1940s

Marianne Gerke Ott, ’47, Gresham, OR, Chi Omega • Roxie Wright Templin, ’48, Estacada, OR • George E. Wallace, ’48, Portland, OR, Alpha Tau Omega • Doris Neabeack Cowgill, ’49, Hillsboro, OR • Gilbert L. Hawes, ’49, Portland, OR • Lorraine Boardman Nelson, ’49, Tucson, AZ, Gamma Phi Beta • William W. Poorman, ’49, Saint Petersburg, FL • Jean M. Weberg, ’49, Portland, OR

1950s

Betty Lively Fraser, ’50, Nipomo, CA, Sigma Kappa • Bruce D. Fraser, ’50, Nipomo, CA, Delta Upsilon • Charles Raymond Johnson, ’50, Sixes, OR • James D. McCormack, ’50, Bothell, WA, Delta Chi • Eldon L. Raber, ’50, El Macero, CA • Wesley Oliver Reed, ’50, Port Hadlock, WA • Daryl Robertson, ’50, Baker City, OR • Paul William Romppanen, ’50, Mercer Island, WA, Sigma Chi • Alfred B. Studach, ’50, Corvallis, OR • Beverly Ann Willis, ’50, Branford, CT, Alpha Phi • Dana H. Collins, ’51, Medford, OR, Alpha Gamma Rho • Nancy Conwell, ’51, Seattle, WA • Albert Maring Desselle, ’51, Fredericksburg, VA, Sigma Pi • Warren Steele, ’51, ’56, Berkeley, CA • William H. Ashley, ’52, Oxford, FL • Ralph Lowell Cheek, ’52, Los Altos, CA, Sigma Phi Epsilon • John L. Gant, ’52, Eugene, OR • Eva Marie Giering, ’52, Salem, OR, Sigma Kappa • Lawrence Dean Underhill, ’52, Beaverton, OR • Leonard J. Weber, ’52, Corvallis, OR, Sigma Phi Epsilon • Jeanette Paulsen Wilson, ’52, Bellevue, WA, Kappa Kappa Gamma • Marilyn Morelock Bucy, ’53, Corvallis, OR • Fred W. Burri, ’53, Long Beach, CA, Beta Theta Pi • Edward Stephen Dunbar Sr., ’53, Ewa Beach, HI • Bill E. Kuluris, ’54, Orange, CA • Donavon R. Steward, ’54, Salem, OR, Delta Tau Delta • William A. Brandes, ’55, Lone Tree, CO, Sigma Chi • Robert D. Copper, ’55, The Dalles, OR, Delta Upsilon • William John Crawford, ’55, Omaha, NE • Marjorie M. Davey, ’55, Greenwich, CT, Gamma Phi Beta • Richard V. Green, ’55, Salem, OR, Alpha Sigma Phi • Norbert Leupold Jr., ’55, Beaverton, OR, Sigma Alpha Epsilon • John Edward Maxwell ’55, Phoenix, AZ • Lenore Luxton Phillippe Maxwell ’55, Yuma, AZ • Lester Ray Sonneson, ’55, Washougal, WA • Lela Kelly Barkley, ’56, Manhattan, KS, Delta Gamma, Alpha Omicron Pi • Brent Lewis Booth, ’56, Roseville, CA • Mary Ford, ’56, Jetmore, KS, Kappa Alpha Theta • Robert Julio Gallo, ’56, Modesto, CA, Sigma Chi • Stanley G. Henkle, ’56, Pendleton, OR • Melvin Murray, ’56, Austin, TX, Sigma Chi • Alice A. Ordeman, ’56, Albany, OR, Kappa Kappa Gamma • Victor Lowell Peterson, ’56, Los Altos, CA, Acacia • Loris Jean Rolph, ’56, Clackamas, OR • Glenn Alan Waltman, ’56, Welches, OR, Tau Kappa Epsilon • Martha Sue Beitel, ’57, Corvallis, OR, Kappa Alpha Theta • Karl Bialkowsky, ’57 ’58, Beaverton, OR • Stuart L. Boos, ’57, West Linn, OR • D. Don Christensen, ’57, Rancho Murieta, CA, Delta Tau Delta • Walter T. Davey Jr., ’57, Newport Coast, CA • Carole Ann Gaily, ’57, Nanaimo, BC, Kappa Alpha Theta • Marilyn Ransom Gustafson, ’57, Lake Oswego, OR, Kappa Kappa Gamma • Roger W. Haag, ’57, Brookings, OR • Edith Meshew, ’57, Eugene, OR • James Romain Mori, ’57 ’58, Sonora, CA, Theta Chi • Harry R. Nelson, ’57, Bend, OR, Sigma Phi Epsilon • Mary Lee Nielsen, ’57, Salem, OR, Kappa Alpha Theta • Lowell N. Pearce, ’57 ’58 ’59, Bend, OR, Phi Delta Theta • Donald P. Perrin, ’57, San Diego, CA, Pi Kappa Phi • Mark B. Siddall, ’57 ’65, Albany, OR • Gail House Smith, ’57, Escondido, CA, Sigma Kappa • Bruce M. Springer, ’57, Port Angeles, WA • David R. Stegner, ’57 ’58, Portland, OR, Kappa Sigma • John Andrew Thompson, ’57, Indio, CA, Tau Kappa Epsilon • Walter Donald Weidlein, ’57, Cedar Park, TX, Alpha Tau Omega • Kenneth R. Asburry, ’58, Portland, OR, Theta Xi • Richard M. Banton, ’58, Salem, OR, Phi Gamma Delta • George C. Barton, ’58, East Glacier Park, MT, Acacia • Shirley Jean Brooks, ’58, Sitka, AK • Merle F. Carlson, ’58, Redmond, OR, Kappa Delta Rho • Max B. Carpenter, ’58, Issaquah, WA, Phi Delta Theta • Ralph D. Church, ’58, Gardnerville, NV • Shirley Henske Cockram, ’58, Newberg, OR • Gerald L. Guinan, ’58, Mobile, AL • Gary L. Haynes, ’58, Oregon City, OR, Phi Delta Theta • Leon B. Hittner, ’58, Pebble Beach, CA, Sigma Nu • Howard E. Jones, ’58, Tucson, AZ, Theta Xi • Frederick D. Kaser, ’58, Molalla, OR • Ronald Anthony Kilburg, ’58, San Diego, CA, Acacia • Kenneth McAndrews, ’58, Klamath Falls, OR • Jerry L. Plank, ’58, Beaverton, OR, Theta Chi • Ben Morgan Pugh, ’58, Rocklin, CA • Carol Emaline Sandaal, ’58, Salem, OR • Alan Lee Williams, ’58, Newbury Park, CA • James Lawrence Beam, ’59, Delta Chi • Clarence M. Beamer, ’59, Winfield, BC, Beta Theta Pi • Thomas William Blackstone, ’59, Santa Rosa, CA, Sigma Phi Epsilon • John Allen Dustin Jr., ’59 ’61 ’64, King City, OR, Sigma Alpha Epsilon • Alan L. Fahrenbruch, ’59 ’69, Redwood City, CA • Ardath Lucile Flomer, ’59, Wilsonville, OR, Kappa Kappa Gamma • Alf T. Hjort, ’59, Beaverton, OR • Laurette Beauregard Kirkendall, ’59, Los Gatos, CA, Pi Beta Phi • Charles M. Long, ’59, Mill City, OR, Alpha Gamma Rho • Joseph Peter Mazzoni, ’59, Rancho Murieta, CA, Phi Delta Theta • David E. Passon, ’59, Tualatin, OR • Dale F. Robbins, ’59, McMinnville, OR • Conrad E. Schray, ’59, Alexandria, VA, Sigma Alpha Epsilon

Bob Gallo, ’56

Bob Gallo, ’56, died on June 22 in Modesto, California, at the age of 89. After graduating from Oregon State and serving in the Navy, he helped shape the landscape of modern winemaking for more than 50 years as one of the leaders of the world’s largest family-owned winery. With a strong interest in the environment, he was at the forefront of E. & J. Gallo Winery’s commitment to sustainability, setting aside one acre of wildlife habitat for every acre planted with grapevines in North Coast vineyards. As chairman of the industry advocacy group Wine Institute, he also helped draft and implement the California Association of Winegrape Growers’ Code of Sustainable Winegrowing Practices. Gallo was predeceased by his wife of 62 years, Marie, and his son Mark. He is survived by children John, Matthew, Thomas, Amy, Julie Gallo Vander Wall, Gina Gallo-Boisset and Mary E. Gallo-Lucisano; 21 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Photo courtesy of Gallo

