College of Design News

PPPM Faculty, Nicole Ngo, recently published research observing the negative outcomes related to aggressive policing and racial profiling. Aggressive policing tactics like stop-and-frisk are linked to worse newborn health outcomes in neighborhoods where such tactics are most pervasive. Babies of non-Hispanic Black mothers had lower birth weights in New York City neighborhoods where police made more on-the-street stops, even when controlling for variables like income and education, according to the research, which analyzed data from 2006 to 2013.

For more than 30 years, the University of Oregon professor and HAA emerita professor, Esther Jacobson-Tepfer, has studied prehistoric Mongolian rock art, illuminating the lives of people who lived 3,000 to 12,000 years ago through the imagery they left behind. She is one of the world’s leading authorities on the subject.

Over the centuries, karuta game play and card designs evolved to reflect historical and cultural shifts. Like a detective, HAA PhD candidate, Mew Lingjun Jiang searches karuta art for clues to Japan’s past.

Last term, a partnership with Bora Architecture & Interiors put students at the center of one of civic architecture’s most complex design challenges. This special partnership between the Library Design Studio with Bora Architecture and Interiors, a prominent Portland-based firm working to reimagine community-centered civic design, challenged graduate and upper-level bachelor students to design community libraries from the inside out, working alongside industry professionals on questions that go far beyond aesthetics.

Today’s performance sports gear is made from spandex, polyester and even Kevlar. But UO students have been developing new ideas for an old-school staple: wool.

Davis's latest book meditates on his personal insights that have come visiting one hundred places over several decades. Davis writes poetically about everything from the mundane to the famous, with some of the sights emblematic of beauty, some the product of fine craftsmanship, some active, and some quiet, but all memorable.

PPPM Professor, Diana Mason, talked alongside other volunteer experts to KLCC about the new trends in volunteering, where volunteers are engaging in shorter terms of engagement instead of long, multiyear engagements with hundreds of hours of service dedicated to a single organization in a year.

The Department of Art at the School of Art + Design is celebrating Ava Murakami's, Art '27, well-deserved recognition as the 2026 Cornelia Hoppe Art Exhibit artist.

The Olympic Winter and Summer Games are a time of celebration and reflection, as more than 200 countries come together to compete and showcase athletes in a myriad of different sports and traditions. Another important part of the Games are the innovative materials and uniforms used by the athletes. Sports Product Design Professor Susan Sokolowski understands the hard work and time that goes into designing these innovative sporting goods for athletes and takes time to talk with OregonNews about the gear at this year's Games.

A RARE and PPPM alumna and Ford Family Foundation leader, a pioneer in education, and a spatial strategist and design researcher are the 2026 winners of three public service awards presented by the UO School of Planning, Public Policy and Management and the PPPM Advisory Council. The awards ceremony will take place May 28 at the Ford Alumni Center on the University of Oregon campus.

Congratulations to Liska Chan for her well-deserved selection for the 2026-27 LAF Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership.

Jayne Cole Southard, HAA PhD '22, alongside fellow curators christina ong and Howie Chen, was awarded the 2025 Best Thematic Museum Show. The exhibition, titled “Legacies: Asian American Art Movements in New York City”, was the first institutional show to survey artists of Asian descent in the city during the period from 1969 to 2001 while being centered around three organizations: Godzilla: Asian American Art Network, the Basement Workshop, and the Asian American Arts Centre.

The College of Design has developed two new options for students looking to get more value from their time at the University of Oregon. The goal? To give high-achieving art history majors and planning, public policy and management majors an opportunity to earn a BA and MA within five years.