Welch: Scholz’s first years at UO have been challenging, but president says institution is ‘flourishing’

A previous version of this story incorrectly stated where Karl Scholz’s wife went to law school. She went to Wisconsin. Also, the role Scholz played in the decision for the University of Oregon to join the Big 10 and communication of that decision was clarified.

In his first two years as the president of the University of Oregon, Karl Scholz has experienced the full meal deal you might expect from someone in his position.

Investiture ceremony interruption?  Check: Pro-Palestine protestors with red-dyed hands stood up and shouted during Scholz’s 2024 ceremony in Matthew Knight Arena.

Commencement address interruption? Check again: Just a few weeks after that, a “Free Palestine” chant cut off his 2024 address inside Autzen Stadium.

A sit-in? Check here, too: UO student workers staged a sit-in outside his Johnson Hall office earlier this year during negotiations for a new contract.

Be the budget grim reaper? Unfortunately, a check: A recent email from Scholz warned of choppy financial waters ahead – and the first layoff notices were issued last week.

Humor a curious journalist? One more check: While in his office, I had to ask where the horse stood in the 1978 movie, “Animal House.” 

(Hey, you cannot interview a UO president without asking that question, and I was gratified when he pointed to the northeast corner of his office’s adjacent meeting room to show me.)

Full disclosure: I like the guy. After a March lunch at, appropriately, the Wild Duck Cafe, and a June interview in his office, I find him to be thoughtful, committed, sincere, humble, tall (6’5”) and, at times, funny.

Over my French dip back in March, I chided him about economists not striking me as life-of-the-party folks.

“You know what they say,” he countered. “If economists had more personality, they’d be accountants.”

Personality is overrated; perseverance and professionalism are underrated. If anything marks the president at his two-year mark, it may be that in a less flamboyant style than, say, Elton John, he’s still standing. 

As a writer, I long ago learned that if you try to please everyone, you’ll please nobody. But my job is simple compared to his. I deal with a single segment of people: readers. He must find equilibrium with a board of trustees, donors, students, faculty, student workers, protestors, the media and Phil Knight. For this, he is paid $750,000 a year, less than half of what Oregon’s offensive coordinator gets.

And yet he seems ever so grateful to be here.

“I never could have imagined the opportunity here working out,” he said. “I’m unbelievably fortunate.”

Part of that is because Oregon welcomed him into the flock as its 19^th president soon after he’d been jilted by the love of his life, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

He was dean of the College of Letters & Science. Later, as provost for six years, he launched the Center for Teaching, Learning and Mentoring, to support instructors. Under his leadership as provost, the average time for students to earn a degree dropped three years in a row, to a record 3.89.

Scholz, now 65, spent 35 years at UW-Madison, more than half his life. That’s loyalty and perseverance.

But if he was the go-to ball carrier helping the Badgers march down the field for decades, when it was time to score the touchdown — make a statement, seal the deal — they handed the ball to someone else.

Although provosts are often considered college presidents-in-waiting, Wisconsin’s choice leveled Scholz.

“It was heartbreaking,” he says.

His confidence was shaken; staying didn’t feel right. In our interview, he referred to the well-known Groucho Marx line: “I wouldn’t want to be part of any organization that would have me as a member.” 

He had a sabbatical coming, and he and his wife, Melissa, considered a segue into retirement: travel, visit their three daughters (Karly, now 22; Kate, 27; and Libby, 30), relax a bit.

But when Oregon came knocking, searching for a replacement for Michael Schill, who left in 2022 to become president of Northwestern University, Scholz listened, drawn by the Oregon “mystique” and the conviction he still had something to offer.

“I believe so deeply in what universities do in the transformation of students and for the good they create in the world,” he told me. “Research. Community service. They are profoundly important to American society. No other group but our military brings together people from diverse backgrounds.”

When, in spring 2023, Oregon proposed, he said yes. 

“And I continue to feel as if I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”

Scholz is more comfortable talking about the UO and his job than about himself. But leadership begins with who that leader is as a person, and so it would seem wise to better understand that person.

“Who are your heroes?” I asked.

“My parents were incredibly important to who I became,” he said.

 His father was professor of chemistry at the University of Nebraska, his mother a “wicked smart” woman who had a master’s in microbiology from the University of Illinois.

At an early age, he learned to value education, exactness and advocating for truth. As a boy, he was plagued with ear infections. He wasn’t getting any better and his doctor couldn’t pinpoint what was causing them.

Finally, his mother, doubtful that the medicine the pediatrician had prescribed was the right one, took cultures of both ears and brought in a petri dish with them to the doctor.

“He has this,” she said, “so you need to prescribe something that kills that.”

