On Friday, November 1, the Lundquist College's new sports product management workshop series will kick off with a two-day event titled "Sustainability: Design through Manufacturing." Three more workshops are scheduled for the upcoming year.

The workshop series is the first salvo of an initiative that aims to provide a new source of talent for Portland's thriving sports product industry. Proposed plans include academic programs based in Eugene and Portland.

Heading up this initiative is Ellen Devlin '81, MBA '12.

A former UO runner, Olympic competitor, and former multinational Nike executive, Devlin has spent the past year studying the sports product industry's needs on behalf of the Lundquist College. During this time, Devlin and her team conducted more than one hundred interviews with people in sports business and academia.

"With this greater understanding of the sports product industry's needs, we have been able to develop programs that align the university's expertise with students' interests and the needs of the global sports product industry based in Portland," said Devlin.

The Lundquist College is uniquely positioned to provide fresh talent to these companies, thanks our strong academics, tradition of hands-on learning, and global outlook.

"Today you have to think on a global basis. Brands have to go all over the world, and we have to instill these kinds of skills from day one. We happen to have the resources here at the college to do that," said Dean Kees de Kluyver.

Visit the program's website, read the UO press release, watch a video about the new initiative, and download flyers describing the File first and File second days of the November workshop.