Farhad Bahram, a graduate teaching fellow in the Department of Art, has been awarded an Oregon University System Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (Sylff) Graduate Fellowship for International Research, to begin fall 2013. The award carries a $6,000 stipend.

This year’s honoree and commencement speaker, David Ping-yee Lung, has been instrumental in three World Heritage List designations.

A limited number of tickets for public tours this summer of the Watzek House, Oregon’s newest National Historic Landmark, and The Shire, a unique landscape in the Columbia River Gorge, are now available. The tickets are expected to sell out quickly so early registration is recommended. 

Two UO interior architecture students won first place prizes in the International Interior Design Association (IIDA) Oregon chapter 2013 Student Day awards held May 4 in Portland. Brianna Bernstein won in the category of furniture/product design for her project “CU/BE.” Haley Hupp won in the category of small commercial for her project “Crafty Wonderland.” Hupp also took honorable mention at the 2012 IIDA Student Day Retail Studio. Both Bernstein and Hupp will graduate June 2013 with bachelor degrees in interior architecture.

The Sustainable Cities Initiative was featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education on May 20. The story shares the UO’s innovative community engagement model with the nation's higher education community. SCI is a cross-disciplinary program at UO involving architecture, landscape architecture, planning, product design, art, law, journalism and business. While the Sustainable City Year Program (SCYP) pioneered in Oregon, SCI has been training other universities interested in adopting the model and implementing a version of it in their local communities.

Two of the four finalists in an international design competition to foster nontoxic building products are University of Oregon students. The competition was open to both professional and student designers. The Red List Design Challenge carries $15,000 in cash prizes. The UO finalists are Zander Eckblad and Yin Yu. Eckblad’s submission proposes a nontoxic, plant-based cellulose nano fiber alternative to traditional fiberglass insulation.

The connection between Oregon and the United Kingdom just lost a champion. Architect Rick Mather, 75, who sponsored six UO students as interns in his award-winning firm, Rick Mather Architects (RMA), passed away April 20 after a short illness. Classmates, former faculty members, and colleagues were stunned as news spread.

Think Nike in Beaverton. Google in Palo Alto. Urban Outfitters in Philadelphia. Corporate campuses aren’t unique, but having one downtown is. Helping design such a campus in a dynamic city like Portland is an even rarer opportunity, but that’s precisely what a cadre of University of Oregon graduate students are doing.