The UO's Sustainable Cities Initiative (SCI) was included in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Want a College Experience That Matters? Get to Work” this week.

Journalist Scott Carlson, who visited campus last year, included SCI as an example of programs that prepare students with real-world opportunities to apply classroom instruction directly.

From the Chronicle:

“Top students in the program said they’d picked Oregon over other colleges precisely because the program would give them practical training in their disciplines, along with challenges they couldn’t get in a classroom, like local politics and budget constraints.  A student project could save a struggling city millions of dollars, but the rewards of coming up with real solutions to real problems are also intangible.

“‘It’s a small thing,’ one Oregon student studying planning and law told me, ‘but it’s nice to be taken seriously.’”

The story also notes that almost 20 universities have followed SCI’s lead to create similar programs including the University of Connecticut and the University of Tennessee.

The May 2013 story “10-week Think Tanks” is here.

- By Julie Brown, Public Affairs Communications