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The University of Oregon is getting a $1 billion donation from Phil and Penny Knight to create the Knight College of Engineering.
The donation will fund the construction of a third building on the university’s Knight Campus, costs to hire faculty and staff and operational expenses for the new college in “perpetuity,” Robert Guldberg, vice president and Knight Campus executive director, told reporters Wednesday, Sept. 23.
The gift, which he said is spread out over 10 years, is the largest “given to a comprehensive public university,” according to an early-morning press release from the university.
“To make an audacious dream a reality requires more than a vivid imagination. It also requires the sort of opportunity that our great American universities, both public and private, have historically provided. This is no time to abandon them,” Phil Knight said in a statement included in the release. “Penny and I are grateful for the chance to invest in our most promising young people’s future in this important way.”
Guldberg said through the donation, the Knight Campus expects to grow to host 42 faculty, up from the current 17, and “more than double” the 500 students currently enrolled through its programs.
The Knight Campus currently offers a bioengineering doctoral program jointly with Oregon State University, an undergraduate minor in bioengineering and master’s programs on semiconductors, bioinformatics and polymer engineering.
The donation will expand those offerings and fund a new undergraduate bioengineering degree program in the fall of 2028 or 2029, Guldberg said.
He said scholarships for the new undergraduate degree are budgeted in, but could not immediately provide an exact number.
He said new programs might study artificial intelligence and mechanical and electrical engineering. The university does not want to recreate engineering programs offered in Corvallis at OSU, he added.
“The idea is to diversify the educational offerings we have and be able to attract more students, while contributing to the nationwide shortage in in problem solvers and engineers,” Guldberg said.
Asked about the university’s $65 million budget deficit, Guldberg said the donation is a “directed gift” to grow the Knight Campus and “not an immediate fix” to UO’s current shortfall.
“This really sets us up to be able to complement the the existing great work at the university and bring in more revenue that will hopefully help us prevent structural deficits in the future,” Guldberg said.
Guldberg said a consultant projected that the new college would generate a cumulative $3.3 billion in “economic impact” for the state of Oregon between fiscal years 2025 and 2040, supporting more than 850 jobs per year on average over that time. It will pay about $1.2 billion in labor income to Oregon workers and return about $119 million in state and local taxes, he said.
Guldberg said the university has not yet picked the site of the third Knight Campus building, but that there is one open lot near Franklin Boulevard and some spaces around the campus quad currently occupied by older buildings used by the College of Design.
“We’ve already been in communications with the College of Design,” he said. “They very much would like to be in in new facilities and so forth.”
Since 2016, the Knights have donated $2 billion to the university to create and expand the Knight Campus. The second Knight Campus building opened earlier this year, capping a three-year, $330 million expansion of the flagship scientific complex.
“Phil and Penny Knight have a long history of believing in things before they exist,” University of Oregon President Karl Scholz said in the release. “They did it in 2016, and they are doing it again now, at a scale that is genuinely hard to take in. I am grateful to them, and I am grateful to be here for it.”
Guldberg said the family does not “micromanage at all” with oversight of their gifts.
“I do occasionally have an opportunity to update them on what we’ve done,” he said. “They’re very excited about it. They often say that they’re very proud of us. They’re proud of the impact that we’ve had on the University of Oregon and the state.”
Unions react
Kate Celis Mills, president of United Academics, the union representing faculty at UO, told Lookout that she and other faculty want to know if the Knights’ donation could impact the university’s projected budget shortfall or the timeline for budget reductions this year.
She said she asked those questions during a previously scheduled meeting with UO leaders Wednesday morning, but did not receive answers.
“Because it’s such a big announcement, it seems like it has to have an impact on our budget projections, so I hope that the timeline will be extended for any current budget decisions being made,” Mills said.
She said faculty want to be excited about the donation, but many of them first want to know how and if this donation will benefit the entire university, not just the Knight Campus.
“Is this a shared win, or is this just a donation that is out of reach to impact the whole campus community?” Mills said.
Johnny Earl, president of Service Employees International Union 503, which represents classified staff at Oregon’s public universities, said his phone “blew up” when UO announced the donation because of its timing in relation to union bargaining.
The union will go on strike Monday after months of unsuccessful contract negotiations with the universities if the parties do not reach a settlement by Sunday, he said.
“I don’t care what the money’s earmarked for,” said Earl, who worked as a custodial coordinator for UO Campus Planning and Facility Services. “People need to be able to be paid a reasonable paycheck to make a living.”
This story will be updated.
