Although summer is steadily fading away, that doesn’t mean you have to stop eating classic summer treats. Here are a few spots to make the transition into fall a little sweeter.

Yogurt Extreme — 879 E. 13th Ave.

If you’ve never been to Yogurt Extreme, here’s the routine: walk up the vibrant pink stairs, find the sample cups, sample three or four different flavors — maybe repeat samples for confirmation — then once you’ve chosen your yogurt base, you’re ready to create your own frozen masterpiece. Yogurt Extreme has 12 weekly transitioning flavors and more than 50 different toppings to choose from to perfect your sugary creation. From crushed Oreo crumbs to fully decorated cupcakes, there truly are no bounds to satisfy your craving. Like what goes in your cup, the price is also in your hands. Priced at only 40 cents per ounce, it allows you to be creative with your toppings if you’re on a budget. Former University of Oregon student Maia Stewart remembers going to Yogurt Extreme weekly her freshman and sophomore years.

“Yogurt Extreme is my favorite,” Stewart said. “I’d always convince a friend to go with me after class because it was a cheap place to have a treat and hang out.”

Prince Pückler’s Gourmet Ice Cream — 1605 E.19th Ave.

Only at Prince Pückler’s is the mint chip flavored ice cream known as “Obama” or as the “President’s favorite.” It was named Barack Obama’s choice when the candidate made an unannounced visit in May 2008. With one of the largest ice cream selections in town, there’s a flavor for any ice cream fan. Just a short 10 minute walk from the heart of campus, Prince Pückler’s is a good spot if you need a quick dairy treat after a long day of classes. Prince Pückler’s serves espresso drinks as well as handmade ice cream, but what it’s known for is its signature Euphoria Ultra-Chocolate sundae. Banana slices, warmed Euphoria Chocolate Company dark chocolate sauce, almonds and whipped cream, smothered all over your choice ice cream. The folks at Prince Pückler’s are kind enough to lower the price of it’s ultra-chocolate sundae to only $3.75 every Friday.

Red Wagon Creamery — 55 W. Broadway

After selling ice cream straight out of a cart for two years, Red Wagon Creamery’s handcrafted ice cream continues to gain popularity at it’s downtown scoop shop. All the ice cream is handcrafted in its 200 square foot dairy plant — Oregon’s smallest — by chef Emily Phillips and her husband Lackey Stuart. Keeping it local, all of the ingredients in Red Wagon Creamery’s ice creams are either locally made or organic. Single scoops of their frozen dessert will only cost you $2.75 and $4.50 for a double. Even though Red Wagon Creamery is fairly new to Eugene in comparison to other ice cream spots around town, it didn’t take long for locals to fall in love with the all-natural artisan ice creams at the Lane County Farmer’s Market every Saturday.

“I’ve been enjoying Red Wagon’s ice cream ever since they showed up at the Saturday Market a few years ago,” Eugene resident Chris Wright said. “It’s nice to see them making an effort to source (ingredients) locally.”

Rafael Arroyo volunteered at the Outdoor Program as a freshman unaware that in three years he’d raise over $26,000 for a project that involved building a 6-kilowatt solar electric array atop the Outdoor Program’s Barn.

As a junior Arroyo received the part time job as the OP’s environmental sustainability coordinator. He said the position itself didn’t have any guidelines or specific projects for him to work on.

“To do this project I had to put it together from the ground up and develop something that I had no idea how to do,” Arroyo said.

It didn’t take long for Arroyo to begin adding things to his position’s blank to-do list. Arroyo researched possible ways the OP Barn could be more environmentally friendly. Arroyo found that when the OP Barn underwent major renovations in 2009, a solar power system was included in the original plans but was cut because of lack of funds.

Arroyo met with Lane Community College’s energy management program and they helped him do an energy audit to figure out how much energy the OP barn was using. Knowing the amount of energy need to produce, Arroyo was able to borrow a tool that analyzes sun patterns from the Solar Radiation Monitoring Laboratory at the University of Oregon.

“I think Rafeal is a real go getter,” said Mary Farrington. “Personable and driven and just a nice guy to work with.”

Farrington is a grant writer with the University of Oregon and helps students with constructing grant proposals for student fee funded programs. With a little help from Farrington, Arroyo wrote two grant applications last year and received $9,500 from the Student Sustainability Center and $17,000 from the Over-Realized Fund.

