Truth Tellers and BuildersPresident Jayathi Murthy on unbuilding dams and rebuilding the Pac-12.

This issue’s cover story is about the world’s largest dam removal project: Beavers unbuilding, instead of building, dams. How do you think this project showcases OSU’s strengths? That’s an interesting observation, building and unbuilding, but engineers build and unbuild all the time. You bring buildings down; you build new ones. Unbuilding is a kind of building, too. And our understanding of what dams do, good and bad, has gotten so much deeper.

I always see OSU’s role as being the truth tellers, the data gatherers, the creators of theory, providing the information that our society needs to make good decisions. If you look at OSU’s research role in this project, it’s about looking at the ecology, at salmon, and providing hard data on what it means to do dam removal.

We want to tell the whole story — the economic, sociological and other consequences that flow from these decisions. There are positive things you’re trying to do, and there are fallouts as a result. You have to tell that story truthfully, using data. I also want to recognize another responsibility we have, to Tribal nations and Indigenous communities — taking responsibility for some of the decisions that our country made in the past and trying to set things right.

I guess as new problems arise from what we thought were solutions, Beavers are in there fixing. Yes, they are always fixing. There’s humility in this — we don’t fully understand everything.

What do alumni need to know about the upcoming Oregon legislative session? We — all Oregon public universities, not just OSU — are asking for a $275 million increase in funding, for a total of $1.275 billion. This is not extravagant. This is basic funding for the public higher ed university system. Part of it is that we are looking for a $150 million increase to the Oregon Opportunity Grant, which funds need-based grants for Oregonians.

If alumni are looking for one thing to advocate for, I would say it’s the Oregon Opportunity Grant — get in there and get our students supported. [See thebeavercaucus.org.]

Exciting news broke recently about universities joining the Pac-12. Why did OSU choose this path? We wanted a home, and we wanted to be the ones writing our own story. If we allowed ourselves to simply be taken by a conference, it wouldn’t be on our terms. For us, having agency, having an ability to shape our future, was critical.

Now, why these universities? Of course there are the stats, but there’s also a cultural fit. Talking to the presidents, my sense was that they too were scrappy, like us. We all recognize this to be a singular moment, 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 athletics and by proxy the university?  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.