For the second time in eight days, Phil and Penny Knight have pledged more than $1 billion to an Oregon institution. Their latest commitment, announced September 23, directs $1 billion to engineering at the University of Oregon. It follows a $1.1 billion pledge announced September 15 for women’s health and heart care at Providence. The two gifts, made to separate institutions for separate purposes, amount to $2.1 billion committed in less than two weeks.
The pace of the announcements is striking, even for donors whose names are familiar across Oregon. The university gift is the Knights’ third major commitment to its scientific research campus in Eugene. Providence’s pledge adds to years of support for its Heart Institute and will help fund a hospital dedicated to women’s health at St. Vincent Medical Center in Washington County. In each case, the money is going to an institution where the couple has already invested, with plans to expand work now taking place.
At the University of Oregon, the new pledge is intended to establish the Knight College of Engineering within the existing Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact. The college has not yet been established and must go through state and university approval processes. Engineering education itself is already underway there: the campus has opened the university’s first engineering department and graduated its first engineers.
That work began with a $500 million Knight commitment in 2016 to create the campus. A second $500 million commitment in 2021 supported its expansion. Those earlier gifts helped turn the university’s plans for applied science into operating laboratories, academic programs and space for young companies. With Wednesday’s announcement, the Knights have now committed $2 billion to the campus over a decade.
The university intends to use the latest pledge to educate more engineers, bring in faculty and researchers, and develop a full college around the programs already growing in Eugene. Bioengineering is expected to remain a strength, with the proposed college also connecting engineering to data science, medicine and other scientific fields. Its eventual size, degree offerings and enrollment schedule have not been announced. Those details will take shape as the university seeks approval and determines how to expand.
The existing campus offers a measure of what that expansion would build upon. Its 17 research laboratories involve more than 500 students and trainees each year. The university reports partnerships with more than 200 companies, while incubator laboratories and other support have helped more than a dozen student and faculty ventures develop beyond the research stage. Its graduate internship program reports graduation and job placement rates above 90 percent.
The pledge also arrives as Oregon employers seek engineers for semiconductor production, biotechnology, manufacturing and life sciences. The university estimates about 2,500 engineering job openings statewide each year. It says Oregon accounts for nearly one-tenth of the nation’s semiconductor workforce but trains comparatively few people for those jobs relative to the industry’s size. The proposed college would give more students a way to prepare for that work at an Oregon university.
Providence’s announcement came first, on September 15. The Knights pledged $1.1 billion to Providence St. Vincent Medical Center and the Providence Heart Institute, to be distributed over 10 years. The first funds are expected this year. Part of the commitment will support a hospital dedicated to women’s health on the St. Vincent campus; the rest is intended for heart care, prevention, diagnostic services and patient support. Providence has not specified that the full $1.1 billion will be spent on the hospital.
The planned facility would bring pregnancy care, labor and delivery, gynecology, menopause care and other specialties into a dedicated setting. It would also include an updated neonatal intensive care unit and access to cardiovascular specialists. St. Vincent already provides maternity care and other services for women, but hospital leaders say some of the space used for mothers and newborns dates to the 1990s. Plans for the neonatal unit include private rooms for families in place of a shared room used for specialized infant care.
Providence expects the completed hospital to create hundreds of clinical and other jobs. It has described the project as Oregon’s first hospital dedicated to women’s health, though a construction completion date has not been announced. Hospital leaders say the planned arrangement would allow specialists to work more closely with patients whose pregnancies are complicated by conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes, or who need behavioral health care.
The Heart Institute is another substantial part of the Providence gift. It treats about 63,000 patients a year from across the Pacific Northwest. Over the past decade, the Knights have contributed $200 million to its cardiovascular programs, helping expand complex treatment that includes heart transplantation. Providence says the latest commitment will help recruit specialists, increase access to clinical trials, improve cardiac imaging and strengthen services for patients navigating serious heart conditions.
The September pledges follow another major Knight commitment to Oregon health care. In August 2025, the couple pledged $2 billion to Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute for cancer research, treatment and patient care. That was a separate gift, announced more than a year before the University of Oregon and Providence commitments. Together, the announcements show the scale of the Knights’ giving to Oregon institutions, while each pledge retains its own recipient, purpose and timetable.
The latest $2.1 billion has been pledged, not spent in the eight days between announcements. The University of Oregon must establish its proposed college, and Providence must develop its hospital and carry out the planned expansion of care. What Oregonians can see now is the size and direction of the commitments: more engineers trained in Eugene, and more facilities and services for patients at St. Vincent.