News Bites

Welcome New Advisory Council Chair

In June 2017, Margaret Moore completed her term as Chair of the Clark Honors College Advisory Council. The first graduate of the honors college, Moore is a retired school administrator who served Washington’s Issaquah school district for more than two decades in a variety of counseling and administrative positions, retiring in 2003 as assistant superintendent.

Richard Boyles At the Council’s summer meeting, Richard Boyles assumed the role of Council Chair and will serve through 2019. Boyles is president and co-founder of InnSight Hotel Management Group, one of the most recognized and respected full-service hotel management companies in the country with many award-winning Pacific Northwest hotels in their portfolio. He and his wife, Pamela, also own and operate Iris Vineyards.During the next two years Boyles will lead the Council, currently composed of seventeen dedicated alumni and friends of the honors college, as they provide guidance, share ideas, and advocate for the students of the Clark Honors College.

“This Council is engaged,” says Boyles. “Our varied backgrounds, experiences, and open discussions provide a deep well of ideas, suggestions and potential initiatives for the Dean to consider in pursuing our common goal to better recruit and support top scholars to the Clark Honors College.”

If you would like to learn more about the Clark Honors College Advisory Council and other ways to volunteer and support honors college students, please email Jen Parker at jeparker@uoregon.edu.


Alumni Pay It Forward In Second Annual #DucksGive

On May 18th, more than 2,100 UO alumni, employees, and friends banded together and, in a single day, raised more than $1.1 million dollars to support students, faculty, and signature programs.

Ducks Give Giving days like the UO’s #DucksGive event are 24-hour online fundraising challenges that harness social media to rally people around a common cause or event. Thanks to the 100 generous Clark Honors College supporters who made gifts to help offset differential tuition costs for current students, the honors college unlocked a $100,000 challenge gift offered by UO Board of Trustee member Mary Wilcox and her husband, Brett.

These funds will help remove barriers and ensure that motivated scholars will be able to benefit from the broad curriculum, small classes, and research opportunities that are the hallmark of an honors college education, regardless of their financial situation.

#DucksGive will return next year on University Day, in May 2018.


Louise Bishop
Photo by Charlie Litchfield

Getting Medieval: Louise Bishop and the Society for Creative Anachronism

What images do we conjure when we hear the word “medieval”? Warfare, knights, clanging metal: violence writ large. To recreate medieval armaments and fight with them, á là the Society for Creative Anachronism, requires historical imagination and reflects one kind of expertise. Founded just over fifty years ago in Berkeley, California, the SCA prides itself on its recreated kingdoms, tournaments, and weapons.

Associate professor of literature Louise Bishop, pictured here with local SCA members in Eugene, Oregon, specializes in medievalism. Her honors college colloquia “Inventing the Middle Ages” and “Getting Medieval” seek to define the word “medieval” by asking where it came from and how it’s been used for the last 500 years.

Were the Middle Ages more characteristically violent than contemporary American culture? Didn’t the Middle Ages also invent courtly love? Today we can ask what purposes the word serves when American presidents refer to “medieval Islamic violence.” These issues – and a love for medieval literature – have animated professor Bishop’s research and teaching for the last twenty-or-so years.