Let's Make the Most of Fall!
Welcome to the fall term, College of Arts and Sciences Ducks! The trees are changing colors but green and yellow are still strong as ever. A new academic year means the start of classes but it's also an opportunity to meet new friends and reconnect with old ones, as well as prospects for research, internships or community service.Hear from Dean Chris Poulsen for tips on how to make the most of your CAS experience this academic year.
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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!
The CAS Experience
The College of Arts and Sciences experience is more than classroom lectures and lab experiments — it’s about putting ideas into action. Our students spend time in the classroom and then go out to the real world to apply their knowledge. A lifetime of curiosity, learning and engagement starts here at CAS.
Life at Oregon
As a CAS student, your next home could be set in the lush Willamette Valley in the city of Eugene. Set between mountain ranges, two rivers and the Pacific Ocean, your adventure awaits. In between your studies, the UO is a place where you can forge lifetime friendships and connections with an exciting backdrop — whether that’s yelling “Go Ducks” during gameday at Autzen Stadium or a quiet hike in an old growth forest.
What’s Happening in CAS?
CAS Connection is back! See what CAS faculty, students and alumni are up to — from discovering new species of plankton off the Oregon coast to the impact of studying abroad. The September issue takes a look at what's possible with a liberal arts degree, whether that's working as an emcee in Japan or in substance abuse policy for the state of Oregon.
Undergraduate Studies
Small classes. Big ideas. More than half of the University of Oregon’s student population is pursuing a College of Arts and Sciences degree. But what you’ll find at CAS is an intimate liberal arts experience at an R1 institution. With a median class size of 23 students per classroom, CAS is an environment where you can work closely with faculty dedicated to research and mentorship. With more than 50 departments and programs, we have a program where you can transform curiosity into action.
Graduate Studies
You’ve got ambition, and you’re ready for the next step: graduate school. Whether your goals are to expand scholarly knowledge or level up your professional capacities, CAS has more than 30 master’s programs and more than 20 doctoral programs, all span a range of disciplines. Our faculty members are here to support you on your academic journey, to guide you through research and advance your professional skills.
Student Support Services
We’re here for you. As a CAS student, you have access to plentiful resources that can help you thrive inside and outside the classroom. Through Tykeson Advising, we provide comprehensive academic and career advising from the start of your journey. Learn about career preparation and get assistance in selecting the very best classes that resonate with you and offer the opportunity to grow. Connect with labs, libraries, IT and tutoring. Find your community on campus.
World-Class Faculty
Our faculty go beyond the frontiers of science. Whether it’s green technology of tomorrow or tackling centuries-old philosophical questions, our College of Arts and Sciences faculty are in forward motion to tomorrow.
And they’re just as committed to the classroom. They’re here to help students like you discover their academic passion so you can become the next generation of professionals and scholars. They are here to coach you, inspire you and prepare you as you enter the professional world as critical thinkers and ethical global citizens.
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
History Department Fall Term Coffee Hour
10:30 a.m.Oct
1
10:30–11:30 a.m.
Please join us Thursday 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!
HIST and IRES Welcome Back Barbecue
4:30 p.m.Oct
1
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.
Cinema Studies Fall Term Coffee Hours
9:30 a.m.Join the Department of Cinema Studies for a cup of coffee or hot apple cider every week on Tuesdays during fall term!
Oct
6
9:30–11:30 a.m.
Join the Department of Cinema Studies for a cup of coffee or hot apple cider every week on Tuesdays during fall term!
We Hold These Truths: 250 Years of the American Experiment at Home and Abroad
6:00 p.m.Oct
6
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 Kristof - New York Times
Megan Ming Francis - University of Washington
Peter Spiro - Temple University
Carol Nackenoff - Swarthmore College
Moderator:
Dan Tichenor - UO Knight Chair; Co-Director, Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics
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 online