The latest story in the Register-Guard's series on the UO's "Clusters of Excellence" initiative looks at sports. Not touchdowns, three-pointers, or a record-setting 10,000-K run. Think sports products.

"In the works," writes series author Diane Dietz, "are two new sports-centric master’s degrees — one in product design and another in the management of product design teams — and a new, UO design laboratory under Portland’s Burnside Bridge." She later adds: "The UO plan is to help develop talent for the sports companies — especially in big-time college athletes — and to give Oregon students an edge in an industry that seeks employees from around the globe."

New professors hired to help expand the UO's sports-products efforts "would play to the Portland area concentration of athletic and outdoor firms," Jim Bean, senior associate dean for academic programs at the Lundquist College of Business, says in the story.

Prominently featured is UO faculty member Kiersten Muenchinger, director of the UO's Product Design Program in the School of Architecture and Allied Arts, who submitted the proposal for a sports products cluster.

Read the story at "UO seeks win-win" and also watch a video featuring Muenchinger that accompanied the story online. Portions of the video come from a spot produced for the Pac-12 Network featuring adaptive athletics products developed in the UO design class. The full video can be seen here.