1960s

Heino Annus, ’60, Corbett, OR • Royce A. Chadwick ’60, Prineville, OR • Harvey Kenneth Elder, ’60, Caldwell, ID • Frederick Norman Fritsch, ’60 ’61, Livermore, CA, Acacia • Jack E. Goodwin, ’60, Valley Springs, CA, Sigma Nu • Percy Walter Hadley, ’60, Tualatin, OR • Frederick Thomas Krogh, ’60 ’64, Marina del Rey, CA • Jack E. Martin, ’60, Hicksville, NY • Elie C. Sifri, ’60, Portland, OR, Alpha Sigma Phi • Sylvia J. Smith, ’60 ’82, Hermiston, OR • Levi J. Smith, ’60, Sherwood, OR, Sigma Nu • Margaret Coffman, ’61, Milwaukie, OR • Glenn W. Ireland, ’61 ’62, Sunnyvale, CA • Mary Alma Leggett, ’61, San Francisco, CA, Sigma Kappa • David Lee McClanahan, ’61, Olympia, WA • Lucille H. Moran, ’61  • Jack Muzatko, ’61, Pinole, CA • Shirley Arden Patterson, ’61, Spokane, WA • David William Ridderbush, ’61, Pasadena, CA • Donald Kenneth Stott, ’61, Eagle, ID • Richard Albert Van Deusen, ’61, Bend, OR, Kappa Sigma • James T. Yamaguchi, ’61, Honolulu, HI • James D. Galligan, ’62, Washougal, WA • Gail G. Gardner, ’62, Cascade Locks, OR • Fred K. Koken, ’62, Juneau, AK • Ronald Roy Mason, ’62, Lacey, WA • William Raymond Monk, ’62, Medford, OR • Michael Guy O’Mara, ’62, Oconomowoc, WI, Delta Tau Delta • Melvin Ray Adams, ’63, Richland, WA • Mary Carolyn Clodfelter, ’63, Albany, OR, Alpha Xi Delta • Helen L. Cox, ’63, Redmond, OR • Karen G. Gundersen, ’63, Lebanon, OR • Judith Adair Gutoski, ’63, Eugene, OR • James R. Larson, ’63, Seattle, WA • Roy Yue Wing Lee, ’63, Pasadena, CA • Ronald Wayne Robertson, ’63, The Colony, TX • Judith Wallin, ’63, Hillsboro, OR • Laurence Martin Wilson, ’63, Jefferson, OR • Mary Elizabeth Adams, ’64, West Linn, OR, Pi Beta Phi • Burton Jay Burreson, ’64, Corvallis, OR, Delta Tau Delta • Angela Marie Krupicka, ’64, Ridgefield, WA • Frank Oliver Wyse, ’64, Decatur, GA • George Earl Barr, ’65, Albuquerque, NM • Linda Basgen, ’65, The Colony, TX, Pi Beta Phi • Ann Leslie Butcher, ’65 ’66, Dana Point, CA, Pi Beta Phi • Joseph E. Grant, ’65 ’68, Walla Walla, WA • Stephen D. Lambert, ’65, Bufford, GA, Phi Delta Theta • Philip A. Livesley, ’65, Portland, OR, Alpha Sigma Phi • Michael Alan McCallister, ’65, Everett, WA, Phi Kappa Psi • Thomas Lowell Munkres, ’65, Eugene, OR • Nathan McKay Smith, ’65, Provo, UT • Martha Chave Yopp, ’65, Lady Lake, FL, Delta Delta Delta • William G. Berner, ’66, Boise, ID • Mark Elliott Harbert, ’66, Salem, OR, Alpha Tau Omega • Donald Orald Moseid, ’66 ’67, Fircrest, WA • Gary M. Thomas, ’66, Corvallis, OR • Eugene Laird Tinker, ’66, Eugene, OR, Delta Upsilon • Pete J. Vennery, ’66, Colusa, CA • Booker M. Washington, ’66, Los Angeles, CA • Gerald LeRoy Waterbury, ’66 ’67, Yuma, AZ • William Daniel Watson, ’66, Puyallup, WA • Lynn Vassallo Zodtner ’66, Fremont, CA, Delta Delta Delta • Ronald Glenn Brenchley, ’67 ’68 ’69, Ashton, ID • Robert E. Ekstrand, ’67, San Jose, CA • Eugene Elzy, ’67, Greensboro, GA • Carl J. Fischer, ’67, Annandale, VA, Alpha Kappa Lambda • Dewey Ralph Hamilton, ’67 ’68, Portland, OR • Lois Ann Holmes, ’67, Salem, OR, Zeta Tau Alpha • J. Diane Hussey, ’67, Portland, OR, Kappa Alpha Theta • Patrick George McRae, ’67, Tigard, OR • Kenneth Charles Olson, ’67 ’68, Acampo, CA • Robert J. Whitacre, ’67, Seattle, WA • Kay Bekooy Brennan, ’68, Corvallis, OR, Pi Beta Phi • Mark Wayne Gehring, ’68, Salem, OR • Douglas A. Gregory, ’68, Canby, OR • Gregory LeRoy Hartman, ’68 ’76, Redmond, OR, Phi Sigma Kappa • Patricia Fae Ho, ’68, Beverly, MA • Charles William Rogers, ’68 ’72, Weatherford, OK • Steve Michael Sakauye, ’68, Goleta, CA, Acacia • Barbara Jean Vaughn, ’68, Portland, OR, Alpha Gamma Delta • Gary P. Weber, ’68, Salem, OR • Gary Henry Weiss, ’68, San Jose, CA • John Jerome Dropp, ’69, Chambersburg, PA • Lawrence Blair Hansen, ’69, Portland, OR • Donnita Konen Hatlestad, ’69, Sequim, WA • Donald E. Scripter, ’69, Portland, OR • Barbara Joanne St. John, ’69, Bremerton, WA • Henry Peter Tervooren, ’69, Portland, OR • Rodger W. York, ’69, Battle Ground, WA

Correction: Larry John Springer, ’66, was listed in the print edition’s In Memoriam list in error.

Mark Kralj, ’77

Mark Kralj, ’77, died on Oct. 1 in Gresham, Oregon, at the age of 69. Kralj started
out studying forestry at Oregon State, but after taking an accounting class, he realized he’d found his calling. The educational foundation he received in the College of Business set the course for his successful 42-year career in finance and investment, largely at Ferguson Wellman Capital Management in Portland. Kralj was an exceptionally active volunteer leader. At his alma mater alone, he served on the board for OSU-Cascades and the College of Business, as well as chaired the OSU Foundation Board of Trustees from 2006 to 2007 as the organization geared up for the university’s first comprehensive fundraising campaign. He is survived by his wife, Kathy; three children, Nick, Joel and Emily, ’10; five grandchildren; and six siblings — including Teresa Kralj, ’79, and Barbara Kralj, ’74.

Photo by Jim Carroll Photography

1970s

Prabir K. Chakraborty, ’70 ’72, Palo Alto, CA • Deeann Bachmann Chartier, ’70, Vancouver, WA • Milton H. Donelson, ’70, Corvallis, OR • Wayne Evor Esaias, ’70 ’73, Highland, MD • Joanne Ruth Nehler, ’70, Clackamas, OR • Ray Phillip Rossman, ’70, Mukilteo, WA • David L. West, ’70, Greenfield, CA • Leland Albert Chase, ’71, Bozeman, MT • Renee Cummings, ’71, Hood River, OR • Bruce Evison Dent, ’71 ’77, Magalia, CA • Donald Jack Knepp, ’71, Salem, OR • James Ernest Larson, ’71, Perkasie, PA • Richard A. Nichols, ’71, Seattle, WA • Leonard G. Swanson, ’71, Hillsboro, OR • Theodore Edward Dowell, ’72, Salem, OR • Daniel Tamio Hasuike, ’72, Tigard, OR • Leonard W. Hauke, ’72, Portland, OR • Philip M. Nord, ’72, King of Prussia, PA • David Warren Parker, ’72, Littleton, CO • Janet E. Phillips, ’72, Baker City, OR • Donna Sharon Silver, ’72 ’76, Albany, OR • Linda Kay Stastny, ’72, Malin, OR, Delta Gamma • Richard Paul Goldner, ’73, Beaverton, OR, Theta Chi • James Morgan Meehan, ’73, Greenville, NC • Charles Allen Peirson Jr., ’73, Omak, WA • David Anthony Rogers, ’73, Santa Rosa, CA • Ramon Acosta Chacon, ’74, Albany, OR • Sherrie L. Horning, ’74, Corvallis, OR • Deborah Frantz Kingsley, ’74, Eugene, OR • Gloria Jean Smith, ’74 ’75, Gresham, OR • Susanne Ritchie Wicks, ’74, Creswell, OR • William Lowell Fellinger, ’75, Burlington, VT • Pamela J. Fitzgerald, ’75, Milton Freewater, OR • Eric Thomas Richardson, ’75 ’79, Twin Falls, ID • Margaret Ann Smull, ’75, Richland, WA • David Edison Malott, ’76, North Liberty, IA • David B. Monson, ’76, Newberg, OR • Richard I. Patt Sr., ’76, Mount Vernon, OR • Paul Anthony Payne, ’76, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA • Jean Elizabeth Skinner, ’76 ’79, Lutsen, MN • Patrick Daniel Wilson, ’76, Crescent City, CA • Kathleen A. Bogue, ’77, Garrison, NY • Joan Cline, ’77, Portland, OR, Alpha Chi Omega • Mark Joseph Kralj, ’77, Gresham, OR • J. Christopher Marlia, ’77 ’81, Monrovia, CA • Wesley D. Morris, ’77, Wilsonville, OR • Marilyn Wong, ’77, The Dalles, OR • Eugene Thurrell Houston Jr., ’78, Amargosa Valley, NV • Kathryn Neely, ’78 ’79, Portland, OR • Judith Lenora Rice, ’78, Nottingham, PA • Yuriy Myron Bihun, ’79, Jericho, VT • Carolyn Biang Yung Dunne, ’79 ’83, Pacifica, CA • Kenneth B. Simons, ’79, Sammamish, WA • Emily Malti Wadsworth, ’79, West Lafayette, IN

