Mac Court project closes University Street
UO basketball fans, who have tried to raise the roof on venerable McArthur Court as they cheered Duck men's and women's teams to victories in "The Pit," are finally getting their wish.
The university has begun a five-month, $1.7 million project to replace the 70-year-old arena's wooden barrel-vaulted roof with a new gable roof whose steel trusses will soar to a center ridge. Funding comes from Athletic Department and deferred maintenance resources.
The section of University Street adjacent to Mac Court closed March 28 and will remain closed to traffic for the life of the project, which is scheduled for completion by Aug. 15.
The new steel roof is expected to retain the current feeling of volume inside "The Pit" and to extend the useful life of the arena.
"The university's commitment to this structure is based both on its utility and on its historic importance," says Vice President Dan Williams. "Even though the university expects to build a new home for men's and women's basketball in the near future, Mac Court will continue to be an important practice and competition venue for various sports and other activities for many years to come."
He says the decision to invest substantially in the 10,000-seat arena followed an engineering study, commissioned last fall to assess the structural integrity of the vaulted roof as well as all of the trusses that hold up the roof and the balconies.
"The report came back cautiously positive that the big trusses are in good condition and not any more stressed than they were when they were designed seven decades ago," Williams says. "Costly repairs to the existing wooden roof structure were mandated, but our architects and engineers recommended the much better long-term solution of removing the whole roof structure and replacing it with a new noncombustible steel joist system."
After meeting with representatives of the UO offices and programs affected by the proposed project, Williams decided to do the work now.
"I am well aware that the roof replacement project will disrupt a number of university activities during construction, but in my judgment, avoiding the risk of permanent damage to the facility more than offsets the inconveniences created by beginning the work this spring," he says.
University architect Garry Fritz says McKenzie Commercial Contractors of Eugene has submitted the apparent low bid for the project. The architect is Soderstrom Architects of Portland.
McArthur Court and the surrounding street and parking lot were closed and turned over to the contractor at the beginning of spring term for safety as well as logistical reasons, Fritz says.
"We don't want the public very close during demolition and other construction activities when the contractor is lifting heavy structural items and maneuvering cranes."
The sidewalk on the west side of University Street across from Mac Court remains open for pedestrian traffic, however, and a fire lane provides access for emergency vehicles. Local traffic on East 13th and East 15th avenues into the center of campus continues but will be congested.
"We ask anyone planning large public events on campus during the Mac Court project to consult with our office about potential parking and traffic flow problems," stresses Tom Hicks, Public Safety.
During construction, Fritz says only the basement facilities in McArthur Court will be open. They will be reached through the northeast corner entrance. In addition, the Academic Counseling Center and all the rest of Esslinger Hall will remain open.
"We expect demolition to start in late April or early May, when the contractor begins using a tower crane on one side or two large mobile cranes on both the east and west sides," Fritz says. "The contractor also will need to fill the court area with scaffolding to reach the roof structure from inside."
The new roof will be supported by 17 steel trusses with a combined weight of 85 tons. Due to their size and span, they will come in two pieces, to be joined together at the center.
The project displaces about 10 reserved parking spaces, 53 metered spaces and 57 faculty, staff and student spaces. Two daily LTD bus runs on University Street have been re-routed.
Public Safety and Physical Plant officials are fencing off the neighborhood playground and creating a temporary parking area on the paved surface adjacent to the south side of Agate Hall. The 47 replacement spaces will allow parking for faculty, staff and student permit holders as well as visitors who will pay a daily fee.
"Other parking lots and the posted permit decal override meters on East 15th, 18th, University and Agate will remain open for use during construction," Hicks says. "We also encourage people to use such alternatives as carpooling, bicycling, riding LTD buses (including park-and-ride) and Autoparq for short-term use of campus and city parking meters."
Fritz acknowledges that the closure of Mac Court and University Street will impact several major events, notably spring commencement which normally would be held in Mac Court if it rains.
"No one has developed a good alternative for accommodating the up to 10,000 graduates and spectators involved in commencement on June 15, other than hoping for good weather," he says.
The project also will force the relocation of summer sports camps. In addition, the NCAA Track and Field Championships on May 29-June 1 and several other big track meets will create traffic snarls around the construction site bottleneck.
Snowstorm to benefit crime victims
The heavy February snowfall that left the UO campus littered with broken limbs and split and toppled trees will bring some real comfort to Lane County crime victims.
