When Pam Birkel, MBA '13, offered her services to TrackTown12—organizers of last summer's Olympic Trials at Hayward Field—she figured she'd land a spot as a recycling volunteer. Instead, she played a key role helping the event gain gold-level sustainability certification from the Council for Responsible Sport (ReSport), the national nonprofit advancing responsibly produced sports events. And because the Olympic Trials was the first multiday competition to be evaluated by ReSport, Birkel's work also helped set a benchmark for future multiday events throughout the nation.

"When we started, no one bought TVs at WalMart," Vizio founder and CEO William Wang recalled, in a Q&A session with Lundquist College students and faculty this October. Radically reshaping the shopping landscape is just one of the ways that Wang's ten-year-old company has changed the world of consumer electronics. During a discussion moderated by Dean Kees de Kluyver, Wang described the "perfect storm" that helped drive his company's success and covered some of the other game-changers Vizio pioneered.

This October, Collette Niland joined the Lundquist College of Business as the assistant dean of undergraduate programs. Niland—who earned her PhD in political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison--comes to us from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was assistant dean for undergraduate affairs at the college of business and founder of the school's Social Entrepreneurship Institute.

Reinvigorating an exchange program, changing lives in China, Eugene, and beyond, untangling patent thickets, and more.

For the seventh year running, the college's Engaging Asia initiative provided a group of second-year Oregon MBA students with the opportunity to explore the sights, sounds, and business practices of another continent. The first stop on the itinerary was Shanghai, where a visit to the Wieden+Kennedy office and a zippy bus ride (yes, a bus ride) around the city's Formula 1 racetrack were among the many activities.

At the Lundquist College of Business, innovation has been a core value from our very earliest days. Most recently, this pioneering instinct has led to the creation of the Business Innovation Institute, the new framework for the Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship (LCE) and the Center for Sustainable Business Practices (CSBP).