Jacqueline L. Giustina, Hon. ’10

Jackie Giustina died on Aug. 1 in Eugene, 17 days shy of her 103rd birthday. Although she was a proud University of Oregon alumna, when she was in Corvallis, she was all Beaver — so much so that she received the Joan Austin Honorary Alumni Award in 2010. She was married for 62 years to wood products industry leader N. B. “Nat” Giustina, ’41, who served 25 years on the OSU Foundation board and was the driving force behind the establishment of Trysting Tree Golf Course. After his death, she and her children created two endowed professorships at OSU, in forest management and turf management. Her children and grandchildren have continued the family’s extraordinary legacy of volunteerism and philanthropy in support of the university. Giustina was predeceased by her husband, as well as her son, Larry Giustina, ’71. She is survived by daughters Natalie Newlove and Irene Giustina, ’74; five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Photo by Mark Davidson

1980s

Michael Arthur Cairns, ’80, Independence, OR • Roma Lee Walther, ’80 ’81, Salem, OR • Rollaynne Marie Bentley, ’81, Portland, OR • Linda Susan Lanoue, ’81, Clayton, NC • Bruce Alan Erickson, ’82, Pesotum, IL • Thomas Edward Howard, ’82, Danville, CA, Beta Theta Pi • Jeffry Anastasi Poulos, ’82, Santa Rosa, CA • Gretchen B. Bencene, ’83, Corvallis, OR • Robert M. Alexander, ’84, Yakima, WA • Eloise Elizabeth Lissit, ’85, Portland, OR • Shawn Crowley Sendlinger, ’85, Durham, NC • Meda Younger, ’85 ’90, Corvallis, OR, Kappa Alpha Theta • James P. Basista, ’86, Girard, OH • Neil Callely Marshall, ’86, Wilsonville, OR, Sigma Alpha Epsilon • Michael Woodin Kamerer, ’87, Beaverton, OR, Sigma Nu • Vicki Fannie Lakso, ’89, Renton, WA, Alpha Omicron Pi • Adam Edward Schrage, ’89  • Joan Alta Wessell, ’89 ’91, Salem, OR

1990s

Wendi Lee Holder, ’90, Portland, OR • Timothy John Kersich, ’90, Salem, OR, Delta Upsilon • Kelvin Lee Lemons, ’90 ’91, Medford, OR • Cameron Mitchell McGinnis, ’90, Cove, OR • Elliot Jacob Zais, ’90, Portland, OR • Daniel J. Gardner, ’91, San Antonio, TX • Roger Louis Traylor, ’91, Albany, OR • Randy Lawrence Everett, ’92, Portland, OR, Sigma Phi Epsilon • Lynn Rufus Crews, ’93, Fargo, ND • Matthew Parker Laird, ’93, Eugene, OR • Rebecca Minette LaMarche, ’93 ’96, Springfield, OR • Todd L. Asburry, ’94, Scottsdale, AZ, Acacia • Edmond F. Doherty, ’96, Prosser, WA • Colleen M. Kinney, ’96, Saint Paul, MN • Rachel Anne Olsen, ’97, Seattle, WA • Jason Ernest Tordale, ’97, Spokane Valley, WA • Heather Angela Leonard, ’98, Corvallis, OR

Kinsey Bass Green

Kinsey Bass Green, dean of the College of Home Economics, now the College of Health, from 1984 to 2000, died at the age of 86. Green was a recognized expert on public policy, demographic trends and economic factors affecting the home economics professional and not-for-profit organizations. Active in the profession, she served as executive director of the American Home Economics Association, director of the American Society of Association Executives and president of the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences. Dedicated throughout her life to her sister Harriett Ann, who lived with disabilities, she created two group homes for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and was a strong advocate for affordable housing, not only serving on the Linn Benton Housing Authority board, but also donating a parcel of land to Habitat for Humanity. She was predeceased by her longtime companion, Gloria Crandall, and is survived by Tina Eveleth, two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Photo courtesy of OSU Special Collections and Archives

2000s

Kristofer Neil Crannell, ’03, Ketchum, ID • Crystal Lynn Beer, ’06, Brodhead, WI • John E. Henricks, ’06, Albany, OR • Kathleen McGuire, ’11, Shaker Heights, OH • Linda Mok, ’12 ’15, Portland, OR • Stanley David Baker, ’13, Corvallis, OR • Thomas William Keough, ’15, Vancouver, WA • Haley Nicole Rife, ’16, Salem, OR • Taylor James Locke, ’17 ’20, Junction City, OR

Faculty, Staff and Friends

George Harvey Andrews, Tualatin, OR • Lorraine Dion Ashley, Oxford, FL • Dorothea C. Bates, Tolovana Park, OR • William J. Birmingham, Portland, ME • Michael P. Bishop, Keizer, OR • Susan L. Bowdish, Goldendale, WA • Harriet P. Brood, Cave Junction, OR • Davey L. Brunkal, Salem, OR • Michael Campana, Corvallis, OR • John S. Caughell, Ridgefield, WA • Joy A. Chesley, Bend, OR • Donald Churchill, Vancouver, WA • Peter Courtney, Salem, OR • Wade A. Cox, Albany, OR • Earl G. Craig, Eugene, OR • Barbara L. Crocker, Roseburg, OR • Leo P. Downey, Corvallis, OR • Barbara Drexler, Pittsburgh, PA • Helen Dunbar, Helena, MT • Rick Walter Durbin, Lafayette, CA • Scott Fernandez, Portland, OR • Margaret M. Field, Clatskanie, OR • Jerry Fisher, Surprise, AZ • Eileen Friesz, Green Valley, AZ • John Gow, Dunedin, FL • Kinsey B. Green, Corvallis, OR • Glenn Guyer, Tualatin, OR • Richard A. Hall, Seattle, WA • Marshall Hammersley, Arlington Heights, IL • Marion Hango, Portland, OR • Anna J. Hayworth Harper, Corvallis, OR • Clark House, Albany, OR • Frances L. Jacob, Albany, OR • Gayna Joy, Griffin, GA • Joyce Klein, Keizer, OR • Laura Knudson, Philomath, OR • Lisa Carr Kreitzer, Kailua, HI • Ennetta Luchau, Honolulu, HI • B. J. McFarland, Keizer, OR • Martin McMenamin, Corvallis, OR • Anna Jean Means, Happy Valley, OR • Jean K. Miller, Lander, WY • Michael T. Mitchell, Reseda, CA • Michael Cary Mix, Corvallis, OR • Cecil C. Montgomery, West Linn, OR • Dan A. Montgomery, Marquette, MI • Thomas E. Nelson, Corvallis, OR • Robert W. Newburgh, Tallahassee, FL • Paul Edward Oliver, Portland, OR • Kathie J. Oriet, Gaston, OR • Louis R. Osternig, San Leandro, CA • Matt Pappin, Brownsville, OR • Malina Peterson, Corvallis, OR • Richard W. Potter, Corvallis, OR • Cecil L. Prall, Keizer, OR • Paul H. Reed, Chehalis, WA • James Alpha Reese Jr., Milton Freewater, OR • Cheryl D. Reynolds, Corvallis, OR • Robert L. Rice Jr., Corvallis, OR • Gwenita Lou Robinson, Murrieta, CA • Margaret B. Robnett, Portland, OR • Gwendolyn M. Rogers, Beaverton, OR • Marie B. Rydell, Portland, OR • Carol A. Seagraves, Damascus, OR • Howard Price Shafer, Eugene, OR • Ronald E. Shanks, Lebanon, OR • J. Wolfgang Smith, Camarillo, CA • Beverly Trappe, Corvallis, OR • Blake Wehrlie, Coos Bay, OR • William Cory Whisler, Seattle, WA • Patricia Wixon, Ashland, OR • Jerry Zahl, College Place, WA

To share losses with the Oregon State community, please send a name, class year and link to the person’s obituary using our submission form.

