INDIGENOUS, RACE, AND ETHNIC STUDIES - The College of Arts and Sciences is investing in its Latinx studies courses by hiring nine new tenure-track faculty members. Meet Bernadette Calafell, who's coming from Gonzaga University in Washington.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES - Associate Professor Lauren Hallett is one of three faculty members to receive a Fulbright US Scholar Program award. Hallett will use her Fulbright award to further her research on restoration ecology in Australia and Spain.

DISABILITY STUDIES, JUDAIC STUDIES, WOMEN'S, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY STUDIES - Students who come to CAS seeking a degree often find something even greater: themselves. Discover how an identity-focused major or minor can lead to a fulfilling career.

SOCIOLOGY - It’s one thing to rebuild homes after a wildfire. Rebuilding communities is a different matter, discovered sociology graduate student Haisu Huang. Graduate student Haisu Huang spent three years interviewing survivors, establishing relationships with them and conducting check-ins to create holistic snapshots of their experiences of evacuations, recovery and rebuilding home. Those she interviewed ranged from people who lived in houses to those who lived in mobile RV homes.

Higher education faces new challenges—from rising costs and a perceived declining return on investment to evolving workforce demands. CAS Dean Chris Poulsen is leading the charge on a new strategy to establish CAS as an innovator and leader in liberal arts education. With a strategic plan, Poulsen sees CAS as a place to prepare students to meet the challenges of a 21st-century world, equipping them with skills and knowledge to set them up for changing workplaces and to excel as global citizens.

SOCIOLOGY - The College of Arts and Sciences is investing in its Latinx studies courses by hiring nine new tenure-track faculty members. Meet Isabel García Valdivia, who is researching how immigrants’ experiences change across their life course how does legal status impact families.

HISTORY - Lauren Goss, BA ’11 (history), is the University of Oregon's new sports archivist. Funded largely by a gift from an anonymous family foundation with deep Oregon roots and a love for UO Libraries, Goss’s position is the only one on the West Coast and one of only a dozen in the US dedicated to preserving collegiate sports history.

HISTORY - With a focus on pre-1848 northern Mexican borderlands, Naomi Sussman, who has just finished postdoc research at University of California, Los Angeles, brings an expertise in Indigenous histories of California the US Southwest, and northern Mexico.

ECONOMICS - Immigration is a part of the United States’s DNA, but it’s long been a contentious political subject. Economic models have found immigration to be a fiscal cost, but a recent study by a University of Oregon economist challenges these findings, showing that low-skilled immigrants on average contribute an additional $750 in annual fiscal benefits not previously accounted for.

ANTHROPOLOGY - The College of Arts and Sciences is investing in its Latinx studies courses by hiring nine new tenure-track faculty members. Ramón Resendiz is one of the faculty members hired as part of this initiative. He joins CAS in fall 2025. Coming from Indiana University, Bloomington, Resendiz’s research investigates the relationship between historical institutions, visual culture, and documentary media in the process of seeing and imaging the history and citizenship of Latinx and Indigenous Peoples in the US.

SOCIOLOGY - The College of Arts and Sciences is investing in its Latinx studies courses by hiring nine new tenure-track faculty members. Byron Villacis Cruz joins CAS after working as an assistant professor at Bowdoin College, a private liberal arts college in Maine. Before becoming a professor, Villacis worked alongside prominent social scientists and politicians in Ecuador but returned to academia after several years of working there.

INDIGENOUS, RACE, AND ETHNIC STUDIES - The College of Arts and Sciences is investing in its Latinx studies courses by hiring nine new tenure-track faculty members. Meet Arifa Raza who is one of nine Latinx studies-related tenure-track professors who are part of CAS’s investments in a growing academic field.

POLITICAL SCIENCE - In mid-August, Chandler James, an assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, attended the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC) as a district-level delegate. This is what he experienced.

HISTORY - The stories of more than 140 Mexican and Mexican American workers who lived and worked not far from the University of Oregon campus went untold for nearly a century until students in a CAS history class discovered them, countering the white settler-dominant history books of the area. Led by Julie Weise, a history associate professor who focuses on the history of migrations in the Americas, students researched and wrote these local histories as part of a course series called Hidden Histories, which aims to tell the stories of underrepresented communities in Lane County.

POLITICAL SCIENCE - Ideas of what constitutes “normal” in the exercise of presidential duties have changed in recent years, but a new University of Oregon study indicates most Americans still support traditional norms, at least until they run up against partisanship. Chandler James, a political science assistant professor, published this research in Presidential Studies Quarterly.