UO E-clips, Feb. 3

UO completes Tigard downtown vision plan (Daily Journal of Commerce): The city of Tigard, working in conjunction with the University of Oregon, recently completed a Downtown Future Vision project for the city. City staff worked with a team of UO graduate students and professors from the university’s Portland Urban Architecture Research Laboratory to develop a graphic plan for Tigard’s future development. … The document includes findings and recommendations, development scenarios for the downtown area over the next 50 years, sketches of opportunity sites, and an appendix of research and analysis. The city hopes the document will help city staff, property owners, businesses and potential developers to envision redevelopment throughout downtown Tigard.

Women earn fewer degrees, jobs in science industry (Daily Emerald): Education is no longer sex-segregated with schools teaching wood shop to boys and home economics to girls, but annual surveys of college degree-earners by the National Science Foundation report that scientists are still more likely to be men. According to the Association for Women in Science, women are not only among the minority of science degree-earners in nearly every discipline, but they also secure fewer faculty positions, earn lower wages and leave the sciences at a higher rate than their male peers. … "There definitely are forces at play, very unconscious forms of bias at play," said Karen Guillemin, associate professor of biology at the University. "People used to think it was just a matter of time before it would even out, but it's not evening out." … "There are a lot of environmental and social reasons, but also the level of expectations for boys and girls are different and stereotypes set in early, sometimes too early," said Miriam Deutsch, associate professor of physics at the University. "We have evolved from a male-dominated society where men called the shots for centuries, but it becomes a culture."

Stimulus dollars inspire dreams of possible local projects (Register-Guard): Imagine a new pedestrian/bike bridge arching over Delta Highway and reflecting in the adjacent urban ponds. See a gleaming new Lane Community College downtown building with daylight classrooms on lower floors and student living quarters above. These are the visions dancing in the minds of local government officials as the state and federal governments prepare to spend massive sums to try to stimulate the economy. … Good planners don’t have a lot of ready-to-go projects lying around, said UO planning director Chris Ramey.

UO scores on fundraising (The Oregonian, editorial): All of Oregon's larger public universities -- and their foundations -- can take heart in the success the University of Oregon achieved in its recently concluded long-term fundraising campaign. University President Dave Frohnmayer announced Friday that the campaign had raised $853 million over its eight-year life, allowing the school to add to its endowment, reward faculty excellence, offer more aid to students and build or improve facilities, academic and athletic. This is, of course, a great thing for the university, its students, faculty and alumni, but it's important to remember that success for one public university in the state is a good omen for all of them. Fundraising isn't a zero-sum game, at least not for practical purposes. Oregon State University, Portland State University and Oregon Health & Science University all have major fundraising efforts in various stages of development, and there is no particular reason why all of them cannot succeed.