The UO is taking the debris to the Skipworth Juvenile Detention Facility where youth offenders will cut, split and sell it for firewood. Skipworth will donate all money collected from the firewood sales to repay crime victims.
Tim King, landscape maintenance supervisor, says state law allows the UO to donate the wood to any UO department at their expense or to another public agency such as Skipworth.
He says it will take several more weeks to clean up the campus and get all the downed wood to Skipworth's youthful woodcutters.
Goodman designs not all 'visual candy'
David Goodman, designer of the logo for The Oregon Campaign, enjoys the challenge of visual communications.
"It is a test to come up with a design that solves the problem of communicating something via a visual medium," says Goodman, in his fourth year as a graphic designer for University Publications.
"The campaign logo is an example of the challenge of bringing something out visually. It needed to be a design that would be consistent, easily recognizable and simple.
"Designing for the university means I have to temper the graphics with text," he continues. "My audience tends to be older, and they are used to newsprint and reading. They do not have the exposure to quick images and fast visuals as compared to younger generations."
Nevertheless, Goodman recognizes the value of using type as a design element.
"If there are too many visuals, you can lose the communication angle, and people will not understand what you are trying to say. Working for the university, there is always something to say or a message to communicate, so I do not want to lose my audience in visual candy," he says.
To be sure, the job is stressful. Goodman has juggled 14 separate projects in one week!
"I cannot put off one job to get another one done," he says. "I am always juggling, so they can all get done at the same time."
Goodman handles his job stress through rock climbing, backpacking, hiking and cross-country skiing. He also tries to keep things in perspective and not take things too seriously.
"All these projects are important to me," he continues, "and they are important to the people I am doing them for. But at the same time, the world is not going to end if they do not get done on time. And sometimes, you just have to remember that, no matter what job you are in," he says.
--COURTNEY HEDBERG, COMMUNICATIONS INTERN
Campaign on fast track for $150 million
The five-year Oregon Campaign--the most ambitious private fund-raising effort in the history of the state--has whipped past the two-thirds mark in just 16 months, President Dave Frohnmayer reports.
The UO capital campaign has raised $108.2 million, is 10 months ahead of schedule and is well on its way to reaching its $150 million goal by December 1998.
"When we began the campaign, we thought a target of $150 million was a stretch at best--maybe an impossible dream," says Dave Petrone of Palo Alto, Calif., a UO alumnus, UO Foundation trustee and chairman of the Campaign Leadership Council. "But we decided to reach for it, and our confidence has been justified.
"This milestone is a triumph for the whole university community--students, faculty, staff, alumni, friends, UO Foundation trustees, campaign staff and volunteers," Petrone says. "It's also a testament to the vision and generosity of hundreds of people who have invested their money and time in the future."
Many of the contributions are already transforming campus programs. The campaign has raised more than $57 million for the Oregon Model, the plan for improving undergraduate education. The effort has more than doubled the number of endowed chairs, professorships and coaching positions--from 20 to 46. It also has raised more than $36 million for faculty support and $13.4 million for student scholarships.
In addition, campaign gifts opened whole new fields of study, including Japanese teaching and environmental studies programs in Arts and Sciences and the entrepreneurship and sports marketing programs in the Lundquist College of Business.
"The Oregon Campaign fuels innovation on campus," says Frohnmayer. "It provides an incentive to take risks, to see if there are better ways to teach or do other things."
"The campaign provides funds to go beyond what we could do with state and tuition support alone," adds UO Provost John Moseley.
Recent examples of Oregon Campaign gifts are:
UO faculty invited to OSU Colloquium
"Diet and Cancer: From Basic Science to Clinical Trials" is the title of the day-long Biology Colloquium at OSU's LaSells Stewart Center on April 18. The free public event will bring prominent scientists together to discuss what is known about diet and cancer prevention. For schedule details and other information, call Sandy Segna, 7-6530.
Bulletin Board
Access to Holocaust conference enhanced
With more than 1,300 people already clamoring to attend the May 5-8 "Ethics After the Holocaust" conference which has room for only 750, UO officials moved quickly to meet public demand. Cheyney Ryan, Philosophy, says the May 8 keynote speech by Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel has been moved to the Eugene Community Conference Center where all 1,800 seats were booked within hours. Those unable to attend Wiesel's talk in person still will be able to see and hear him and most other main speakers through live remote broadcasts to the Pittman Room at the Casanova Center, live broadcasts by TCI Cable on two public-access channels and satellite broadcasts. Keynote speakers also will be available live on Channel 2 of the UO closed-circuit television system in the residence halls, TV lounges and other campus sites that can receive the transmissions. For satellite broadcast coordinates and other information, call 6-3934.
