OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
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University Day is Oregon State University's celebratory launch to the academic year. During this event, the university welcomes new employees, celebrates excellent work, and recognizes awards for teaching, mentoring, engagement, and research. Part of this event is the University Day Lecture, delivered by a distinguished leader, thinker, or scholar who inspires faculty and staff to reflect on their roles as educators committed to delivering OSU's land grant research university mission.
Dr. Marcia McNutt will be Oregon State's 2023 University Day Speaker. McNutt is a geophysicist and the 22nd president of the National Academy of Sciences. From 2013 to 2016, she was the editor-in-chief of Science journals. McNutt was director of the U.S. Geological Survey from 2009 to 2013, during which time USGS responded to a number of major disasters, including Deepwater Horizon oil spill. For her work to help contain that spill, McNutt was awarded the U.S. Coast Guard's Meritorious Service Medal. She is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, Geological Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the International Association of Geodesy. McNutt is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Foreign Member of the Royal Society, UK, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy. In 1998, McNutt was awarded the AGU’s Macelwane Medal for research accomplishments by a young scientist, and she received the Maurice Ewing Medal in 2007 for her contributions to deep-sea exploration.
The university system is one of the oldest continually-operating human institution. Although universities are centers for creating new knowledge, they themselves have been slow to evolve over the ages. With the advent of disruptive factors such as a global pandemic, AI, challenges to affirmative action, and rising competition globally, it is time for universities to take a fresh look at how they hire, promote, and retain their faculty, educate their students, and engage with their communities. A number of artificial factors, such university ranking systems and how faculty are assessed, stand in the way of much needed change at a time when education has never been more important to the future of society.
