University of Oregon President Richard Lariviere finds academic goals overshadowed by sports controversies
By Bill Graves, The Oregonian
April 19, 2010, 6:34PM
University of Oregon President Richard Lariviere holds Juliet Starnes, niece of Jamilyn San Jose, (left) last week during an awards celebration for outstanding classified and administrative workers in the university’s Gerlinger Alumni Lounge.Public higher education lifted Richard Lariviere from his working class upbringing in Iowa to the far reaches of India, the ancient world in Sanskrit manuscripts, the inner circles of international business and the president's office at the University of Oregon."My own experience deeply colored my view of public higher education," said Lariviere, who took the helm of the university last July. "I owe everything I have to the remarkable power of education."
To protect that power at the University of Oregon, which is strained by declining state support and brimming enrollment, the president wants to gain more administrative and financial autonomy for the school. He wants to pay the faculty more, improve student graduation rates, increase student diversity and protect university access for students who, like him, are first in their families to blaze a path to college.
But Lariviere's academic goals have been overshadowed by an athletic department awash in donations from Nike co-founder Phil Knight that
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