Nike cofounder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, are committing $1 billion to the Knight College of Engineering at the University of Oregon, the university announced Wednesday.
The gift is the largest single contribution to a comprehensive public university, according to the school.
The Knight Campus established the University of Oregon’s first engineering department in 2016, and its laboratories host more than 500 students and trainees each year. The Knights donated $500 million in 2016 and again in 2021 while developing the Knight Campus, making their total contributions $2 billion.
Oregon is a chip hub
At the Knight Campus, its curriculum is focused on advancing bioengineering research, biomedical data science, and high-tech workforce training.
“We go out and we do some discovery, we understand what the companies need, and then we design our curriculum around that,” Bob Guldberg, executive director of the Knight Campus, tells Fast Company. “As you create talent, it attracts more companies, and the companies hire students.”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that STEM jobs will grow by 8.1% between 2024-2034, compared to 3.1% across all occupations.
To keep up with this projection, the Knights are committing to closing the gap between a shortage of talent and this growing industry, according to the press release.
Oregon holds nearly a tenth of the country’s semiconductor workforce, the university stated, but the state trains proportionally fewer engineers than any other major semiconductor state.
The $1 billion donation will go toward a third building, building new labs, and hiring new faculty, Guldberg said.
Some 2,500 engineering job openings are expected each year, the university says, but there are not enough local engineers to fill those positions.