College of Design

This year's Lawrence Medalist is artist Brad Miller, BFA '74 and MFA '77. He returns to Eugene in June to deliver the College of Design commencement speech.

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.

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.

School of Architecture & Environment students recently created models for the hospital of tomorrow for their end-of-term reviews, using mass timber as a base for the projects.