Winter 2025 13 PRESIDENT Q + A PERSPECTIVES ALEC LEVIN Associate professor, College of Agricultural Sciences; viticulturist and director of Southern Oregon Research and Extension Center The movie Sideways is the best fictional portrayal of the wine industry and left an enduring impact that’s still noticeable today. The main character’s famous line that he would under no circumstances drink any merlot (using more colorful language) simultaneously tanked demand for merlot and surged demand for pinot noir. Undoubtedly, this helped the Oregon wine industry flourish, given that pinot noir is our signature grape variety. KAGAN TUMER Professor, College of Engineering; director of the Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems Institute Robot and Frank might be the best robot movie you’ve never heard of. After some initial resistance, an aging Frank accepts a butler robot from his son (who rarely visits him), only to realize the opportunities it provides may extend beyond helping with house chores. This movie explores ethical dilemmas in AI and robotics, including whether a robot should lie or break the law. Fair warning: Your reaction to what’s right and what’s legal may surprise you. MATTEO BUGATTI Assistant professor, School of Psychological Science After years of providing loud commentary on countless TV shows depicting therapists (just ask my wife), I’d say Shrinking is definitely one of the worst. What made me stop watching was not the fact that the therapist crosses all sorts of boundaries, but that the underlying assumption is that therapists know what their clients need to fix their lives. The truth is we don’t — but we know how to help you figure it out. WILL HOMER, ’91 Chief operating officer of Painted Hills Natural Beef Yellowstone stands out as a fictional depiction of the ranching world. It skillfully resurrects the spirit of the Wild West, complete with more gun battles than Tombstone and The Magnificent Seven combined. However, while there may be guns in our pickup trucks, they’re typically drawn only to fend off the occasional four-legged predator, not for showdowns. But I believe the show’s creators have good intentions, highlighting the profound responsibility of land stewardship. STRANGER THAN FICTION Q: WHAT’S THE BEST (OR WORST) FICTIONAL DEPICTION OF YOUR FIELD THAT YOU’VE ENCOUNTERED? HOMER: COURTESY OF WILL HOMER; BUGATTI, TUMER AND LEVIN: OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY and we know that business as usual isn’t going to cut it. So there’s hunger, creativity and impatience there. I recognize that in ourselves and in them.And that’s what I mean by cultural fit. It’s not simply that we’ve got this many students and this many programs. It’s an attitude. Is it possible to keep up with the college athletics money race? If you play the game on the terms of the Alabamas and Ohio States, then you can’t succeed. We are going to have to find new models, new kinds of competition, new sources of revenue. The athletic world may look very different.The Pac-12 may choose to do things that are quite creative and different. I feel like we’ve got the group that is capable of that. What are the types of risks we’re willing to take to market athlet‑ ics and by proxy the universi‑ ty? We’re planning very creative marketing, that’s for sure. We now have an identity with the rebuild of the Pac. This is a rebirth and a rebranding. There’s lots and lots of thought going into that. And I’m keenly aware that there’s no such thing as marketing athletics without really marketing the university. The university itself is thinking through what it means to market our strategic plan — everything that we are doing in the research space and toward every student graduating. You’ll see this rollout this year. Is there anything else alumni should know about this winter? What I want to say to our alumni is that I am so grateful — so grateful for their resilience, their toughness, their willingness to give us space to work it all out. I don’t know that I could have gotten it out of any other community, but this community gave us a little bit more grace and a little bit more space.We’ll come out of this just fine. THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN EDITED FOR CLARITY AND LENGTH.
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