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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We Love Our Supporters
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
2:00–5:00 p.m.
Screening and Q&A of BELLA, a film about American choreographer and dancer Bella Rebecca Lewitzky (January 13, 1916 – July 16, 2004), with Professor Walter Kennedy, Associate Producer.
In partnership with Dance Oregon and National Dance Week.
2:00 p.m.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Physical Chemistry Seminar Series
Professor David Limmer, University of California—Berkeley Hosted by: Marina Guenza
On the nature of chemical reactivity in atmospheric aerosol
Most of our intuition about chemistry stems from observations made in macroscopic beakers. Increasingly observations made in small containers, where surface to volume ratios are large, defy standard expectations suggesting that on the smallest scales chemical reactivity can be altered.
In this talk, I will discuss some of our work on chemical reactivity in the presence of extensive air-water interfaces, like that which occur in atmospheric aerosol. I will show how rates and mechanisms of reactions can vary dramatically in such heterogeneous environments and how modern computational tools can be deployed to render testable predictions.
10:00 a.m.
Please join us Tuesday mornings for a free cup of coffee, pastries, and conversation with your history department community! We’re excited to continue this tradition for our history undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff. We hope to see you there!
3:30 p.m.
Join the Department of History and Nicholas B. Breyfogle, University of Ohio, for a talk on “Drowning the Sacred Sea: Lake Baikal and the Hydroelectric Moment in World History."
Free and open to the public.
This paper examines the building of the Irkutsk Hydroelectric dam and the human-induced, hydroelectric flooding of Siberia’s Lake Baikal that began in the mid-1950s and transformed the water systems, fish and human ecologies, energy flows, and cultural practices (especially religious) of the diverse peoples of the region. The dam resulted in a rise in water depth of more than 4 meters around the lake. Whole communities found their villages drowned, water transport infrastructure disappeared, the shoreline was irrevocably changed, and the spawning grounds for the lake's endemic (and iconic) fish, the omul, were destroyed. The Shamanist Buriat communities found religious sites dropped underwater and struggled to prevent (and then culturally to absorb) the loss of these sacred sites. This paper explores the ways that hydrological and geological factors merged with economic and technological to generate interest in building a multi-dam cascade along the Angara river; the extensive efforts to prepare the lands that would be flooded by the dam; the rise of new ways of thinking about and using the lake; and finally the impact the dam had on the omul population (and the fishing industry that was based on them) Throughout, the paper places the Baikal story in the larger context of global hydroelectric development.
Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle is Professor of History and Director of the Harvey Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching at The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH. He is a specialist in the history of Russia/Soviet Union and in global environmental and water history. He is the author/(co-)editor of multiple volumes, including Hydraulic Societies: Water, Power, and Control in East and Central Asian History (2023), Place and Nature: Essays in Russian Environmental History (2021), Nature at War: American Environments and World War II (2020), Eurasian Environments: Nature and Ecology in Imperial Russian and Soviet History (2018), Readings in Water History (2020), Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History (2007), and Heretics and Colonizers: Forging Russia’s Empire in the South Caucasus (2005). He is currently completing two books: “Baikal: the Great Lake and its People” and “Water: A Human History.” Since 2007, Breyfogle has worked as co-editor of the online magazine/podcast/video channel Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, http://origins.osu.edu and most recently on Picturing Black History, https://www.picturingblackhistory.org/. In 2022, he was awarded The Herbert Feis Award for Distinguished Contributions to Public History from the American Historical Association. In 2024, his next co-edited book, Picturing Black History: Photographs and Stories that Changed the World will be published with Abrams Books.
The Department of History Seminar Series runs throughout the academic year and features guest speakers from the top universities who share their perspectives on history. Visit history.uoregon.edu for more information about the seminar series.