Phil and Penny Knight delighted the University of Oregon last month with their latest big-ticket donation, $1 billion to establish an engineering school in Eugene that plans to add dozens of faculty and hundreds of students.
The news hit much differently at the state’s established engineering programs, especially at Oregon State University. Leaders there say the University of Oregon took them by surprise when it announced plans for an engineering school. They describe it as direct competition to their own program, just up the freeway in Corvallis.
“It’s very easy in situations like this to divide the baby to the point where you’re at best mediocre, across the board, and that’s the last thing this state needs,” Oregon State Trustee Julia Phillips, who formerly led science and engineering research at Sandia National Laboratories, told fellow trustees at a meeting last week…