A major part of a university education is what happens outside of the classroom, which is why the Spring 2017 “Experience” issue of Oregon Quarterly dives into opportunities the UO offers faculty members and students to ask questions, get out in the field and put learning into practice.

Like one of writer Tom Titus’ herpetology students, you can travel out to Oregon’s Great Basin to feel the shimmering heat and the rough sand under your belly as you patiently try to ensnare a lizard — in the name of science, of course.

Visit John Boosler’s “heavy metal” machine shop — the Scientific Instrument Fabrication and Engineering Shop in Cascade Annex — where students and staff have access to the kind of precision industrial tools that can turn crazy ideas into working prototypes. For a different trip, share in the adventures of Allen Hall Advertising students who built on classroom lessons to “Reset the Code” in a campaign to encourage students to speak out against all forms of intolerance.

And marvel at Ming Canaday, an irrepressible, fearless, unstoppable Duck who embraced the challenges of her life when she could have easily let them defeat her.

The edition also includes an excerpt from “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author of this year’s Common Reading selection, and a profile of emeritus English professor Glen Love, whose activism in the cause of preserving Oregon’s fishing streams led to a new interdisciplinary approach to literary criticism.

Print copies are available at Duck Store locations and at sites on campus, or online at http://oregonquarterly.com/.