News

A team from the University of Oregon Department of Product Design has taken on the challenge of protecting military service members during chemical or biological attacks.

Susan Sokolowski, associate professor and director of the Sports Product Design Program, and undergraduate student Juliann Larese have made it to the final round of a Department of Defense competition to design clothing better suited for “warfighters”—soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. Winners will be announced in January.

Ron Jude’s 45-part work Alpine Star is on view through April 30 at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles as part of Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media. Through photographs and video made over the past 40 years, Breaking News explores how artists have responded to media coverage of news topics.

Jane Swift knows a thing or two about female politicians. When she became governor of Massachusetts in 2001, she was the first female governor of that state and, at age 37, the youngest sitting governor in the nation. Months after taking office she also became the first governor ever to give birth while in office. She became a lightning rod in local and national discussions of the challenges faced by women in the workplace.

Efforts by UO researchers to study how climate change may change Pacific Northwest grasslands have blossomed into global collaborations with two recently published reports and a third on the way. Department of Landscape Architecture Professor Bart Johnson is one of the UO researchers collaborating in the effort. The three studies focus on the ability of soils to store excess carbon in the face of warming conditions. Studies at individual research sites have produced mixed results, but the new findings may help to change the scientific understanding.

Drawn by the opportunity to work with industry innovators and creative faculty, students in the UO’s new sports product design master’s program are also finding their fellow students’ varied backgrounds ideal for collaboration. The uniquely Oregon program attracted a mechanical engineer, a soccer jersey designer, and a museum exhibit installer, among others, eager to explore the hands-on nature of sports product design. Several students formed a team that won first place in the QuackCon in October, the country’s first collegiate sports and technology hackathon competition.

Zudegi Giordano, office coordinator in the Department of Planning, Public Policy, and Management, and Beth Roy, executive administrative assistant in the Department of Art, are among recipients of this year’s Outstanding Employee Awards at UO. They were honored during a reception at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art on November 30.

Beth Esponnette envisions a world in which clothing is made to order on a 3-D printer that builds each item with no waste in a process that could include scanning a person’s body measurements. After winning a Faculty Research Award, Esponnette, an assistant professor in the UO Department of Product Design, hired Sarah Hashiguchi, a Clark Honors College student majoring in product design and minoring in chemistry, to assist with the research. The Oregon Quarterly winter 2016 issue profiled their work.

A recent exhibit in the Wallace and Grace Hayden Gallery was notable not just for the artwork itself—folio pages from a rare design book by color master Josef Albers—but also for the framework that displayed the art.

Architecture Pro Tem Instructor Landry Smith designed the innovative panel system, which is also intended for staging future art exhibits in Lawrence Hall’s Hayden Gallery as well as elsewhere on campus and beyond.

Erin Moore makes a regular practice of melding architectural design with science. She has taught architecture classes at UO in collaboration with a chemist and a wood scientist. A practicing architect and teacher, she emphasizes the role of natural systems and environmental ethics in design processes.

It’s not unheard of for a restaurant patron to sneak out with a spoon. But with a chair?  And at the request of the host?

Students in a product design class at the UO are encouraging diners to do just that on December 2, when the class, “Feast for Fifty,” invites community members to connect with student work over a shared meal.