Nike co-founder Phil Knight, and his wife, Penny, have donated $1bn to the University of Oregon in what the institution described as the “largest gift ever made to a comprehensive public university”.
The donation is intended to be used to establish a new engineering school in Eugene. In a news release seen by the Guardian, the university said the new school would “educate engineers and applied scientists in bioengineering and other high-demand disciplines, attract faculty and researchers to a growing campus, and accelerate the university’s ability to move discoveries out of the laboratory and into products, therapies, technologies and companies”.
The University of Oregon president, Karl Scholz, said in a statement that the Knights have “a long history of believing in things before they exist” and that “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.”