Scholz earned a BA in economics from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he started on the school’s basketball team, then earned a Ph.D. from Stanford. That’s where he met Melissa. (Melissa, who went to law school at Wisconsin, now runs her own law practice, rising early to talk with East Coast clients who are already on the go in their time zone.)

When Scholz was unanimously selected by the 22-person board in 2023, a search committee member, Connie Seeley, said, “I think everyone on the committee would agree with me when I say Karl Scholz is an inspiring, humble, and approachable leader.”

I told him humility seems to have lost favor as a leadership virtue in America. Did he consider himself a humble man? And is authenticity important?

“Let others say yes or no,” he said. “I do think authenticity is important in leadership.”

We talked of the similarities between Madison and Eugene, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Oregon — and the differences. Madison and the university have a tighter town-and-gown connection than UO, he said, and Madison’s downtown is more vibrant than Eugene’s. (So are a lot of nursing homes.)

“Reading some history of this place, I saw where Dave Frohnmayer, the great, great, great president of the UO, said Oregon is a ‘national university located in Eugene,’” he said. “That says something about the university and the city of Eugene. We have to be integrally related; our prosperity is tied together.”

Any surprises he found about UO or Eugene?

“The surprises have mostly been on the upside,” he said. “I didn’t appreciate — I knew UO was a good place and that Oregon had a certain mystique to it with TrackTown USA and such — but didn’t appreciate how green and beautiful the place was and how dedicated people are to their causes. I also hadn’t come from a place where the environment and unions played such prominent roles.”

He did come from a state that supports higher education better than Oregon. Since 1988, Wisconsin’s percentage of budget funded by the state dwindled from 32 percent to 13 percent. But Oregon’s, he came to find, had slipped to almost 5 percent.

“That,” he said, “was my ‘Scooby-Doo’ moment.”

Meanwhile, while out-of-state students comprise roughly half of UO’s students — 27 percent from California alone — the numbers of that demographic group are being threatened. The “disruption in Washington,” as he calls it — the crackdown on immigration — is making students and their parents more cautious. There is also concern that the number of international students may drop. And the 10-school University of California system, to help its bottom line, is fighting to keep more students at home.

“Things are getting more competitive,” he said.

Speaking of competition, we did not talk of UO’s 16-13 win over Wisconsin last fall, which I have to believe Scholz enjoyed, but we did talk about athletics. When Scholz started in July 2023, the tectonic plates of the Pac-12 were already shifting wildly.

Scholz said he pushed for the school to change conferences and recalled that on day 28 or 30, he walked into his leadership team to tell them “we just joined the Big Ten.”

He values athletics as a complement to the academic side of a university.

“First, athletics create visibility. Studies show people like the Ducks, and that draws students here. Second, in our times of polarized politics and other things, athletics bring people together. You can have conservatives and Marxists equally excited about a team. Finally, we have one of the few athletic departments in the country that is self-sustaining.”

Said Scholz, ever the economist: “The cost-to-benefit ratio is good.”

But are college sports even sustainable given the latest news? Schools now can directly pay athletes for the first time. Potential recruits are shopping for the most lucrative name, image and likeness (NIL) deals. The transfer portal and conference realignment have reshaped the college athletics landscape.

“I am,” he said, “an incorrigible optimist. And that extends to sports. I’ve read all the same things you have, and yet college football viewership is up, and you never know what’s going to happen when a game or race starts. Look at Cole Hocker (the former Duck who won the Olympic 1500 meters in 2024): Those kinds of moments emerge, and they bring people together.”

We talked little about the friction he’s faced; he’d rather talk about the future and, speaking of words that starts with the letter “f,” his favorite: flourishing.

“Success for me is an improved graduation rate. My favorite word is ‘flourishing.’ We want people to come here because they can flourish, because they can do things they can’t do other places. We just learned that a top scientist chose us and when interviewed, said he chose UO because the most exciting work in bioengineering is happening here at the Knight Center. We want to amplify our strengths and athletics and academics.”

Back in March, when we’d met for lunch, we had talked books; Scholz loves to read, and I was thrilled to learn that his interests extend far beyond academia. As our June interview came to an end, I recommended he consider the late UO Journalism School professor Ken Metzler’s insightful 1973 book, “Confrontation: The Destruction of a College President,” about interim UO President Charles Johnson’s 1968-69 tumultuous year that ended with his death. 

Not, of course, that I wished anything of the like on Scholz. I just thought he could pick up some local history and relate to the pressures of being a college president — and might realize he wasn’t alone.

He recommended I consider “Running with Sherman,” about a guy who trains a rescue donkey to run one of the most challenging races in America. It’s written by Christopher McDougall, who wrote “Born to Run.”

It wasn’t until later that I realized I’d recommended to a college president a book on a college president and he’d recommended to a columnist a book on an ass.

This economist may have a subtle sense of humor that puts even the accountants to shame.