The project was installed in early August and has already lowered the cost of the Barn’s electricity bill.

“Since we’ve had the photovoltaic system installed for the past six weeks, we’ve off set about ten trees,” Outdoor Program staff member Dave Villalobos.

The main goal of the project was to reduce their environmental impact. With the new solar electric arrays the OP Barn is now creating it’s own power, rather than using energy created from the grid. The solar panels are generating approximately 5 to 5.88 kilowatts of power when the OP Barn uses approximately 3 kilowatts of power. Arroyo said it’s even creating an excess of energy most of the time, so it’s actually giving power back to the grid.

“We’re contributing rather than utilizing resources,” Arroyo said.

Arroyo said the program is holding out on making a bigger solar electric array system until they improve making other parts of the facility more efficient. The OP plans to get a new air compressor — which utilizes the most energy — before purchasing more solar panels which according to Arroyo, would increase the power generated to 12 to 15 kilowatts of power every hour.

“This project is just a small fraction of what we are going to see from Rafael in the future,” Villalobos said.

The OP is hosting a solar power project celebration open to the public at 5-8 p.m. on Thursday, September 19 at the OP Barn — 1225 18th Ave. The free event will have light food and live music to acknowledge everyone who made the project possible.

With free admission to students and professional art exhibits frequently on display, there’s not very many reasons to not stop by the University of Oregon’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art every once in while.

“There’s literally always something new here,” JSMA spokesperson Debbie Williamson Smith said.

The JSMA is one of six museums in the state of Oregon and is the only academic museum accredited by the American Association of Museums.

UO student Heather Jones is a frequent visitor, stopping by at least once a month to see any new exhibits.

“I’ve always loved art, so it’s great to have the JSMA on right on campus,” Jones said.

The JSMA will be starting the school year off by showcasing the exhibit “National Geographic Greatest Photographs of the American West” on September 28. The exhibit will be featuring photographs by Ansel Adams, William Albert Allard and Joel Sartore, among many others.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the JSMA is hosting two lectures from National Geographic photographers Sam Abell and Rich Clarkson. Photographs by both the photographers are included in the exhibit.

Abell has worked with the National Geographic Society since 1970 and has shot more than twenty assignments on various cultural and wilderness subjects. Abell will be speaking at 2 p.m. on the opening day of the exhibit. For Abell, this isn’t his first time speaking at the museum. In March 2010 Smith said Abell premiered the exhibition “Amazonia” with an another photographer.

Local track fans might be familiar with Clarkson’s work from his book “Track Town, USA,” that shows the history of the University of Oregon’s historic Hayward Field through photographs. Clarkson will talk at the JSMA on October 6 at 2 p.m.

Although the exhibits at the JSMA are typically from well known or professional artist, the museum, in a collaboration with the John E. Jaqua Academic Center and the UO Department of Arts and Administration, is currently showcasing works created by UO student athletes. Smith said the exhibition features 46 UO student athletes from various sports including football, track and field, soccer, cheerleading, golf and basketball.

The art is from a class that focused on incorporating art into their lives. According to the exhibit’s page, many of the athletes used their studio time to create paintings depicting Alex Rovello, the UO tennis player who drowned last May.

But if photographs or paintings aren’t your cup of tea, those are just two of the many exhibits that the JSMA will put on throughout the year.

“I’d really like students to know we’re here and we’re here for them and let them come in and explore what piece of art touches them,” Smith said.

The JSMA is located on the UO campus at 1430 Johnson Lane. Museum hours are 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesdays, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays through Sundays.

After graduating from the University of Oregon in 2011 with a business degree, Ryan Beltran already knew climbing the corporate chain wasn’t for him.

So, he moved to Hong Kong and started his own watch company.

“He always wanted to created his own path,” Ryan’s younger brother and Original Grain vice president Andrew Beltran said.

In Hong Kong, Beltran noticed the growing trend of wood products and more specifically wood watches. Beltran soon came up with the idea of producing a watch made of wood and stainless steel — what Original Grain calls the next generation of watches.

Beltran’s younger brother Andrew, was returning home on a ship from his seven month deployment with the Marine Corps, which coincidentally stopped in Hong Kong for four days. Beltran knew that this was something Andrew would want to be apart of and discussed his ideas with Andrew over the few days they spent together in Hong Kong.

“Working together is a blast honestly, and I would never choose another person to work with,” Andrew said.