1940s

Monte Jane McCalla ’43, Walla Walla, WA • Robert Horn Stewart ’43, Wilsonville, Alpha Tau Omega • Thomas Edward Talbot ’43, Hillsboro, Phi Gamma Delta • William T. Wisbeck ’43, Estacada, Chi Phi • Ruth Alcorn Dennis ’46, Portland, Kappa Kappa Gamma • Lorraine Martin ’47, Corvallis • Donald E. Petersen ’47, Bloomfield Hills, MI • Jo Anne Petersen ’47, Bloomfield Hills, MI, Sigma Kappa • Ruth Warris Thompson ’48, Bloomington, IL • Norma Jean Fisher ’49, Caldwell, ID • Jean Agnes Kimsey ’49, Portland, Alpha Omicron Pi

1950s

Marianne Michelle McDonnal ’50, Seattle, WA, Kappa Kappa Gamma • Jo Ann Shoemake ’50, Bellevue, WA, Sigma Kappa • William Eldon Butler ’51, Eugene • Bill Ding Kong ’51, Rancho Cordova, CA • Henry Robert Krebs ’51, Ione, Delta Chi • Mary Josephine Levenspiel ’51 ’71 ’75, Corvallis, Sigma Kappa • Jane McGee ’51 ’62, Gold Canyon, AZ, Alpha Gamma Delta • Ralph C. Shivers ’51, Lead, SD • Robert I. Young ’51, West Chester, PA, Sigma Phi Epsilon • Pauline Deggendorfer Beauchamp ’52, Laguna Hills, CA, Pi Beta Phi • William E. Fasnacht ’52, Campton, NH, Kappa Delta Rho • Myron Daniel McCall ’52, Portland, Sigma Alpha Epsilon • Richard Merrill Oveson ’52, Provo, UT, Beta Theta Pi • Robert L. Wagner ’52, Cornelius • Harry F. Weinert ’52, Hillsboro • Donald James Zarosinski ’52 ’55, Portland, Sigma Chi • Gerald G. Chadburn ’53, Springfield, Beta Theta Pi • John Alan Hentze ’53, Junction City, Theta Xi • Lester L. Hill ’53, Springfield • William K. Minea ’53, Santa Rosa Valley, CA, Theta Xi • Pauleta Robertson ’53, Portland • Gerald J. Anderson ’54, Zion, IL • Patty Craig Dumas ’54, Medford, Kappa Alpha Theta • Shirley Murrell Francisco ’54, Bellevue, WA, Tri Delta • George L. Noakes ’54, Moorestown, NJ • Gerrald Emanuel Church ’55 ’56, Bend, Sigma Nu • Duane Loren Day ’55, Kappa Delta Rho • John Frederick Hodecker ’55, Redmond, Kappa Sigma • James Patrick McClure ’55, Wenatchee, WA • Norman Ruben Ottoman ’55, Sherwood, Phi Sigma Kappa • James A. Roberts ’55, Wilsonville, Alpha Tau Omega • Charles E. Trapp Jr. ’55, Fair Oaks, CA, Alpha Tau Omega • Susan Cooley Burgess ’56, Redmond, Kappa Kappa Gamma • Lorris Ivan Child ’56, Woodburn • Patricia Keller Jacobs ’56, Eugene, Kappa Alpha Theta • Robert M. O’Brien ’56, Renton, WA • Joan Claire Ricketts Toole ’56, Lady Lake, FL, Pi Beta Phi • Helen Louise Gienger ’57, Bay City, Sigma Kappa • Robert J. Hill ’57, Cheshire, Phi Kappa Theta • Helen Pieser ’57, Portland, Alpha Chi Omega • Ronald A. Anders ’58, Tucson, AZ, Phi Kappa Psi • Iral Dean Barrett ’58, Salem • James M. Busch ’58, Ukiah, CA, Alpha Tau Omega • Gary Leon Carnahan ’58 ’61 ’89, Pooler, GA • Wallace N. Cory, ’58, Yellow Pine, Idaho • Dorothy Gathercoal Cruickshank ’58, Bend, Delta Gamma • Charles Albert Fahsholtz ’58, Mercer Island, WA, Alpha Tau Omega • Norman Charles Leeling, ’58 ’61, Florence • John Dennis Roach ’58, Klamath Falls • Winford V. Simmons ’58, Boise, ID • James E. Anderson ’59 ’61, Corvallis, Phi Sigma Kappa • Glenn H. Davenport ’59, Corvallis • Robert M. Farring Jr. ’59 ’62, Fargo, ND • William Crews Long ’59, West Linn, Phi Gamma Delta • Roland D. Schirman ’59, Dayton, WA

Joan Ricketts Toole, ’56

Joan (Ricketts) Toole, ’56, died Feb. 15 in Alexandria, Virginia, at the age of 89. A home economics graduate, she championed the microwave throughout her career — not as a mere kitchen convenience for warming leftovers, but as an appliance as useful as an oven. “She was a trailblazer in this field,” says her niece, Susan Frost, ’69, who still uses her aunt’s recipe for chicken divan. “No one understood how to use a microwave — they were a little afraid of it.” In addition to writing the bestselling cookbooks Cooking with Microwave Magic, Cooking En Concert with Microwave, and Food for the Heart and Soul, which Writers’ Digest awarded a prize for Best Cookbook of the Year in 1998, Toole also developed a line of porcelain microwave cookware. She remained a staunch advocate for the appliance’s powers, even as The New York Times declared, in 1995, that it “failed to live up to its early promise.” “It just takes a little understanding,” she said then. She was predeceased by her husband, Jerry Toole, and is survived by her sons, Andrew, Ross and Rick, as well as by Frost.

Photo by Susan Frost

1960s

Jack J. Carroll ’60, Salem • Lewis H. Derthick ’60, Beaverton • David G. Dykstra ’60, Washougal, WA, Alpha Tau Omega • Harold Dexter Garey ’60, Burien, WA • Richard D. Hahn ’60, Sequim, WA • Frederick G. Kern ’60, Seattle, WA, Delta Tau Delta • Joseph Stanley Michalek ’60 ’62, Santa Rosa, CA • Marilyn Marie Richards ’60, Portland, Pi Beta Phi • Louisa Gibson Velguth ’60, Lynnwood, WA, Pi Beta Phi • David Mize Crow ’61, Hillsboro, Theta Xi • John D. Dortch ’61, Chambersburg, PA, Delta Tau Delta • Peter Morse Irish ’61, Green Valley, AZ • James Ernest Monroe ’61 ’67, Mount Vernon, WA • Marilyn A. Murphy ’61, Sacramento, CA, Gamma Phi Beta • Louis F. Pratt ’61, Nampa, ID • Aaron N. Thomas ’61 ’67, Corvallis, Lambda Chi Alpha • Margaret L. Wood ’61, Portland, Kappa Alpha Theta • Maurice R. Banning ’62, Kailua Kona, HI, Sigma Phi Epsilon • Charles William Boyd ’62, Bend, Sigma Alpha Epsilon • Frederick Warren Brown ’62, Astoria • Judith Ann Brunkal ’62, Salem, Kappa Kappa Gamma • Richard W. Drosman ’62, Scappoose • James D. Gross ’62, Albany • David D. Hartley ’62, Scotts Mills, Acacia • Don Stanley Hayner ’62, Portland • David Marcel Hite ’62, Bend, Kappa Delta Rho • Ronald Hisaji Koga ’62, Export, PA • Abner Anton Korsness ’62, Happy Valley • Edith Gaynelle Orner ’62, Albany • Richard E. Pritchett ’62, New Braunfels, TX • George B. Reed ’62, Leesburg, VA, Alpha Sigma Phi • Jonathan Nicholas Roth ’62, Goshen, IN • Elisabeth Blanchard Shawl ’62, Wallingford, PA • Robert Arnold Aaserude ’63 ’65, Portland • Claude Oliver Coffman ’63 ’64, North Bend • David A. Geisler Sr. ’63, Murdo, SD • Kenneth G. Haack ’63 ’67, Vancouver, WA • Margaret Marie Heater ’63, Sublimity • Linda Hickman ’63 ’65, Bend • G. Claudine Kratzberg ’63, Vancouver, WA • Kent E. Lambert ’63, Hood River, Alpha Tau Omega • Jane Yantti Marquis ’63, Portland, Alpha Gamma Delta • Roger G. Nibler ’63 ’68, Portland, Phi Gamma Delta • James W. Scott ’63, Portland • C. Samuel Eicher ’64, Albany • Tommy R. Hensley ’64, Walnut Creek, CA • Gary L. Hickman ’64, Fort Pierce, FL • William Rich Hubbard Jr. ’64, Auburn Hills, MI • Jimmie E. Lauman ’64, Summerville • James H. McMurtry ’64, Philomath • Normand D. Raymond ’64, Lavina, MT • Fred L. Rose ’64 ’68, Keizer • Wayne Paul Russ ’64, Long Beach, CA • Sandra Louise Smith ’64, Albany • Allen H. Brady ’65, Reno, NV • Ronald A. Brandt ’65, Glendale • Philip T. Choong ’65, Los Altos Hills, CA • Frank Halstead Clark Jr. ’65, Vancouver, WA, Phi Gamma Delta • Ronald Claas Collman ’65, Warrenton • Susan Roberts Dalke ’65, McMinnville, Alpha Phi • Michael Allen Douglas ’65, Newberg, Phi Sigma Kappa • Mary Eighme ’65 ’66, Scottsdale, AZ • Melvin Guy Epley ’65, Yuba City, CA • William Earl Gilbert ’65 ’67, Corvallis • Dorothy Hudlow Willis ’65, Walla Walla, WA, Chi Omega • James Franklin Willis ’65 ’96, Walla Walla, WA, Pi Kappa Alpha • James A. Young, ’65, Reno, NV • Mary Carl Baines ’66, Green Valley, AZ, Alpha Omicron Pi • Robert Elliott Barnum ’66, Wilsonville, Beta Theta Pi • Jerome Edward Colonna ’66 ’68 ’71, Bend, Phi Delta Theta • Bryan C. Dorner ’66 ’69, Graham, WA • Dennis J. Epping ’66, Salem, Phi Kappa Theta • Larry A. Flick ’66, Cromwell, CT • Victor Harold Holme ’66 ’67, Fircrest, WA • Elizabeth Anne Moore ’66, Roseburg • Douglas Carl Roth ’66, Portland • Donald Laverne Skaar ’66 ’67, San Diego, CA • Walter Leo Ekins ’67 ’68, Saint George, UT • LaRay Harmon ’67, Molalla • John Jennings Hutchins ’67, Naples, FL, Kappa Sigma • Peter Ernest Jensen ’67, Boise, ID, Beta Theta Pi • Stephen Douglas Pancoast ’67 ’68, Tucson, AZ, Phi Delta Theta • John Robert Ray ’67 ’69, Bloomington, IL • Kenneth Bruce Shaull ’67, Woodland, CA, Alpha Sigma Phi • Barbara Schild Carroll ’68, Tucson, AZ, Kappa Delta • Ronald E. Hartz ’68, Philomath • Linda Ann Sims ’68, Albany • Werner Stebner ’68, Spring, TX • Anne Marie Thompson ’68, Corvallis • David C. Bressler ’69, Buckeye, AZ • Diane Engdahl Denero ’69, Stockton, CA, Kappa Kappa Gamma • John Richard Green ’69, Lebanon • Karen Mildren Kump ’69, Elko, NV • Charles Yung Lam ’69, Canby • James August Lichatowich Sr. ’69 ’70, Columbia City • James Lochhead ’69, Redondo Beach, CA • Rudolph A. Mundy ’69, West Linn • Roger J. Schmeltz ’69, Corvallis • Mark Edward Weckesser ’69 ’70, Richmond, KY

