President Karl Scholz gave the following remarks to the board of trustees on Tuesday, June 3, 2025.

I want to thank those who public comments and who have been participating in the meeting. I want to thank Allison (Schmitke) and Dyana Mason for their work on the senate ethical investment taskforce report. We are working through it and look forward to working with the senate going forward on that.

I want to start with the financial outlook of the university.

Jamie and her team provided a detailed look at the deficit to our education and general fund budget yesterday. It is a sobering situation that will require us to make difficult budget decisions. 

There is no simple or quick or simple fix. We anticipate taking the summer months to confer with leaders in academic and administrative areas to develop approaches that meet our targets of 4 percent average cuts across administrative units and 2.5 percent average cuts across academic units, those are in addition to the changes that are required in academic and administrative units to meet their existing budgets. 

We will implement plans that best support our mission, our long-term goals, and our legal and contractual obligations and we will do this being mindful of the impact various options might have on the institution and our community. 

It is my expectation that we will complete our plans and begin implementation by the start of the fall term.

At our March meeting staff and faculty reported to you about the federal funding landscape, but even as we continue to monitor and assess how much we will be affected, I have a bright spot I’d like to call out. In late May we received a notice of award for the Alacrity Center from the National Institute of Mental Health totaling more than $11 million to the Prevention Science Institute with many faculty from the College of Education and the Ballmer Institute having substantive roles. This competitive center grant will improve the lives of children and families in schools and builds on our national expertise in this area. 

This NIH grant aligns very well with the signature area of Youth Behavioral and Mental Health of Oregon Rising. This is great news for the university and our network of collaborating K-12 schools, especially in today’s funding climate.

This might be a good time to also say a fond farewell to outgoing School of Education Dean Laura Lee McIntyre, who was recently announced as the new provost of Michigan State University. Dean McIntyre leaves a wonderful legacy from her 15 years at the University of Oregon, including her service on the board of trustees. 

I’d also like to give my appreciation for the three trustees who are leaving the board after this meeting. Toya, Ed, and Ruby, thank you. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with and getting to know you. Thank you for your care for our students, your support for the UO, and for being great trustees.

Oregon Rising

Let me turn to Oregon Rising. I have constantly said this strategic plan would not sit on a shelf to collect dust. I think we have shown in the eight months since that we are laying foundations and following through on that promise. 

In goal one on removing impediments to timely graduation:

• We empowered Grant Schoonover to lead the work of aligning academic advising and student support services to meet our goals. We have created consistent advising messaging around increasing the number of students who take 15 credits per term. We’ve already seen an increase of students who are taking at least 15 credits by almost 4 percentage points.
• Students are hearing a more consistent message about finishing their course work in four years and;
• We have also integrated an opportunity for our incoming students to meet with an advisor during Introducktion and actually leave with a fall class schedule.

On goal two around career preparation:

• Our action team is developing milestones and laid groundwork for our career efforts. We have settled on eight career communities. These will provide focal points for student exploration and serve as a landing spot for alums and others who will support our efforts. The communities are
  • Creative Arts, Design, and Communication
  • Investment, Consulting and Entrepreneurship
  • Environment and Natural Resources
  • Government, Policy, Global Affairs, and Law
  • Health Care and Well-Being
  • Education, Human Development, Nonprofits, and Service
  • Applied Sciences
  • Data Science, Analytics, and Technology
• A lot of work has also been done to identify an alumni engagement platform that meets our needs for the increased interactions we are looking for. 

In goal three on creating a flourishing campus community:

• Flourishing is an interesting concept. It will never be “done,” and we won’t one day clap our hands and proclaim that we are now flourishing. It is also not meant to be something we only do when everything is going smoothly. It’s not just about abundance. It’s about learning. Growing. Finding purpose and trusting. It’s about living a meaningful life. The idea must have salience in difficult as well as in good times. I’d argue that it is even more important now.
• We have made progress in defining and finding ways we can measure our progress, identifying domains of flourishing for students and employees.
• Focusing on employee development and engagement has yielded good results, and we now have a collaborative team led by HR and DEI to identify the most impactful opportunities to build on our recruitment and retention of faculty and staff.
• Units are digging into these ideas. HR has held flourishing events, as have our Officers of Administration, our Office of Equity and Inclusion, and it has been a focus in our yearly leadership academy.

And briefly on goal four and our signature areas of scholarship:

• We have assigned work groups for each area with a focus on faculty expertise.
• Of course, great work is occurring in these areas, and this would be the case even in the absence of Oregon Rising. Our hope is to accelerate this work and its impact.
• To mention a handful of accomplishments:
  • We now have an Olympic Studies Hub housed in the Warsaw Sports Business Center. We are a part of a network of nearly 80 such hubs around the world—and we’re the only one in the United States.
  • At the Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health we had 18 UO child behavioral health interns placed at five Portland-area public schools. I don’t want to step on the toes of my colleagues in University Communications, but a long-form portrait of a few of these interns will run this week. Read it.
    • At the Knight Campus, scientists have developed miniature implantable sensors that transmit real-time data about what’s happening at an injury site. The work is a collaboration between the labs of Bob Guldberg, Nick Willett and Keat Ghee Ong in the Knight Campus, and is funded in part by the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance.
    • And later this month, the Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center is hosting a workshop in Portland with more than 130 organizations. They’re coming together to discuss and workshop core issues for earthquake-related hazard research, awareness and training.

Remarkable work is occurring at the University of Oregon.

End of year wrap up

As I wrap up my final report of the 2024-25 academic year, I would like to thank all of you—the trustees—for your work, and to all those who support the University of Oregon. 

I would also like to congratulate our students, faculty and staff on their accomplishments. Commencement is in 13 days, and we’ll again graduate a wonderful, talented, eager class that will soon be out in the world, creating change.

We also had a great year in athletics. We won eight Big Ten championships in our first year in the conference. That’s a single-year record for us, regardless of what conference we’ve competed in. 

Our athletic department is one of only a few around the country that is financially self-sustaining, receiving no general state funds or tuition revenue. And athletics brings great positive attention to the institution, as well as providing terrific opportunities for student athletes and others.

So let me close by stating the obvious. This is a challenging moment for universities and the UO. Yet I remain optimistic. 

As others have mentioned, we have great people, belong to great networks like the AAU and Big Ten, and our base of support among alumni is second to none. The UO is beautiful. And Ducks care—our students, their families, our staff and faculty, and our alumni. We’re focusing on what matters and people see that.   

But what gives me the greatest hope and faith is what we do is precious. We bring people in from very different backgrounds. All 50 states, 90 countries, different experiences, different priorities, different ethnicities and religions and political beliefs and at the UO these things collide. There are few places in American society where that occurs, and that by itself supports remarkable experiences.

Second, we’re organized around the discovery and promotion of truth. Doing that requires us to grapple with complexities. Not hot takes on the issue of the day, but instead we use science, reason and deep understanding of what it means to be human to interrogate truth. That is a precious mission at the University of Oregon.

We have weathered quite a few things this school year, but I am proud of the work that has been done across the university. We officially opened the Portland Campus, we received a generous gift from Jordan Schnitzer and the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation to name our school of Global Studies and Languages and we have continued to push the mission of the university forward. 

I can’t wait to see what lies ahead.

Thank you.