Bringing Representation to Oregon's K-12 Classrooms
Some of the University of Oregon's most accomplished football players have had Hawaiian ancestry, including Marcus Mariota, Dillon Gabriel and Penei Sewell. But inside Oregon's K-12 classrooms, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Island history and culture isn't a part of the curriculum.
Lana Lopesi is working with Oregon State University research Patricia Fifita to change that. Lopesi is an assistant professor in the Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, and she hopes this work will increase the visibility and representation of Pacific Islander and Native Hawaiians in the Oregon public school system.
“Pacific students feel really alienated and would really love it if there was more curriculum that was geared towards their identities,” Lopesi said.
Explore the 2024-25 Annual Research Report to read more about CAS research and how it's making a positive impact at home and beyond.
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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?
Researchers in the College of Arts and Sciences secured $83 million in sponsored grants to fund 199 research projects across the three divisions: Humanities, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences. This year’s annual report provides a glimpse into the curious minds of researchers and their work.
Also in the November issue of CAS Connection: a physics professor takes the helm of the world's largest particle accelerator, a cinema studies student shares her experience interning for a Portland-based casting company, a data science professor works to make AI be more accurate—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
10:00–11:00 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!
3:30–4:30 p.m.
Northwest Native American Language Resource Center.
Practical tools for gathering and interpreting community input, including mapping, asset inventories, and consensus-building strategies.
Participation is on a first come, first served basis. We are capped at 50 participants per workshop.
Register at: https://forms.office.com/r/NjGWyE6sxe
10:00–11:00 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!
4:30 p.m.
The Oregon Humanities Center presents its 2025–26 speaker series centered on the theme of “Attention.”
The “Attention” series will explore the dynamics of how, why, and what we focus on shapes our reality and creates our purpose. Also known as concentration, alertness, focus, notice, awareness, heed, regard, and consideration—Attention is the fundamental cognitive ability to sustain one’s energy on a specific pursuit or thought.
Our first event will feature three UO faculty members on a panel discussing, from their own perspectives, how attention connects us to others and allows us to experience the world around us.
Santiago Jaramillo is an associate professor in the Department of Biology and the Institute of Neuroscience. His lab studies auditory cognition—how the brain helps us hear the world (recognize sounds, pay attention to sounds, remember sounds, etc). Their research is performed on mice so advanced techniques can be utilized to measure individual neurons of different classes and change their activity with high precision. While their work focuses on the healthy brain, rather than any specific disorder, their studies can help others understand and address disorders related to hearing (tinnitus, auditory processing disorders, age-related hearing loss, etc) and inspire better artificial hearing systems.
Kate Mondloch is a professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory. Her research interests focus on late 20th- and early 21st-century art, theory, and criticism, particularly as these areas of inquiry intersect with the cultural, social, and aesthetic possibilities of new technologies. Her research fields include media art and theory, installation art, feminism, new media, science and technology studies, digital humanities, human flourishing, and mindfulness in higher education. She is especially interested in theories of spectatorship and subjectivity, and in research methods that bridge the sciences and the humanities.
Forest Pyle is a professor of English and Cartoon and Comics Studies. His interests include 19th Century British Literary Studies, Literary and Critical Theory, Poetry and Poetics, Postmodern and Contemporary Literary Studies, and Visual Culture. His work explores the problems and posibilities posed by aesthetic experience, particularly in the context of Romantic and post-Romantic literature.