A Martian Odyssey
Students in this class don't have an ordinary first day. Once they enter the classroom, Human Physiology Professor John Halliwill hands them employee badges for a mock aerospace contractor and gives them their mission: The company is planning to send humans into low Earth orbit and eventually to Mars, and the students have to use their human physiology education to help these astronauts survive the rigors of space flight.
“Most of the challenges we face in space have to do with the removal of the constant pull of gravity,” he said. “We’re not using our muscles in the same way, and we’re no longer putting stress on our bones. The cardiovascular system is not working in the same way. All those systems adapt to microgravity by becoming weaker. When you land on the moon or Mars and return to Earth, those systems are unprepared for the return of gravitational stress.”
Halliwill received support from the University of Oregon Office of the Provost's Williams Fund to help develop the course. The class is an example of how CAS professors are encouraging students to bring together their liberal arts education with curiosity in a real-world setting.
“They absolutely love it,” Halliwill said. “It’s the most fun I’ve had teaching, meeting students where they are, and treating them as if they were employees and experts already. They don’t have exams or quizzes. They’re working in teams trying to answer real world questions and trying to solve problems.”
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What’s Happening in CAS?
CAS Connection is on hiatus until mid-September. But you can see what's been going on in the college this past year. From malaria research and returning looted artifacts to commencement and the role of storytelling in a liberal arts education, our faculty, students and alumni are doing big things.
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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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!
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Happening at CAS
3:00–6:00 p.m.
The history department welcomes our students back to campus with a casual get-together! Join us for free pizza and beverages; learn what’s happening in the department this year; and connect with the history community.
Free and open to all history undergraduates, graduates, faculty, and staff!
4:30–7:00 p.m.
History and Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies invites our graduate students, faculty, and staff to a welcome back barbecue!
Spend an evening with History and Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies. Talk with old friends, meet new colleagues, and enjoy fine food and drinks.
All HIST and IRES graduate students, faculty, and staff are invited. Families warmly welcomed.
6:00–7:30 p.m.
As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, this symposium returns to the bold universal promise of 1776—the claim that “all men are created equal” and endowed with “unalienable rights.” Cast at once as the rights of citizens of a new republic and as the rights of all of humankind, they also coexisted with a deep contradiction: the subjugation of Native Americans, enslaved people, and women. The principles at the heart of the U.S. founding launched a politics of rights whose origins and reverberations were transnational, even as access to them remained sharply unequal in practice.
“We Hold These Truths: 250 Years of the American Experiment at Home and Abroad” brings together a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and leading scholars of citizenship, political development, race, gender, immigration, and civil rights to reflect on this legacy. The panel will explore how America’s founding ideals have shaped struggles for inclusion at home and abroad, and how those ideals have been stretched, reinterpreted, and at times betrayed across two and a half centuries.
Refreshments will be available at 5:45pm.
Panelists:
Nick Kristoff - New York Times
Megan Ming Francis - University of Washington
Peter Spiro - Temple University
Carol Nackenoff - Swarthmore University
Moderator:
Dan Tichenor - UO Knight Chair
Presented by the Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages and the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics.
Free and open to the public. No registration required.
This event will be livestreamed and recorded. Join HERE
4:00 p.m.
The Oregon Humanities Center presents its 2026-27 endowed lectureship series centered on the theme of Reading.
We are used to thinking about reading in relation to writing, musical scores, performances, and works of cinema and art. But as social animals, we read more broadly. We read the signs. We read the landscape. We read each others’ faces and body language. We “read the room.”
Our speakers will consider how people observe, look for patterns, try to discern meaning. How does reading shape humanity, individually and collectively? What might taking an extended, intentional look at this activity—our constant reading—reveal? Using approaches honed by their disciplines, our invited speakerswill help us think about reading from a variety of directions.
Saeed Jones is the author of the memoir How We Fight for Our Lives (Simon and Schuster), winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction and the poetry collection Prelude to Bruise (Coffee House Books), winner for the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry. His poetry and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times, Oxford American and GQ among other publications. His most recent book Alive at the End of the World (Coffee House Press) won the 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry.
Saeed Jones was the 2024-2025 artist-in-residence in the Media, Health and Medicine program at Harvard Medical School. His next book Home Out There, a memoir, is forthcoming from Washington Square Press. He cohosts the podcast Vibe Check with Sam Sanders and Zach Stafford.