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Higher education faces a dilemma in the field of architecture. Attracting talented professionals with the credentials to teach at colleges and universities is difficult when weighing the salary of a college professor against the potential earnings of a top-flight architect.

Recognizing that challenge, ZGF Architects principal Larry Bruton and his wife, Janice, last year decided to leave a legacy at Larry’s alma mater, the School of Architecture and Allied Arts at the University of Oregon. The Brutons bestowed their $5 million gift specifically to help the university attract and retain top-level architecture professors so that UO can continue to be considered among the best architecture schools in the country for years to come.

“I was in the right place at the right time,” Larry Bruton said of his early years as an architecture student at UO. “I grew up in Eugene, and when I started in the program, they’d just hired a new dean who brought in hot new designers, progressive young professionals who’d made their marks, and bright, aggressive talent from all over the U.S. I later came to appreciate that nontraditional approach. Education shapes talent.”

After graduating, Bruton honed his skills with smaller firms before joining ZGF in 1971, where he rose to become a full partner. He was with the firm as it grew from a single office with 40 people in Portland to hundreds of employees in locations that include Seattle; Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; New York; a presence as ZGF Cotter Architects Inc. in Vancouver, B.C.; and projects spread around the world.

Bruton likes the direction he sees UO’s architecture program moving. In 2008, the university opened a Portland campus in the White Stag Block, refurbishing three 19th-century buildings into a multiuse academic complex. Bruton cites it as an example of the focus on urbanization that he sees as the future of architecture.

“We’re an urbanized world; Oregon has reached out to embrace urban designs with quality and sustainability,” he said. “The current dean, Frances Bronet, is tremendous, energetic and good at attracting talented instructors. The new Sustainable Cities curriculum will prove to have a real effect on communities.”