Who We Are 

Mike Urbancic is a Senior Instructor in the Department of Economics, where he has been teaching both large lower-division courses and smaller upper-division electives since 2012.

He is passionate about teaching, and he loves making connections across campus both through his work with United Academics and in a variety of service roles across campus. He currently serves on the Undergraduate Council, the Committee for Academic Infrastructure, and the Board of the Provost’s Teaching Academy.

In each of these spheres—and at the bargaining table—he works to highlight and elevate the teaching mission of the university, enhance the profile of our dedicated instructors, and strengthen our institutional support and job security.

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Deborah Green is the Greenberg Associate Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature in the Department of Religious Studies. Her research area of focus is the interplay among everyday life in the ancient Near East, history of biblical interpretation, and the layered language of metaphor found in interpretation. She teaches lower and upper/graduate division courses. Before going to grad school (as a “returning” student), Deborah worked for two major benefit and compensation consulting firms.

Deborah’s work with United Academics predates the union itself. She has served on the finance committee since the formation of the union, and she has been involved with the family caucus for many years. She served as a Representative and later as Chair of the Representative Assembly. Deborah has served on each bargaining team since the formation of the union. This is her fourth round.

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Bill Harbaugh is a Professor of Economics, has been UO Senate President twice, and co-founded SAIL, the university's largest volunteer faculty diversity program. He is also the Chair of the UAUO Budget and Finance Committee.

Harbaugh has taught Economics at UO since 1995. He also edits UOMatters.com, a muckraking blog about UO* for which he was awarded the Oregon Society of Professional Journalist’s “First Freedom” award in 2012.

His academic research uses methods from experimental economics and neuroeconomics to study charitable giving and the economic behavior of children. His union work began in 1969, when he led his third-grade class in a wild-cat strike and march on the Principal’s Office, to protest boring reading assignments.

* UO Matters is not associated with United Academics.

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Christina Karns is an Assistant Research Professor in Psychology with the Center for Brain Injury Research and Training. 

She uses human neuroimaging, behavior, and interventions in kids and adults (with and without disability) to clarify how attention and self-regulation support development. What brain systems support positive social interactions, how do they affect stress systems in the body, and to what degree are these interactions changeable, demonstrating neuroplasticity?

Good science can be a powerful force toward social justice, an ethos she brings to her teaching and her research.

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David M. Luebke is a professor in the Department of History whose research and writing focuses on the religions and political cultures of ordinary people in the German-speaking lands of central Europe.

He has been a member of the UO faculty since 1997 and has supported the formation of a faculty union since beginning, way back in 2007.

David is especially interested in ensuring that procedures for the review and promotion of faculty members are conducted fairly, according to clear and transparent criteria, and with proper respect for the value that departments place on scholarship, teaching, and service.

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Lynn Fujiwara is an associate professor in the Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies whose research specializes in Asian American Studies and Women of Color feminisms. As an interdisciplinary researcher and scholar her work engages social policy, cultural formations, and coalitional resistant strategies.

She served as the department head of IRES from 2011-2016, was a founding member and co-chair of the Faculty and Staff of Color Coalition 2003-2008, and was a founding member and inaugural coordinator of the Women of Color project in the Center for the Study of Women in Society.

Lynn is concerned with the overall state of climate at the University of Oregon, and believes UA is an important organization to support faculty from marginalized communities and address issues of retention.

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Edward Davis is an academic expert in paleontology and the evolution of large mammals. At the University of Oregon, he is an associate professor of earth sciences and the Paleontological Collections Manager for the Museum of Natural and Cultural History.

Edward specializes in the way species respond to ongoing climate change. Most of his work is on terrestrial herbivores (plant eaters, like antelope), but his research also expands into whales and carnivores.

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