During a visit to Oregon the Beltran brothers were reunited and together they began to get the company on it’s feet. Beltran’s longtime friend Jasem Dulany would soon become the last member of the team after helping with ideas and naming the company.

“I always looked up to Ryan as an older brother,” Dulany said, “and I always wanted to be looked up to as an older brother from Andrew as well.”

Beltran’s commitment to building the company never stops, always talking or thinking of new ideas for Original Grain.

“He’ll call me at like four or five in the morning and then he’ll beat me to getting up and be awake before I am,” Andrew said. “He’s just the most driven person I’ve ever met.”

Ryan Beltran came up with most of the concepts while his brother and Dulany would help design different components of the watches. When they first started putting their ideas on paper, they used crayons to sketch their ideas for the design of the watches.

“Literally with Crayons, we busted them out of the kindergarten boxes and started drawing one day,” Andrew said.

Once they finalized the look for their first three watches, they had samples made and launched the Original Grain on Kickstarter in February, 2013. Most of the funding came from it’s Kickstarter page. During their 30 day funding period, their page raised more than $390,000, making Original Grain the third most funded fashion item on Kickstarter at the time.

The three continue to work together to design more watches and recently released an Oregon Ducks watch made of green sandalwood and matte black steel.

“I don’t think I could have picked two better partners,” Beltran said. “Something about us three working together is just really nice.”

The University of Oregon athletic department teamed up with SeQuential Pacific Biodiesel to convert cooking oil used to make the Autzen stadium french fries into biodiesel.

The recycled cooking oil from the concessions stands operated by the UO athletics department at Autzen Stadium will be used to make fuel via a closed-loop production cycle.

Launched by three UO alumni in 2005, SeQuential Pacific Biodiesel was Oregon’s first commercial biodiesel production facility. Using an incubator on campus, the three students started the business together.

“Our business grew out of our garage in Eugene while we were all going to the UO,” SeQuential general manager and UO graduate Tyson Keever said.

The UO is now a part of a network of 7,000 Sequential feedstock providers, which includes local restaurants, businesses, hospitals and schools.

“Our business has grown quite a bit, we’re almost at 100 employees and a good fraction of them grew up in Oregon as well,” Keever said.

Before working with SeQuential, the UO donated cooking oil to the California-based firm, Baker Commodities Inc. Bakers Commodities collects cooking oil to make meat ingredients and doesn’t make biodiesel, unlike SeQuential.

SeQuential was already working with the EMU and UO Housing and Dinning Services, with UO Housing donating for more than five years. But repurposing used oil isn’t the only way the UO has been recycling on campus

“We compost in all of our locations, so everywhere that students eat with us, ” said UO housing spokeswoman Lauren Miller. “We’re going to be composting as much food as we can and is locally accepted.”

Through composting, recycling and recovering reusables, the UO campus diverted 1,429 tons of waste from landfills in the 2011/2012 school year.

As a alum, and a fan of the Oregon Ducks, Keever said working with the UO athletic department “feels like I’m coming home.”

More than 150 international students from all over the world gathered on the Erb Memorial Union’s East Lawn to attend the American English Institute’s first ever summer concert. The AEI is in the linguistics department at the University of Oregon. AEI and the UO work together to help international students succeed in their studies and learn English. With minimal assistance from their supervisors, 72 students enrolled in AEI’s summer volunteer program put on the event.

“This was all their idea,” AEI program coordinator Zach Benedict said.

Benedict put Brazilian international student Daniel Caldas in charge of managing his classmates for the event. Caldas said he organized events for his peers when he lived in Brazil.

“I like doing this. I like organizing things and getting people to work in a group,” Caldas said. “It’s just kind of my thing.”

Through asking questions and discussing plans with his classmates on the AEI Facebook group, Caldas and his 71 classmates were able to brainstorm together and get to know each other.

“The volunteer group is a great thing for international students that are coming here because we can organize events like this and forces us to interact with each other,” Caldas said. “Everyone’s here to make friends, especially in the international community.”

Caldas said AEI intergrates with organizations around Eugene. After working at the Food for Lane County kitchen earlier this term, the AEI students agreed to make the suggested entry fee of the concert two cans of food for Food for Lane County.

“We already had this event and it’s a good cause, so we asked for people to bring food because we just want to help,” Caldas said.

