Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, announced a whopping $1 billion contribution to the University of Oregon early Wednesday.

The money will help start an engineering school in Eugene, a major boost to the university’s research ambitions and a potential competitor to Oregon State University’s well-established program just up the freeway.

Wednesday’s donation is the latest in a string of high-dollar philanthropy from Oregon’s wealthiest family and another in a long series of large contributions they’ve made to Phil Knight’s alma mater in Eugene.

In a statement, Phil Knight rejected national cynicism about the value of university research and said his contribution reflects his dedication to higher education.

“To make an audacious dream a reality requires more than a vivid imagination. It also requires the sort of opportunity that our great American universities, both public and private, have historically provided,” Knight wrote. “This is no time to abandon them.”

The university said it will use the money to start the Knight College of Engineering. It’s a new program that will share space with the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact, created by a pair of $500 million donations from the Knights in 2016 and 2021.

Those facilities consist of two leading-edge research buildings just across busy Franklin Boulevard from the main University of Oregon campus. The first opened in 2020, with a second opening this year. The university said Wednesday it plans to build a third building somewhere near the existing facilities, aiming to begin construction within the next two years. But it hasn’t picked a specific site yet.

Bob Guldberg, the Knight Campus’ executive director, said the university will receive the Knights’ funding over 10 years and it’s structured to fund operations in perpetuity. He said the Knight Campus plans to double the 500 students enrolled today and grow the faculty from 17 to 42.

Scholarships are budgeted into the gift, Guldberg said, but the university didn’t immediately have details about how many.

The University of Oregon is coping with a budget deficit, like other colleges around the state and across the country. Falling birth rates and new restrictions on student visas and immigration have limited the pool of prospective students, while the Trump administration has imposed limits on federal research spending.

“Obviously it’s an exceptionally challenging time for universities,” Guldberg said. He said the Knights’ contribution gives Oregon the resources to expand what it does and appeal to a broader population.

“It’s setting the university up to be more financially resilient,” Guldberg said, “in terms of bringing in new types of students.”

The Knight Campus aspires to be an economic engine for the state, promoting scientific research that operates outside traditional economic structures, focused on bioengineering, biomedical data science and high-tech workforce training.

Engineering work has been central to Oregon’s economy dating back to the 1940s and the founding of Tektronix. Intel now occupies that space in Oregon’s technology landscape, with approximately 16,000 employees at its campuses and computer chip factories in Washington County.

“Oregon has the companies, the workforce and the research,” said Renée James, a University of Oregon alumna, trustee and Intel’s former president. “What it has not had is a pipeline big enough to feed all three. A college of engineering built to move as fast as the technology is a missing piece to solving that problem and keeping more graduates in state.”

The state’s semiconductor workforce is at a 30-year low after a series of layoffs at Intel and other Oregon chipmakers. In July, a consortium led by Oregon State University won a federal grant worth up to $160 million to boost the state’s semiconductor research.

“Oregon needs engineers. Intel has been part of this community for more than five decades, and we understand the importance of strong engineering talent,” Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a statement that accompanied the University of Oregon’s announcement Wednesday.

The University of Oregon said Wednesday’s $1 billion contribution will support new faculty and facilities over the long term.

It may also present a challenge to Oregon State, 50 miles north in Corvallis, which already works closely with Intel and other technology employers and leads much of the state’s engineering research. OSU will soon open a $200 million supercomputer research center partly funded by Oregon State’s own wealthy alumni — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and his wife, Lori.

Portland State University also has a robust engineering program tied to Intel and other Silicon Forest companies.

On Wednesday, Guldberg said he plans to collaborate with Oregon’s other universities rather than match what their engineering schools already do.

“We’re not going to recreate all those departments,” he said.

Knight, 88, ran track at the University of Oregon. He founded Nike with his former track coach Bill Bowerman in 1964 and made his fortune selling sneakers and athletic apparel all over the world.

Just last week, the Knights donated $1.1 billion to Providence St. Vincent Medical Center west of Portland. That money will pay for a hospital dedicated to women’s health and cardiac imaging and clinical trials at Providence Heart Institute.

The Knights donated $2 billion last year to Oregon Health & Science University, money designated to “revolutionize” cancer treatment by accelerating diagnoses and treating more patients. The donation also established a separate board of governors from the rest of OHSU.

Forbes values the Knights’ fortune at $25 billion. It ranks the couple among America’s top philanthropists and estimated their charitable donations totaled $4.5 billion, before Wednesday’s major new gift to the University of Oregon.

The Knights’ other contributions to the University of Oregon include $27 million for the school’s library, $10 million for its law school (named for Phil Knight’s father, William W. Knight) and $100 million for Matthew Knight Arena (named for the Knights’ late son).

The Knights also contributed a significant share of the $270 million the University of Oregon spent to remake the Hayward Field track venue, which opened in 2021.

The Knights have been hands-off donors, Gulberg said. He said he asked what they expected from big gifts before he took the science center’s top job in 2018.

“And the answer,” he said Wednesday, “was simply, ‘Excellence.’”