Jimmy Anderson, ’59

Jimmy Anderson, ’59, a 2015 inductee into the Oregon State Athletics Hall of Fame, died March 3 at the age of 86 in Corvallis. Anderson’s story as both a basketball player and coach is intertwined with that of many Beaver greats. He won the Pacific Coast Conference Championship as a player under Slats Gill, won a Pac-8 Conference title as an assistant for Paul Valenti, and claimed four Pac-10 championships as an assistant coach under Ralph Miller. After becoming head coach in 1990, Anderson continued the success of his predecessors, winning a conference title his first season and becoming Pac-10 Coach of the Year. All told, Anderson was part of 576 wins in his 37 years with the Beavers. Teams he played for or coached on won 17 Far West Classic championships. After retiring, Anderson became an informal ambassador for the men’s basketball team, attending games and practices and furthering the cause of a program he deeply loved. He is survived by his wife, Fifi (Quisenberry) Anderson, ’63; sons, Steve and Jeff, ’90; daughters, Kelly, ’88, and Jill Fuller, ’92; as well as his siblings, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Photo by OSU Athletics

1970s

Dennis Fay Chapman ’70, Cottage Grove • David Alan Heatherbell ’70 • Edward P. Howard ’70, West Linn • Keith Irl King ’70 ’71, Corvallis • Robert Lee Offord ’70 ’71, La Mesa, CA • Mary Katherine Reed ’70 ’73, Gresham • Molly O. Schworm ’70, Eugene • Majorie Haile Walker ’70, Bend • James Bruce Campbell ’71, Salem • Joyce M Crowson Cox ’71, Reno, NV, Chi Omega • Dean Edward Freitag ’71, Saint Helens • Bruce Raymond Palmer ’71, Keizer • Carol Tyler Schaeffer ’71, Gresham, Alpha Gamma Delta • Von J. Thompson ’71, Prineville • Dennis Dean Wirth ’71, Tangent • Alan Wythe Budenz ’72, El Dorado Hills, CA • Alan R. Candlish ’72, Rancho Murieta, CA • Lawrence Jon Carroll ’72, Salem, Phi Kappa Theta • Kathryn McGhee Moore ’72, Lake Oswego • Ronald A. Nussbaum ’72, Ypsilanti, MI • Ronald Jay Scheurer ’72, Vancouver, WA • Ralph D. Brown ’73, Cornelius • Richard A. Dawes ’73, Green Valley, AZ, Phi Kappa Tau • Gregory Lawrence Gray ’73, Boise, ID • Mary Ann Isaacson ’73, Olympia, WA, Gamma Phi Beta, Panhellenic • Ronnie Jay Layton ’73, Joseph • John Ernest Liljeberg ’73, Albany • Thomas Evan Schaible ’73, Manasquan, NJ, Phi Delta Theta • Brian K. Stevenson ’73, Anchorage, AK • Emilio T. Vejil ’73, Corvallis • Kerry Dean Viestenz ’73, Tigard, Alpha Sigma Phi • John Harvard Baker ’74, Newport • Janice Ann Gunness ’74, McMinnville • Laurie Jenks ’74, Lakeville, MA • Charles E. Mayo ’74, West Linn • Richard Arlen Miller ’74, Corvallis • Lyle Mayes Cheney ’75, Hammond • Gregory Scott Oriet ’75, Gaston • Robert Lewis Singel ’75 • Barbara Lynn Spangler ’75, Newport • Daniel Alan Larsell ’76 ’80, Albany • Abayomi Adolphus Obadeyi ’76, Ibadan, Nigeria • Karen L. Randall ’76 ’80, Normanday Park, WA • Jerry G. Sachtjen ’76, Salem • Guy Lee Tebbit ’76, Concord, NC • Dennis Alden Bieze ’77, Elk Mound, WI • Hiram Hart ’77, Portland • Barry Mitchell Hasson ’77, Lake Oswego • Randolph Todd Heiman ’77, McMinnville • Eula Faye Henry ’77, Pasco, WA • Kathleen Hart Hohman ’77, Portland • Douglas Roy Dixon ’78, Richland, WA • Susan Lea Gregory ’78 ’99, Redmond • Harold Leroy Harris ’78, Corvallis • Susan S. Johnson ’78, Corvallis • Carol B. Mussler ’78 ’81, Keizer • Bruce Robert Bartlett ’79, Corvallis

Aaron Thomas, ’61

Aaron Thomas, ’61, died April 26 in Corvallis. He was 86. After a standout football career at Oregon State — Hall of Fame coach Tommy Prothro called Thomas the best tight end he ever coached — he was drafted into the NFL in 1961. He played for the San Francisco 49ers for a year and was then traded to the New York Giants, where he played until retiring in 1970, becoming one of the most prolific receiving tight ends in Giants history. After his playing days were done, Thomas worked as a stockbroker in Los Angeles; ran a restaurant/bar/bowling alley in Yreka, California, with his father; and was head football coach at Klamath Falls High School in the early 1980s. He then returned to Oregon State, where he served as assistant director of the Beaver Club from 1983 to 89. Thomas was predeceased by his first wife Jeanie, ’62, and his son Todd, ’84. He is survived by his wife, Joan, ’62, and children Troy, ’88; Robb, ’89; Lance; and Leslie.

Photo by OSU Athletics

1980s

Bruce Elderkin Blackmer ’80, Moore, ID • Gregory Paul Brown ’80, Rigby, ID • Kevin Richard Carter, ’80, Chapel Hill, NC • Marc Alan Ferries ’80, Salem • Lorrie Jo Kagayama-Heleker ’81, Payette, ID • Patricia Ann Mason ’81, Portland • Kim Marian Spotts ’81, Hood River • John Michael Coles ’82, Lake Oswego • Kenneth Alan Rauscher ’83, Corvallis • Rodney Craig Leeper ’84, Eugene • Jean Isabelle Clark Morgan ’84, Corvallis • Cheryl Lynn Dalton ’85, Lake Oswego • Marilyn Ehrenshaft ’86, Cary, NC • Gary Jay Haldorson ’86 ’90, Pullman, WA • Daniel Raymond Corpron ’87, Portland • Andrew Warren Lacey ’88, Pendleton • Tracey Leanne Brenneman Lucht ’88, Molalla

1990s

Sarah Maria Hendren ’90, Salem • David Howard McNabb ’90 ’91, Edmonton, AB • James P. Denevan ’91, Sioux Falls, SD • Ann Brookhyser Eichelberg ’91, Gresham • Julie Anne Koch ’92, Beaverton • Ronald J. Spisso ’94, Albany • Rachel A. Ozretich ’95, Corvallis • Judith N. Bennett ’96, Ashland • Darin Gernot Colby  ’96, ’03, Portland, Chi Phi • James Russell Davis ’97, Beaverton • Matthew E. Anderson ’99, Millbrook, NY • Naomi Goldberg Mazzeo ’99, Mullica Hill, NJ

