Phil Knight is putting another huge amount of money into the University of Oregon. He and his wife, Penny, are donating $1 billion to help launch a new engineering college, which the university says is the biggest gift ever given to a comprehensive public university.
It will become the Knight College of Engineering and sit within the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact. Knight went to Oregon before eventually co-founding Nike, and this is far from his first investment in the school. He previously gave $500 million toward the campus in 2016, then matched that amount again in 2021.
A lot of the couple’s recent giving has stayed close to home in Oregon. In 2025, they committed $2 billion to Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute. Another $1.1 billion later went toward Providence St. Vincent Medical Center and the Providence Heart Institute, including plans for a women’s health hospital and more cardiovascular care.
There is also a sports side to Knight’s philanthropy through Nike. Programs such as N7, the Nike Community Impact Fund, and Doernbecher Freestyle have all received support. Doernbecher Freestyle, in particular, brings young patients together with Nike designers to create their own sneakers.
Oregon also sees the engineering school as a way to answer a real workforce problem. Jobs tied to biotech, AI, life sciences, sports performance, and other technical fields continue to grow, while companies are having a harder time finding enough trained workers. The state expects roughly 2,500 engineering openings each year.
The university wants to build out programs like bioengineering, hire more faculty, and give researchers more support. It also wants more work done on campus to make its way into actual products, treatments, technology, and new companies.
Knight started with an idea that turned into Nike. Now, a large piece of his money is going back into a place where other ideas could get their start.
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