Teaching award nominations solicited
Strategic planning gets Web page
OSSHE has established a page on the World Wide Web to make information more readily available about the strategic planning process. Besides offering a way to provide input, the page includes task force charters, rosters, meeting minutes and planning schedules. Browse http://www.osshe.edu/planning
Mail Services offers Web information
For ZIP+4 lookup, U.S. and Canadian postal rates and information about UPS and Federal Express shipping, check out the new University Mail Services home page on the Web at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~telcom/mail.htm
Jane Nelson, Telecommunications, created the page which also includes general Campus Mail information and will add other features later.
Our People
In the spotlight
CLARIFICATION: Heather Boonstra, formerly Admissions, was in charge of "Insight," the viewbook which received a gold award in the CASE District VIII Juried Awards Competition. The March 6 News & Views erroneously credited Brian Gallagher, who was a free-lance writer for the project and now fills Boonstra's position.
Mary Lawrence, Law, is the first recipient of the Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession from the Association of American Law Schools Section on Legal Writing, Research and Reasoning. Creator of the nationally recognized UO course on legal research and writing, she will be honored during the AALS annual meeting in 1997.
Jim Brau, Physics, has been appointed to the National Research Council's Committee on Elementary Particle Physics. The panel will report to Congress and the public in 1997 on the future of the U.S. high-energy physics program and the facilities required. Brau also recently completed a two-year stint as manager of a project to build the world's most advanced "heavy quark detector" at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
Carlos Bustamante, Chemistry, and four Physics faculty members--Rudy Hwa, Stephen Kevan, Tom Mossberg, and George Rayfield--were among 180 scientists recently elected fellows of the American Physical Society.
"The Heppner Flood of 1903," a documentary produced by students Lara McKaughan, Larry Haftl, Alex Denison and Matt Walser of Dan Miller's Journalism 408/508 class in association with Journalism and Communication and the Knight Library's Instructional Media Center, debuted Feb. 25 on Oregon Public Broadcasting. Another documentary produced by students Christine Tobar-Dupres, Laurie Bossi, Allyson Johnson, Melissa Johnson and Jule Wind--"Yours for Liberty: The Abigail Scott Duniway Story"--has aired at least seven times on OPB since it first aired in December 1995.
Third-year UO law students Murray Petitt and Allyson Krueger recently won the American Bar Association's (ABA) national client-counseling competition, the first UO law students ever to win the contest. They were slated to compete for global honors in Australia in late March.
On the move
Randy MacDonald, Legislative and Community Relations, will step down as director at the end of May. Vice President Brodie Remington says the post will be filled after a reassessment of its duties.
Edwina Welch, ASUO Women's Center director, left at the end of winter term to take a similar position as head of a cross-cultural center at the University of California at San Diego. Bonnie Kanter will be interim director through June 30 while a search is conducted for Welch's successor.
In print
John Lukacs, Anthropology, is the author of "Sex Differences in Dental Caries Rates with the Origin of Agriculture in South Asia" in the February 1996 issue of Current Anthropology and of "The Caries Correction Factor: A New Method of Calibrating Dental Caries Rates to Compensate for Antemortem Loss of Teeth" in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology (1995).
Robert Hill Long, Creative Writing, is the author of two poems, "Hav-a-Hart" and "Sava," in the spring 1996 issue of Shenandoah, The Washington and Lee University Review.
Steve McGrew, University Computing, is the featured artist in a chapter on using video in the Web Publisher's Design Guide for Macintosh by Mary Jo Fahey (Cariolis Group Books, 1995).
In memoriam
John L. Hulteng, Journalism dean from 1962-69, died March 9 in Spokane, Wash., after an extended illness. The author of two books on media ethics and a former Nieman Fellow, Hulteng, 74, was one of the first to receive the Ersted Award for Distinguished Teaching. Joining the UO faculty in 1955 after a 10-year career in newspapers, Hulteng left in 1977 for Stanford, where he taught nine years before retiring. He graduated from the University of North Dakota and the Columbia School of Journalism, which in February had named him one of its four outstanding alumni for 1996. No services were held. Memorial contributions may be made to a charity of one's choice.