2000s

Eric Kenneth Cook ’02, Hammond, LA • Jill Champney Phillips ’03, Sitka, AK • Chad Nathan Waldron ’03, Silver Lake • Elizabeth Lorraine Dungy ’05, Monmouth • Monica Sue Hildebrand ’05, Eugene • Jacqueline Riviere Smith ’05, Corvallis • Annette Phyllis Gapp ’09, Aumsville • Valerie Jean Kelly, ’09, McMinnville • Adrienne Rose Strubb ’09, Cornelius

2010s

Angela Louise Walker ’12, Gainesville, VA • Ross D. Lingenfelter ’15, Yakima, WA • Maxwell Dunlap Taylor ’15, Reno, NV • Matthew Edward Wilkinson ’16, Corvallis • Frederick Paul Groh ’17 ’18, Harrisburg, PA • David Matthew Skeen ’19, Corvallis • Matthew Michael Vanbemmel ’19, Albany 

Clemens “Clem” Starck

Clem Starck, longtime carpenter with Oregon State’s Facilities Services and award-winning poet, died March 21, in Dallas, Oregon. He was 86. Starck, whom The New York Times called “an essential plain-spoken poet of work” published eight collections of poetry, including his first, Journeyman’s Wages, which won the 1996 Oregon Book Award in Poetry and the William Stafford Memorial Poetry Award. His poems have been widely anthologized, and two more of his books were honored as Oregon Book Award finalists. As Elizabeth Gunderson of Booklist wrote, “Starck is an expert workman, building his original lines nail by nail.” He was predeceased by his wife, Barbara, and is survived by his children, Rachel Starck, Daniel Starck and Deborah Pruitt; his sister, Juanita Rodriquez; and grandchildren.

Photo courtesy of Charles Goodrich, MFA ’02

Faculty, Staff and Friends

Carlos Enrique Alvarez, San Antonio, TX • Roland F. Banks Jr., Portland • Marion E. Borchgrevink, Medford • Martin M. Burrus, Corvallis • David L. Carter, Kimberly, ID • Kenton Lee Chambers, Corvallis • Joan L Bradley Child • Fred Stokes Coombs • Orla Currie, Lebanon • Robert S. Custer, Corvallis • Paul Daghlian, Corvallis • Alice Yvonne DeArmond, Rathdrum, ID • Jay Dixon, Albany • Marlys Mae Dolan, Phoenix, AZ • Sharon L. Dolan, Missoula, MT • John T. Egan, Eugene • Steven K. Esbensen, Corvallis • Robert C. Foreman, Salem • Salem Milton Freewater • John Simon Gillis, Corvallis • Terry Glover, East Wenatchee, WA • JoAnn Graves, Keizer • Gary Graybeal, Pendleton • Lois B. Greig, Corvallis • Oscar Grischkowsky, Corvallis • Marilyn D. Helle, Eagle, ID • Julia Hume, Irvine, CA • Philip Lloyd Jackson, Corvallis • Francis K. Johnson, Corvallis • Michael Josephson, Astoria • Clifford P. Judy, Pendleton • Agnes C. Keller, Albany • Arlene Kern, Seattle, WA • Eric Larkin, Burns, TN • Diane L. Loney, Eugene • Masakazu Matsumoto, Corvallis • William Stephen McKinney, Corvallis • Dorothy M. Minea, Santa Rosa Valley, CA • Brigitte Moesta, Westborough, MA • Robert G. Moore, Portland • Wayne H. Nierman, Flint, MI • Diane Oster-Courtney, John Day • Casper S. Owen, Lebanon • Arlene F. Pearson, Wenatchee, WA • Petri Juha Pohjanpelto, Corvallis • David H. Powell, Beaverton • Lloyd Walter Ream, Corvallis • Helmut W. Riedl, Hood River • Richard P. Riess, Sherwood • Janice Mildred Ryum, Phoenix, AZ • Carol Ann Schwartz, Bethesda, MD • Kent Settles, Corvallis • Joyce Lance Spain, Corvallis • Charles “Chuck” Stamps • Carol Ann Stanton, Los Angeles, CA • Clemens Starck, Dallas, OR • John L. Stephens, Pomeroy, WA • Linda S. Tedisch, Albany, OR • Eunice I. Theriault, Salem, OR • Gordon H. Vanderzanden, North Plains • Robert H. Williams, Clarkston, WA • Forrest E. Winkler, Sun City West, AZ • Claude R. Winter, Corvallis • Brian K. Winterfield, Tualatin • Carol J. Wright, Tucson, AZ • Patricia Zysett, Monroe

To share losses with the Oregon State community, please send a name, class year and link to the person’s obituary using our submission form here.

Come Home for Homecoming

We can’t wait to welcome you back to campus during OSU’s Homecoming celebrations this Oct. 18-20. Watch the Beavs square off against University of Nevada, Las Vegas; join in Class of “4’s” reunions (’04, ’94, ’84, ’74, ’64, ’54); celebrate our new Homecoming Court Ambassadors; dig into the Homecoming Pancake Breakfast; and more.

Work Your Connections

OSU Connections, our Beavers-only online networking hub, is packed with opportunities for leveling up your career. Go to OSU Connections to find one-on-one mentoring opportunities; webcasts and workshops; a directory of OSU alumni, students and staff; job and internship listings; the Beaver Business Directory; and more.

Show Up for Beaver Football

Now more than ever, it’s important for Beaver Nation to support our student-athletes. That means we’re rooting for you to join us at OSUAA Tailgate Town prior to every football game.  Don’t miss food, fun, friends and special activities before each home game at the CH2M HILL Alumni Center and at Beaver road games. Bonus: We’re bringing back three popular themed tailgaters: Oct. 19: The 8th Annual Multicultural Alumni & Friends Tailgater; Nov. 9: Beavs, Brews & BBQs; Nov. 23: Ag Sciences Tailgate. If you can’t make a game in person, show your support by tuning in on TV. 

Welcome, Class of 2024!

More than 7,600 students joined the ranks of Oregon State alumni this June and we celebrated them in style. Nearly 700 seniors attended the disco-themed Grad Night; hundreds gathered at the first annual Sweet Beginnings celebration, complete with See’s Candies for every grad; and the OSUAA helped arrange 16 featured alumni speakers, including Commencement speaker, Steven Jackson, ’20. Visit here to share a congratulatory message with new grads.

OSUAA Wins Inclusiveness Award

Insight Into Diversity magazine, the oldest diversity and inclusion publication in higher education, named the OSUAA one of its inaugural winners of the 2024 Alumni Association Inclusive Excellence Award. Get involved at upcoming events in Portland, including Sept. 26: Celebrando Nuestras Raices; Oct. 25: Ethical Fashion Showcase; Oct. 26: Industry Connect; Jan. 9: Community, Culture and Cuisine.

SAVE THE DATE 

Sept. 19
Black and Orange Awards Celebration 

Sept. 20
Alumni Fellows Celebration Lunch

Oct. 3
College of Engineering Oregon Stater Awards Ceremony

Oct. 12
Sharktoberfest

Oct. 18–20
Homecoming

Nov. 8
Parent and Family Social 

Nov. 12–Nov. 25
Membership Challenge

Nov. 15–Dec. 8
Columbia Employee Store Member Shopping

For more events and details visit the OSU Foundation and Alumni Association.

Stan Boyd, ’76, was honored with a lifetime achievement award at the Idaho Governor’s Awards for Excellence in Agriculture. Boyd served 37 years as executive director for the Idaho Wool Growers Association and represented several agricultural organizations in the Idaho Legislature.

Doris Cancel-Tirado, MPH ’12, Ph.D. ’12, was named the College of Health’s new associate dean for student services and well-being. She is part of the inaugural cohort of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities ENLACE Leadership Program.

Angie Chown, M.S. ’11, school counselor at Sage Elementary School in Redmond, was named 2023 Oregon School Counselor of the Year.

Debbie Colbert, Ph.D. ’05, a biologist and oceanographer, is the first woman to lead the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission. 

Robert W. Ellison, ’48, was profiled by Fox 12’s “Show & Tell with Tony” show for his role as resident engineer for the construction of the Astoria-Megler Bridge, which opened in 1966. Watch the story.

Taliese Fuaga was selected in the first round of the NFL draft by the New Orleans Saints. Anthony Gould, ’23 (Indianapolis Colts), and Kitan Oladapo, ’23 (Green Bay Packers), were selected in the fifth. Beavers signed as undrafted free agents include Deshaun Fenwick, ’23 (New England Patriots); Ryan Cooper Jr. (Baltimore Ravens); Jesiah Irish, ’23 (Seattle Seahawks); and Riley Sharp, ’22, MBA ’23 (Baltimore Ravens).

Jen-Hsun Huang, ’84, ’09 (Hon. Ph.D.) Time magazine named Jen-Hsun Huang one of the 100 most influential people of 2024. The NVIDIA co-founder and CEO was celebrated for his part in making possible the computing hardware that powers artificial intelligence, one of today’s most transformative technologies. Huang was named to Time’s 100 Most Influential People in AI list last year.

