This week in higher education news:
The University’s school of law was deemed one of the premier public service graduate programs in the nation. The ranking was published in the January 2012 issue of the National Jurist, a national magazine in legal education. The ranking accounted factors such as standard of living and employment data in their consideration. This marks the fourth time the Oregon Law program has been professionally recognized by a national publication.
The museum of natural and cultural history, as well as the department of intercollegiate athletics at the University will be receiving a large donation in the coming months. Alumni couple Alan and Jean Pedersen of Monterey, Calif., donated 550 acres of Salinas Valley farmland valued at $5 million. Half the proceeds will go to the museum, and the other half to the athletic department. Athletics will use part of the gift to offset the cost of operating the new football operations building, and the museum will use its portion to jump start a $10 million endowment fund to provide stable, ongoing support for public programs, archeological research and the collections under the museum’s care.
According to the Register Guard’s Saul Hubbard, the proposal for creating independent governing boards at the University and Portland State is dead for this legislative session. Lawmakers instead are backing another bill, House Bill 4061, which would create a special committee to study issues surrounding university governance between April and November. This committee — comprised of eight lawmakers and two members of Gov. John Kitzhaber’s Oregon Education Investment Board — would be in charge of creating legislation for the 2013 session which would allow all seven of Oregon’s public universities to establish independent boards. Read more in Monday’s Emerald.