Saudi Arabian international student Abdulmohsin Abusaq and a few of his friends found out about the event through an announcement online. Like many of the international students that attended the concert, Abusaq said he saw the event as a chance to practice his English.

“We’ve been looking forward to this day because we get to work on English conversations with other international students.” Abusaq said.

The concert came at a great time Abusaq said, because some of his friends are leaving at the end of the summer term and it was a good way to say goodbye to them.

“I got to mingle with them and it’s fantastic really,” Abusaq said.

The AEI volunteers were able to get Off the Waffle to sponsor a “waffle decorating contest” while local band The Zendeavors played live music.

“For a lot of the students just being able to come together in a big group is fun,” Benedict said. “They’re just so hungry for interaction.”

The Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics will host William “Terry” Fisher as the visiting Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics this year. Every year the center selects an invitee to host its theme.

Fisher, the Wilmer Hale Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Harvard and a director of the Berkman Center for Internet Society will be the lead scholar for the upcoming Wayne Morse Center theme of “Media and Democracy,” and co-teach a class with UO professor Eric Priest in the fall.

“He’s one of the foremost experts in intellectual property law in the world,” Priest said.

Almost 10 years ago, Priest met Fisher when he enrolled in one of his classes at Harvard Law. Priest worked with Fisher as a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Fisher would later supervise Priest’s thesis when he was a grad student at Harvard Law and ended up working at a company that Fisher co-founded with another Harvard Law faculty member in 2006 called Noank.

“It’s a really rare opportunity for the University of Oregon to be able to learn from an expert of that caliber,” Priest said.

At the time, Noank was implementing a new licensing model for copyrighting works distributed by peer to peer technologies and was essentially a spin-off of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and society. After two years the company ended due to lack of funding as well as other financial reasons.

The class that Fisher and Priest are going to teach will focus around intellectual property laws. The two plan to implement their experiences with Noank.

“He taught me a lot so I think that my student teacher relationship has really impacted my teaching, not just in this class but of course my teaching in all my intellectual property courses and all my teaching in general,” Priest said.

Getting back into the swing of things at school can be difficult. To help, here are some great restaurants to relax that are only a block or two away from the Knight Law Center.

Prince Puckler’s Gourmet Ice Cream — 1605 E. 19th Ave.

If you’re looking for a little sugar to reward yourself for all your work fighting for truth and justice, Prince Puckler’s is your answer. Loved by locals for its tasty hand-made ice cream, Prince Puckler’s has been around since 1975 and is a great spot for a delicious treat. Prince Puckler’s also serves espresso and has eight different coffee-flavored ice creams to choose from, making this spot a great place to satisfy your caffeine fix before tests and exams.

“Eat a big bowl of ice cream, sit back and relax.” said manager Lance Shendel.

Agate Alley Bistro —1461 E. 19th Ave.

Thursday nights here are known as “Drink Wheel” days. Starting at 10 p.m., there’s a wheel — based on the Wheel of Fortune — that is spun every hour. But unlike Pat Sajak’s wheel, Agate Alley’s has the names of various alcoholic drinks printed on it. Whatever drink it lands on is $2.50 until the wheel is spun again.

Chris Kohen graduated from the UO last year and lived near by in the apartments down the alley. He would visit Agate Alley at least a few times a month, sometimes twice a week.

“I think it’s better then Rennie’s,” he said. “I know Rennie’s is fairly popular but if you want to get something decent to eat you don’t want to go to Rennie’s.”

Another thing Agate Alley Bistro is known around campus for is Taco Tuesdays. Seven dollars buys two tacos — chicken, beef or bean — with pickled veggies, sour cream, guacamole and salsa. The dishes are served with a Pacifico beer.

McMenamins East 19th Street Café — 1485 E. 19th Ave.

McMenamins is the ideal spot for graduate students to de-stress from a long week of classes. Outfitted with three pool tables, an indoor wood fire place, a couple of pinball machines, a dart board and even a jukebox, there are plenty of ways to get your mind off school.

“It’s air conditioned with nice booths inside and you can have your own privacy,” former UO student Jenna Stewart said.

Stewart graduated from the UO last spring and would visit McMenamins at least once a month. Stewart said the cheap happy hour was what brought her to McMenamins and the $2.50 Cajun tots are one of the reasons she kept coming back. During happy hour all the available meals are under an affordable $6.

“Happy hours are good times to come if you’re trying to just study and drink a beer,” UO graduate Brandon Yeh said.

