Bringing 'Rule Breakers' to the Big Screen
An all-girls robotics team in Afghanistan defied the barriers and odds in 2017 to compete at a world stage, capturing international attention for their resilience and persistence.
Jason Brown, a creative writing professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, helped bring this story to the big screen. The film, "Rule Breakers," was released in March in over 2,000 theaters across the country. Produced by Angel Studios, "Rule Breakers" is inspired by the real-life story of the Afghan Girls’ Robotics Team, also known as the Afghan Dreamers.
Brown’s journey with the film began in 2014, when his sister, a human rights advocate working with UN Women, introduced him to R. Mahboob, Afghanistan’s first female tech entrepreneur. He thought a feature film would bring their journey to life. “I thought a major studio would have jumped on this story,” Brown said. “But it turned out there was a lot of hesitation — Hollywood wasn’t sure people would want to watch a film about Muslim teenagers in Afghanistan.”
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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?
Grab your lab coat and let's see what CAS faculty members are researching. The March issue of CAS Connection features our annual research report, a glimpse into how grants are supporting our faculty as they work toward innovation, from the frontiers of science to a better understanding of the human experience.
This month's issue also looks at a history PhD candidate and a 17th-century court case she discovered. That court case led to an essay about how early scientists named their specimens and a prestigious award.
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.
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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
2:00 p.m.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Oregon Center for Electrochemistry Seminar
Jeiwan Tan, Materials, Chemistry, and Computational Sciences Directorate National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO
Chirality induced spin selectivity suppresses competing hydrogen evolution during electrochemical CO2 reduction
Catalysts for electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction (CO2R) in aqueous electrolytes suffer from low Faradaic efficiency and selectivity of desired carbon products due to the competing hydrogen evolution from water reduction. Over the few years, a concept of chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS) has been proposed to improve the efficiency of oxygen evolution reactions by stabilizing only one spin state of charge carriers at the catalyst surface. It was demonstrated that the formation of hydrogen peroxide and singlet oxygen was suppressed during the water oxidation reaction. However, this CISS phenomenon has not been studied during the reduction reaction at the cathode side. Here, we prepare chiral, helical-structured copper (Cu) electrodes that exhibit an exceptionally strong circular dichroism anisotropy factor and manifest product selectivity control during the CO2R owing to CISS. In situ spectro-electrochemistry is employed to investigate the role of the chirality inducer in real-time during the electrodeposition and under actual electrochemical CO2R conditions. Regardless of their handedness, the chiral Cu electrodes exhibit a lower onset potential for CO2R compared to their achiral counterpart by suppressing the hydrogen evolution reaction. I will also discuss how the carriers traveling through the helical structure become spin polarized, inducing an electron spin accumulation at the electrode surface. This spin polarization reduces hydrogen formation, thereby promoting CO2 reduction to CO and formate due to the Pauli exclusion principle for bond formation. These findings provide insights into the potential of chiral catalysts for controlling selectivity during CO2R as well as other valuable reduction reactions such as nitrogen or CO reduction where hydrogen evolution is also an undesired side reaction.
3:00 p.m.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Organic/Inorganic/Materials Seminar Series
Spring Rotation Talks 3:00 pm Campbelle Hunt, Mascarenhas Lab 3:15 pm Natalie Lakanen, Jasti Lab 3:30 pm Tingting Zhang, Jasti Lab 3:45 pm Robert Greenwood, Jasti Lab 4:00 pm Ben Andrews, Harlow Lab 4:15 pm Joel Ashton, Pluth Lab 4:30 pm Michaela Vacca, Kempler Lab
5:00–8:00 p.m.
Please join Women in Graduate Sciences for our 11th Annual Fundraising Gala. We are hosting two back-to-back events designed to provide an engaging and informative evening celebrating women and marginalized genders in STEM!
From 5 to 6 PM, join us for a cocktail hour where community members are invited to learn about WGS's initiatives, meet our executive board, and hear from WGS members, including scholarship winners and our outreach team. Stay for the main event from 6-8 PM, where we welcome everyone for a buffet style dinner, banquet raffle, and exciting seminar by Dr. Laura Ackerman-Biegasiewicz, an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Emory University whose research focuses on developing technology for accelerating reaction discovery in sustainable chemistry.
As the annual WGS fundraising benefit, the event offers a sliding scale of ticket prices ($50 for students, $100 for non-students, and $800 for an 8-person table). Purchase tickets or donate to WGS.
3:00 p.m.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Organic/Inorganic/Materials Seminar Series
Spring Rotation Talks
3:00 pm Ernesto Lucatero, DWJ Lab 3:15 pm Ally Stonas, DWJ Lab 3:30 pm Alex Bender, Cook Lab 3:45 pm Sam Rundquist, Cook Lab 4:00 pm Ally Wagner, Cook Lab 4:15 pm Marie Kerns, Rapp Lab 4:30 pm George Piepgras, Rapp Lab 4:45 pm Andrew Goldman, Kempler Lab