Photo by Darryl Lai

Randy Fuller, Ph.D. ’79, accepted a new position as deputy director of forest management with the National Forest Service’s Southwestern Regional office.

Abbie Hawley, ’23, and Staci (Dreher) Ballard, ’18, and began new positions at Kernutt Stokes, a leading certified public accounting and business advisory firm serving clients throughout Oregon.

Kent Lauder, ’66, published his first novel, Pendulum, with Authority Publishing. Learn more at kentlauder.com.

Lauren Lieberman, Ph.D. ’96, professor of kinesiology, sport studies and physical education at SUNY Brockport, published The Camp Abilities Story: The Global Evolution of Sports Camps for Children Who Are Visually Impaired with SUNY Press (available in print and audio editions).

Jake Mackenzie, M.S. ’64, Ph.D. ’71, was appointed to the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board by California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Mary Marston, ’80, senior project manager at Davis Evans and Associates in Tustin, California, was named one of the American Public Works Association’s top 10 public works leaders of the year.

Dr. Timothy C. McCarthy, ’67, diplomate emeritus for the American College of Veterinary Surgeons, is the editor of two editions of Veterinary Endoscopy for the Small Animal Practitioner. He also wrote the book Veterinary Arthroscopy for the Small Animal Practitioner.

Jeannie McGuire, ’61, received a lifetime achievement award from the Lake Oswego City Council and the Historic Resources Advisory Board for contributions to the city’s historic preservation programs. The award is now known as the Jeannie McGuire Lifetime Achievement Award for Historic Preservation.

Ali A. Karakhan, Ph.D. ’20, a lecturer in the Department of Reconstruction Projects at the University of Baghdad, was published in the peer-reviewed journal, SHIFT. 

Angela Kargel, ’92, has become the first woman to hold the position of state traffic engineer with the Oregon Department of Transportation.

Colton Weinstein, ’14, chief executive officer and co-founder of Liba Spirits and consulting distiller for Corsair Distillery in Nashville, Tennessee, was chosen by his peers as Artisan Spirit magazine’s 2024 Artisan Spirit Distiller of the Year. Weinstein was also named to Imbibe magazine’s list of 75 People to Watch in 2024.

Photo by Devon Trevathan

Brent Keeler, ’06, was awarded the Quanta Services CEO Innovation & Entrepreneurial Award for his work as team leader in designing, building and implementing an anti-rotation device for the CH-47 Chinook Helicopter. Keeler is a senior pilot and CH-47 “utility hook” program manager for PJ Helicopters out of Northern California. 

Michael Kondo, ’77, retired head gardener of the Portland Japanese Garden, was profiled by KGW8 for his 40 years on the job and lasting impact on the garden’s beauty. Watch the story.

Scott Rueck, ’92, MAT ’93, head coach for OSU women’s basketball, was voted Pac-12 Coach of the Year by the media. Rueck guided the Beavs to a 23-6 regular season finish and No. 4 seed in the Pac-12 tournament, after finishing 13-18 the previous season. 

Robert Schalla, M.S. ’78, a retired geologist, published Black Diamonds from the Treasure State with Indiana University Press about early efforts to bring rail transport to the northeast corner of Yellowstone National Park and the Red Lodge-Bear Creek coal field.

Jim Schwarz, ’69, was honored as the eldest member of William Paterson University’s Class of 2024. Schwarz returned to school in his 70s to pursue a second bachelor’s degree — this time in health studies — after watching his wife of 48 years recover from medical issues. Read more.

Ellen Yin, ’16, is the first Asian American in nearly 30 years to be crowned Mrs. Oregon America. She represents the state in the Mrs. America competition — the longest-standing national pageant for married women — at the end of August in Las Vegas. Yin is the founder and host of the Cubicle to CEO podcast, which features weekly case-study interviews with entrepreneurs and CEOs. Learn more about her work at ellenyin.com.

Photo by Mathieu Lewis-Rolland

Melanie Spraggins, ’01, and Jamae Hilliard Creecy, ’91, were featured in Hydro Leader magazine as part of the all-female executive team now leading the Bonneville Power Administration’s Power Services Department. Spraggins commented, “We are also both Black females, making this truly a historical milestone in the predominately white male energy industry.” 

Tom C. Veblen, M.S. ’55, co-convener of the Washington, DC, Cosmos Club Freethinkers Conversation Table, published Reimagining America’s Experiment in Self-Governance: The Way Forward with Dalen Publishing.

Connect with us to share your good news with the Oregon State community.

Though a few readers felt that campus dating was not an appropriate topic for the magazine of a great research university, most found no conflict between life-changing learning and life-changing love. Many wrote in to share their own stories. An engaged couple asked for an extra copy of the spring issue so they could frame it, and another sent the magazine an invitation to their wedding. We were also excited when our publisher received a kind note from Kathy Kohner-Zuckerman, ’62, the Beaver who was the inspiration for Gidget, the iconic, in-love-with-love surfer girl of book and movie fame.

The story on romance in the current Oregon Stater was inspired. It contained so many great moments. It is also an excellent cultural history of the university.

 —Stephen A. Forrester

I enjoyed the recent edition of the Stater magazine, with its focus on alumni who met their future spouses through OSU connections. Alumna Zelma Reed Long, ’65, well known wine maker, introduced me to Tom McCoy. He and Zelma attended the same high school, and I was a good friend of hers at OSU. Since he went to college at Harvard, it was unlikely we’d ever meet. I’m grateful for the OSU connection that led to a marriage in 1967. Thanks for publishing a magazine I read from cover to cover. 

 —Nancy Austin McCoy, ’65

I read with interest “OSU, a Love Story” and was inspired to share our story with you. Oct. 12, 1962. Columbus Day. I was living at the Theta Chi fraternity house. It was a Friday afternoon. I was having my very first date with this wonderful person I had met in analytical chemistry class. She and I spent nine hours together in lab each week. We were going to have dinner at the fraternity house and then go to the Sophomore Cotillion and hear the Four Preps. 

The wind started blowing late in the afternoon and got stronger and stronger. I stood on the front lawn of the fraternity house and watched a chimney topple over on a house across the street. All the electricity went out. The Sophomore Cotillion was canceled, but because we had a gas stove in the house, our amazing cook was able to put together a meal. We all were dressed up and had dinner by candlelight. 

Then, instead of going out, we had a quiet evening dancing to music from a transistor radio in the basement of the fraternity house. The next day, we walked all over campus and were amazed at the devastation, particularly on the Quad, where most of the century- old trees had been toppled. 

My date, Judy Thompson, and I got married shortly after her graduation. Years later they decided to make Columbus Day come on a Monday, but Judy and I always remember our first real Columbus Day together, 59 years ago, Oct. 12, 1962.

 —Jim Mutch, ’66, and Judy Thompson Mutch, ’65 

I read with great interest the OSU alumni love stories in the Oregon Stater. I too met my husband, Eric Stone [M.F. ’69], at the Memorial Union back in 1968. I can’t remember if the MU has two separate stairways, but it was that way on April 5 of 1968. I kidded that my future husband came down one stairway, asked me to dance and walked up the other with his wife. He was in the forestry master’s program, having transferred from the University of Connecticut just a couple of weeks before. We were pinned on April 18, 1968, engaged on May 18 and married a year later on June 7, 1969, after he graduated. We are extremely happy almost 55 years later, raising two sons. I did not graduate from OSU — U of O was the only university offering a bachelor’s in nursing — but did meet the love of my life at OSU.

 —Teresa Stone

We had a quiet evening dancing to music from a transistor radio.

---

The Orange and… MasBlue?

With a new Pac-XX on the horizon, and as a proud alumnus and embracer of change, I was thinking maybe it’s time to shake things up with our school colors, with the addition of the OSU-discovered MasBlue. While black and orange will always have a special place in Beavers’ hearts, the addition could bring a bit of excitement. It would also serve as a tip of the cap to our sea-, space-, sun- and land-grant designations and heritage, as well as the great work our scientists do. Should we get other Beavers’ thoughts?

 —David Akerson, ’83

A Bounty of Beavers

Sally Goodman, ’70, sent us this photo of three generations of Beavers gathered at Commencement this June. The family was celebrating their newest grad, Wyatt Holliday, ’24, as well as a $1.4 million gift to the OSU Foundation from the estate of their relative Carol (Hansen) Isbell, ’55, Ed.M. ’67. Pictured from left: Brooke (Carlson) Goodman, ’99; Sally (Bay) Goodman; Geoff Goodman, ’99; Gary Goodman, ’70; Wyatt Holliday, ’24; and Emily (Goodman) Holliday, ’00. Sally and Gary are holding a picture of Carol.

Kudos for Students

A recent SFGate article contrasted the sorry state a Shasta Lake campground was left in by UC Davis and UO students versus how it was cared for by a group of Oregon State students who had visited just a few weeks before. I was very proud of the student body and the lessons they learned at OSU!

 — Ron Rusay, Ph.D. ’77

Mountain Memories

I now think back about my time at Oregon State, from 1959 to 1963, and realize what a wonderful experience it was. One of my strongest memories is my first climb with the Oregon State Mountain Club. The faculty leader was Willi Unsoeld. I, of course, had no idea of the stature he would achieve in the world of mountaineering. [Unsoeld was part of the first American expedition to summit Mt. Everest.] 