The drive along Interstate 5 is lined with endless trees and farms. Seeing horses or sheep every so often is about the most excitement there is when driving between Eugene and Portland. To hopefully spice up the two hour drive — assuming you’re following the speed limit — here are three restaurants to stop by to make the trip a bit more interesting.

Novak’s Hungarian Restaurant

About an hour into the drive, you’ll enter the small town of Albany, Ore. Hidden behind an outdoor mall you will find a little taste of Hungary. For less than $12 you can try the best Hungarian food in the state of Oregon. And who could say no to mama’s specialty “Székely Töltött Káposzta” – a cabbage roll filled with lean ground pork. Although most of the local customers come straight from the nearby retirement home, the restaurant is ideal for curious college students looking for something other than the fast food chains all along the freeway.

Word of Mouth

Make reservations, because this Salem, Ore. hotspot is constantly flowing with people. Located in an old Victorian-style home, this breakfast place is well worth the average wait time of 30 minutes to get in. The restaurant is decorated with handmade art made with kitchen utensils and handmade tables. Hung on one of the walls is a map of the U.S. covered with push pins representing each customer’s home town. Word of Mouth is known for its Creme Brulée French Toast — a traditional French toast topped with caramelized sugar topping that cracks like brulée — and its generous serving sizes. Sharing a dish is recommended.

Dar Essalam

From the moment you walk in, you’re no longer in small town of Wilsonville, Ore., but transported to an Moroccan palace. From the floor to the ceiling the entire restaurant is decorated with authentic Moroccan antiques and art. Covering the entirety of one of the walls is a beautiful ceramic fountain that you see as you walk in. Although Dar Essalam is known for other Moroccan dishes, the Tagine lamb with spicy raisin sauce was just as unique as the atmosphere. Although it’s oddly located at a strip mall in Wilsonville, it’s delicious Moroccan dishes are great to take your mind off the road for a hour.

As students walk through the door into Gerlinger 242 on a Wednesday night, the chalkboard lit only by a strand of colorful plastic pepper-shaped christmas lights draped across the top reads “Salsa Libre.” Chairs with attached desks line the walls of the room. The chair-desk hybrids usually occupy the entire classroom floor, but for one night a week the center of the room turns into a dance floor for anyone willing to slide in.

Before the 7 p.m. scheduled salsa lesson began, two students take center stage on the makeshift dance floor while about 10 students there for salsa lessons watched them swing their feet back and forth almost perfectly in synch. The two students continue to dance, holding hands as they swiftly shift their weight from one foot to the other, following the other’s movement with a mirrored step.

University of Oregon students Ben Reid and Maya Benezer decided to create a student-run group to teach salsa dancing when they noticed a lack of students in the Eugene salsa scene.

“A lot of students have taken salsa over the years with Florabelle Moses in Salsa 1 and 2,” Benezer said. “But then no one knows where to go.”

Benezer says the only other place to in town to practice salsa dancing is the Veteran’s Club on Willamette Street, but it’s catered toward the older crowd and costs $10 to get in.

The group is not an official UO club, at least not yet. Reid and Benezer plan to make it so in the fall.

The two met in Salsa 1 a little over a year ago. Benezer has only been dancing for a year and got more into salsa dancing when she studied abroad in Israel last fall. Reid and Benezer reconnected in a salsa class this spring and have been dancing partners on and off since they’ve known each other.

“They’re great. Ben’s been doing it forever, for five years and you can see that and Maya’s really talented,” said UO student James Wilkinson. Wilkinson has attended five of the six lessons that Salsa Libre has hosted so far this summer.

Reid started dancing during his freshman year when the girl he had crush on dragged him to one of her lessons. Although nothing happened with the girl, Reid kept learning salsa dancing on his own and has been doing so for five years now.

Because Salsa Libre is not an official UO club, its members aren’t allowed to reserved a room over the summer. That’s why they contacted the ballroom club — its president has been reserving Gerlinger 242 for the summer lessons according to Salsa Libre marketing manager Sydney Fournier.

“Nathan (Zelick) offered to help us find us a room, which was really helpful,” Fournier said.

The free dance lessons start with an hour-long session with Reid and Benezer teaching basic salsa dance moves. After the lesson, the lights go off and the music is turned up — it becomes an open dance floor for another two hours.

“You learn something new every time and then afterwards you get to try it out,” Wilkinson said.