PSYCHOLOGY - A new discipline in psychology at the University of Oregon is broadening the department’s inclusivity with three new dedicated faculty hires.

ENGLISH - Ben Saunders was voted best professor for the second year in a row. He is professor of Comics and Cartoon Studies.

BIOLOGY - Almost a decade ago, UO graduate student Jennifer Hampton Hill made a fortuitous find: A protein made by gut bacteria that triggered insulin-producing cells to replicate. The protein was an important clue to the biological basis for Type 1 diabetes.

BIOLOGY - It’s 6 a.m. on a summer morning on the Oregon coast, and a dozen undergraduate students wearing tall rubber boots are piling into vans. They’re juggling granola bars and notebooks, texting friends who are running late.

ENGLISH - Ben Saunders has co-founded and directs University of Oregon’s minor in Comic and Cartoon Studies (the first undergraduate minor of its kind in the country), and he is a book editor, author and curator of numerous museum exhibits, including the latest hosted at OMSI.

PSYCHOLOGY - Over the course of seventeen years as a school counselor in Eugene, Sara Matteri has supported students through just about every kind of challenge a kid can face. When she started as a high school counselor in 2005, the big ones were truancy, teen pregnancy, and drug and alcohol use, in addition to managing students’ class schedules and helping them plan for the future.

ENGLISH - Life rarely follows a linear narrative. It zigs. Sometimes it zags. Just ask Lidia Yuknavitch—teacher, lecturer, and best-selling author of Thrust and soon-to-be feature film, The Chronology of Water—whose fierce and fragmentary form of storytelling took root at the University of Oregon.

NEUROSCIENCE - As technology has improved, neuroscientists are now pushing the boundaries of traditional experiments and studying the brain in more naturalistic ways. UO neuroscientist Cris Niell is part of this growing movement. In two recent papers, his team has developed ways to study mouse vision that more realistically represent the way animals navigate the world beyond the lab.

GEOGRAPHY - A new report out of a collaboration with the UO InfoGraphics Lab, the Wyoming Migration Initiative researchers and the Pew Charitable Trusts synthesizes the growing body of science regarding the migration of western North America’s populations of mule deer, elk, pronghorn, etc and identifies the most substantive threats to migrating wildlife.

After more than three decades in office, Peter DeFazio MA ’77 is retiring. DeFazio’s service and voting record is extensive with over 20,000 votes logged in Congress and his impact goes far beyond representing the people of southwestern Oregon.