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The University of Oregon has received a $1 billion donation from Nike co-founder and UO alumnus Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, to establish an engineering college in Eugene. It’s the largest gift ever given to a comprehensive public university, according to UO.

The college is intended to educate engineers and applied scientists in bioengineering and other fields, attract high-quality faculty and researchers, and speed the pipeline from the laboratory to the marketplace.

“To make an audacious dream a reality requires more than a vivid imagination,” Phil Knight, a 1959 graduate of UO, said in a statement. “It also requires the sort of opportunity that our great American universities, both public and private, have historically provided. This is no time to abandon them.”

The new college will be located on the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact, which was created by two previous $500 million contributions from the Knights, one in 2016 and the other in 2021. Those gifts inspired additional support from the state, industry partners foundations and other donors, the university said.

“Phil and Penny Knight have a long history of believing in things before they exist,” said University of Oregon President Karl Scholz. “They did it in 2016, and they are doing it again now, at a scale that is genuinely hard to take in. I am grateful to them, and I am grateful to be here for it.”