U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley comes to campus Friday to talk about "Reversing the Decline of the Middle Class: Saving the American Dream"

It takes more than a little effort to transform oneself from a respectable, professional university employee to a candidate for Eugene Slug Queen. For Brandy Todd, assistant director for administration at the UO Oregon Center for Optics, competing in the city’s offbeat annual competition starts with applying enough makeup to paint a kitchen. Then comes a white-plastic lab coat and a pair of Chuck Taylors laced up – excruciatingly – all the way to the knee.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof  and his wife, banker and author Sheryl WuDunn, dropped in for a recent session of the UO's Summer Academy To Inspire Learning (SAIL) and shared stories about their work and the paths that led them to it. SAIL is a pipeline program at the UO that aims to make higher education a realistic goal for disadvantaged middle school and high school students.

University of Oregon faculty and staff who are connected with overseas travel and international study will soon have an opportunity to learn about MERS (Mideast Respiratory Syndrome) at a town hall meeting to be held at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 8 in Room 202 of the Ford Alumni Center. The town hall meeting is a collaborative effort between the UO and Lane County Public Health, designed to provide accurate information on how to prevent infection and limit the spread of the disease. The meeting is free of charge.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and his wife dropped in on a session of SAIL and shared stories about their work and the paths that led them to it