Ducks for a Green Future
As the effects of climate change become increasingly apparent, scientists around the globe are racing the clock to mitigate its impact. Although time is running out to meet the original goal outlined in the Paris Agreement—achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius—CAS chemists are hard at work tackling the problem from a variety of angles.
From reducing industrial CO2 emissions to advancing clean energy technology, the University of Oregon’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry is a national leader in green chemistry research, says Elliot Berkman, divisional associate dean for the Natural Sciences. “Research in our Chemistry department is helping to develop the next generation of clean technology, whether it be energy transfer and storage, carbon filtration or clean water,” he says.
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Gifts to the College of Arts and Sciences can help our students make the most of their college careers. To do this, CAS needs your support. Your contributions help us ensure that teaching, research, advising, mentoring, and support services are fully available to every student. Thank you!
What’s Happening in CAS?
The urgency of climate change can’t be overstated. The Earth’s ten hottest years on record have occurred in the last decade, and 2024 has been the very hottest. This is leading to devastating and costly consequences. This month is a special issue that looks at how students are dealing with one of the bleakest futures of any generation and how CAS researchers are addressing climate change.
Find out how researchers in CAS are calculating the cost of climate change for Oregon households, chemists developing sustainable technologies, using economics to inform policymaking—and more.
Undergraduate Studies
Wherever your academic goals eventually take you at the UO, all Ducks begin their journey with foundational courses in CAS. More than 60 percent of students go on to pursue a major in a CAS department or program. With more than 50 departments and programs, there’s an intellectual home for almost any interest, talent, or career aspiration.
Graduate Studies
The College of Arts and Sciences offers more than 30 master's programs and more than 20 doctoral programs across a diverse range of disciplines. Both as contributors to research teams and through their own scholarship and teaching, our CAS graduate students are indispensable to the vitality of the UO academic mission.
Student Support Services
We provide our students with a variety of resources to help you thrive inside and outside the classroom. Through Tykeson Advising, we provide comprehensive academic and career advising from the start of your journey at the University of Oregon. Learn about career preparation and get assistance in selecting the very best classes. Connect with labs, libraries, IT and tutoring. Find your community on campus.
World-Class Faculty
The College of Arts and Sciences faculty members are a driving force of the high-output, high-impact research activity that has earned the UO membership in the prestigious Association of American Universities (AAU). Our world-class faculty members are inspiring teachers.
Among them are five members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, four members of the National Academy of Sciences. They are committed to helping students discover their academic passion. Every day, they work to expand students’ intellectual horizons, preparing them for life after college with real-world knowledge and skills.
Meet our Dean
In the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), we are committed to excellence in research and teaching, student success, and diversity, equity, and belonging.
A liberal arts education—one that offers a breadth of intellectual approaches and perspectives and depth in a major discipline—is the foundation to a purposeful life as a life-long learner, engaged citizen, and leader. The skills you will learn here—from written and verbal communication to analytical and quantitative reasoning, to compassion and understanding—are those that employers seek and will open the door to a wealth of opportunities.
You will find more than 50 majors and a multitude of minors within CAS, and seemingly endless opportunities for personal exploration and discovery. Whether you are an incoming first-year student, a grad student or a transfer student, you can map an exciting future and be part of a fun, warm, engaged liberal arts community here. Come join us. And go Ducks!
The College of Arts and Sciences includes:
Happening at CAS
noon
The Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies welcomes Kit Myers, Assistant Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Merced, for a talk on “The Violence of Love: Race, Adoption, and Family in the United States.”
12:00 pm on Friday, April 25 in EMU Crater Lake North (Room 146) Free and Open to the Public
The Violence of Love challenges the narrative that adoption is a solely loving act that benefits birth parents, adopted individuals, and adoptive parents–a narrative that is especially pervasive with transracial and transnational adoptions. Using interdisciplinary methods of archival, legal, and discursive analysis, Kit W. Myers comparatively examines the adoption of Asian, Black, and Native American children by White families in the United States. He shows how race has been constructed relationally to mark certain homes, families, and nations as spaces of love, freedom, and better futures–in contrast to others that are not–and argues that violence is attached to adoption in complex ways. Propelled by different types of love, such adoptions attempt to transgress biological, racial, cultural, and national borders established by traditional family ideals. Yet they are also linked to structural, symbolic, and traumatic forms of violence. The Violence of Love confronts this discomforting reality and rethinks theories of family to offer more capacious understandings of love, kinship, and care.
Cosponsored by the Mellon Foundation.
Kit Myers is transracial and transnational adoptee from Hong Kong and grew up in Oregon. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of History & Critical Race and Ethnic Studies. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of California, San Diego in ethnic studies and his B.S. in ethnic studies and journalism from the University of Oregon. His book, The Violence of Love: Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States, was recently published with the University of California Press (2025). Myers has published journal articles in Adoption Quarterly, Critical Discourse Studies, Adoption & Culture, and Amerasia. He has also written on issues of race and policing. He serves on the executive committee for the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture and previously served on the leadership team of the Adoption Museum Project. When Myers is not working, he loves spending time with his partner and two kids, being in nature, watching sports, coaching his daughters' soccer teams, and visiting family in Oregon.
1:00 p.m.
Phi Alpha Theta Honor Society invites history majors and minors to lunch and a study session! We’ll enjoy free food, study for midterms, and mingle with history students!
Friday April 25th from 1-3 PM in McKenzie Hall 375 Free and open to all Department of History majors and minors
2:00 p.m.
The Department of Cinema Studies proudly announces the 10th Annual Harlan J. Strauss Visiting Filmmaker Series with award-winning Director Sean Wang.
Join cinema studies for masterclass with award-winning Director Sean Wang. He will share his creative process for developing and directing scenes from his independent feature DÌDI , including ideas and techniques for casting, blocking, and working collaboratively on set with both talent and crew.
Open to UO students • Priority to CINE majors • Space is limited Register to attend by April 14.
For more information about the masterclass and to RSVP, please visit cinema.uoregon.edu.
Sean Wang is an Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker from the Bay Area. He began his career developing and directing commercials at Google Creative Lab. Since then, his work has screened at globally renowned film festivals including Sundance, SXSW, and TIFF. He is a former Sundance Ignite and TAAF fellow, and 2023 Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Lab Fellow. In 2024, he was named a BAFTA Breakthrough Artist and received the Sundance Vanguard Award for Fiction.
His most recent short film, Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó (Grandma & Grandma), premiered at SXSW 2023 where it won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award and was acquired by Disney+. It went on to screen at dozens of film festivals worldwide, earning top honors at AFI Fest and SIFF, and was nominated for Best Documentary Short Film at the 96th Academy Awards.
His feature directorial debut, Dìdi (弟弟), premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival where it won the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award, Special Jury Prize for Best Ensemble Cast, and was acquired by Focus Features for a global theatrical release. Sean was nominated by the DGA for Outstanding Directorial Achievement of a First-Time Feature Film and the film was named a New York Times Critics Pick, nominated for 4 Independent Spirit Awards, winning 2 for Best First Screenplay and Best First Feature, and was named one of the top ten independent films of 2024 by the National Board of Review.
The UO Cinema Studies Visiting Filmmaker Series is Funded by the Generous Harlan J. Strauss Visiting Filmmaker Endowment.
2:30–4:30 p.m.
We are pleased to host Dr. Roberto Cabeza of Duke University for our 36th annual Fred Attneave Memorial Lecture on April 25th at 2:30pm in Gerlinger Lounge. Dr. Cabeza’s research uses brain imaging techniques to explore how memory and brain activity are connected, and how this relationship changes as we age.