakhri, John Greenman, Mohsen Manesh and Eric Priest. We discussed a typically exciting and broad ranging set of ideas (the kinds of things you encounter all the time when talking to law faculty) that range from intellectual property in China to new adaptations of business law in constantly changing market environments. The conversation even included a discussion of plagiarism and intellectual property and how texts are cited in Sanskrit literature.
Professor Laura Lee McIntyre from the school psychology program in the College of Education told me about her work helping families with differently-abled children, facilitating their success in school and in life starting at a very early age. Her work has garnered broad national attention and millions of dollars in funding. She’s an engaging and effective addition to our world-renowned education program.
We've often heard in the last few months the exclamation that “It's a great time to be a Duck!” Indeed it is. But the fact of the matter is that because of the constant innovations of this faculty—the sort I got to spend some time with last Friday—it is always a great time to be a Duck. A great university like this one gives really smart people the opportunity to come up with new and exciting questions and ideas all the time.
I am lucky to work with such colleagues. Oregon’s lucky to have them.