Our destination was Coburg Caves on the way to Eugene. Professor Unsoeld drove us, singing Alpine mountaineering songs all the way. We learned belaying, a safety technique involving a rope attached to a climber. In our case, the end of the rope was wrapped around the waist of a person who was located above the climber and secured with a safety rope. Belaying was especially critical when rappelling, a technique in which one lowers oneself on a rope. The first time I rappelled, Willi Unsoeld belayed me. Had I known more about him, I would have been more relaxed. 

As I backed up to the edge of a 100-foot-high cliff, Willi, with a huge grin, asked if I really wanted to do this. I sort of joked, “Do I have a choice?”  He laughed and said, “Not really.” So down I jerkily went. When I reached the bottom, I looked up and waved, and he waved back. The next thing I knew, he followed me, but he rappelled to the bottom upside down in one smooth continuous motion.

 —Richard “Dick” Demers, ’63

Send letters and comments by using our form or by mail to Oregon Stater, OSU Alumni Association, 204 CH2M HILL Alumni Center, Corvallis, OR 97331. We edit for clarity, brevity and factual accuracy. Please limit letters to 225 words or less.

“I felt it pulling a little bit. Then I saw the body and I’m like, ‘Oh My God.’” Oceanography sophomore Gabriel Jurado has caught the day’s first shark. And it’s about to come aboard.

July 23, 7:13 p.m.: On the 22-foot Oregon State University research boat Arima, two graduate students, two under-grads and Assistant Professor Taylor Chapple are fishing for sharks in Willapa Bay, Washington. Coincidentally, it’s the first day of the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week.

The Northeast Pacific is home to at least 15 species of sharks, but we know relatively little about them. Chapple’s Big Fish Lab is aiming to change that — and to change attitudes among the world’s most dangerous species: the human race. 

I felt it pulling a little bit. Then I saw the body and I’m like, ‘Oh My God.’

This day trip is for Jessica Schulte’s doctoral dissertation in fisheries science. She’s studying broadnose sevengill sharks. The goal is to learn where they go and what they eat. We can’t protect sharks when we don’t know the crucial habitats where they mate and give birth to their pups. When we don’t know how many there are, we can’t know if the population is stable or endangered. The Oregon Coast Aquarium has the conservation status for sevengill sharks listed as “unknown,” for lack of data.

Guided by a sonar depth finder, we drop four red buoys at an underwater crossroads where deep channels cut through the shallow, muddy bay. Each buoy has a weight that sinks to the bottom, plus hooks, each the size of a half-dollar. Sockeye salmon is the bait.

In the first hour, we catch eelgrass and a crab. “Is it time for Johnny Cash yet?” someone asks. Rumor has it, playing the Man in Black seems to draw the sharks. We throw a sacrificial Dorito overboard. Sturgeon jump.

Then Jurado feels that tug on the line. “If it starts freaking out, just let go,” Chapple tells the student. Then he tells the shark: “Chill out, relax.” There’s a splash and a whump as a muscular gray body hits the boat.

Raised in Ohio on the shores of Lake Erie, Chapple was 13 when he earned his scuba certification. On a dive during a family vacation in Florida, he encountered his first shark: an eight-foot nurse shark lunching on a fish. With the last gulp, the shark swam past him: “a moment of sheer joy and sheer terror all at once.”

By now, Chapple has studied sharks — particularly great whites — for more than 20 years in the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific oceans. A College of Agricultural Sciences faculty member since 2019, based in the new Gladys Valley Marine Studies Building at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Oregon, he typically spends 120 days per year on the water. But catching sight of those swift, powerful animals never grows old.

What’s in the Water?

Oregon’s waters are home to at least 15 species of sharks, ranging in size from the brown catshark at about 2.2 feet long to the basking shark at more than 30 feet.

Illustrations by Jessica Schulte

The boat tips to starboard as Chapple lowers a stretcher-like “cradle” into the water and works with master’s student Ethan Personius to maneuver the thrashing shark, its mouth gaping open with razor-sharp teeth. They secure it with three straps and then crank a winch, lifting the cradle and swinging it around to straddle the back of the boat.

Sharks move up and down the Pacific Coast, many species arriving alongside Oregon and Washington in spring and returning south in the fall. Broadnose sevengills — most sharks have five — seem to time their seasonal appearance with salmon, but we don’t know much about what they’re doing here. 

Understanding sharks is important because the eaters at the top of the food chain play a key role in maintaining healthy ecosystems. If we want healthy, harvestable fisheries, we need to understand the sharks that keep marine systems balanced. Even seagrass and coral reefs depend, indirectly, on sharks.

I always tell people: if you’ve been in the ocean, you’ve been with a shark.

---

Moving quickly and carefully, Schulte inserts a PVC pipe into the shark’s mouth and aims a hose so water flows over the gills, allowing the shark to breathe. To reduce the animal’s stress, she covers its lidless eyes with a small wet towel. Jurado steps in to hold the head and hose, while Schulte grabs the tape measure. The second undergrad, Ester Alexander, records the data.

This shark, a female, is seven feet and four inches long, about three feet around and 145 pounds: on the medium-large side for this species. 

Sharks are big fish with a big, big PR problem. They aren’t cute like otters or seals. They don’t do jumping tricks like dolphins. Even orcas — another apex predator — are glorious to watch, and they’ve got Free Willy. Sharks — consistently portrayed as giant eating machines, mindless killers or even savage megalodon attackers — got the devastation wreaked by Jaws.

Chapple is wary enough of media sensationalism that when invited to appear on Snoop Dogg’s “Sharkadelic Summer” he declined. He notes that many so-called attacks can be ascribed to curiosity. Lacking hands, a shark has only one toothy way to grab something and check it out. 

Generally, they aren’t interested in us. “If sharks wanted to eat us, we’d be easy pickings. There would be a lot fewer of us around. No one would go in the water,” Chapple said. “But thankfully, humans simply aren’t on their menu.”

Fear also lends to sharks’ invisibility. People assume that if sharks were around, they’d be attacking people, so when people don’t get bitten, they figure sharks aren’t there. Take this bay. Oysters have been harvested here for centuries by Indigenous peoples and commercially farmed since the mid-1800s. But ask a local, Schulte said, and they’ll answer definitively: “There are no sharks in this bay.” Schulte shrugged. “I always tell people: If you’ve been in the ocean, you’ve been with a shark.”

This PR problem matters because the stories we tell shape our attitudes and our actions. If we don’t care about sharks, we’re not going to pay attention, much less spend resources to understand and protect them. Relatively little funding is currently available for shark research. And the research is expensive. The most sophisticated biotags with cameras cost $10,000 each. Schulte began her doctoral program by applying for more than 40 grants. She’s paying the boat costs for this trip (about $500 per day) from her dissertation budget. Chapple applies for about 25 grants each year.

If sharks wanted to eat us, we’d be easy pickings.

---

The shark’s cool, freckled skin feels like finest grade sandpaper. When Personius’ hand catches between it and boat, the grad student comes away with a bloody, dime-sized shark burn. “A rite of passage,” he says, getting out the Band-Aids.

The team collects a blood sample — from the shark, not the student — plus a bit of muscle and a snip of dorsal fin; these will help reveal who is related to whom and provide information about the shark’s diet. An external tag gives Chapple’s email address, asking anyone who catches the shark to notify him. Some sharks in Schulte’s project also get an acoustic tag inside their bodies to track where they go for 10 years. With bare hands and pliers, Chapple pries the fishing hook from the shark’s jaw.

By now, you might be thinking, “Poor widdle sharky,” but rest assured, sharks are built tough. Their wounds heal quickly. Anesthesia would put the shark at risk, as releasing it half-dazed would make it easy prey for other sharks. Sevengills are also chill, as sharks go. Out of the water, this one lies still, with just an occasional flex of her tail. Even shark sex is considerably rougher than this alien abduction experience.

Speaking of which, now begins a process new even to Chapple. He opens a squeeze bottle of blue gel and a portable ultrasound machine. Is this shark a mama-to-be?

The new director of OSU’s Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station, James Sulikowski, is a renowned shark expert. “The holy grail of shark science is to determine where mom sharks give birth,” he said. “They’re carrying the next generation. If we don’t protect the moms, we can’t protect the babies.” 

Sulikowski and collaborators have developed satellite tags and successfully inserted them in the uteruses of pregnant hammerheads and tiger sharks. During birth, the tag pops out, documenting the location and timing. To find pregnant sharks in the first place — especially those too large to bring on board — Sulikowski has developed a submersible ultrasound that can identify embryos in free-swimming moms.

At OSU, “we are generating new technologies no one else in the world has,” Sulikowski said. “The next step is to deploy them globally.” 

Sevengills, like most sharks, are ovoviviparous — they produce eggs, but the eggs hatch inside the mother’s body. The ultrasound finds no babies this time. 

For the last step, Schulte changes the direction of the water hose, and the shark’s stomach fills like a balloon. Schulte gets to hold the bucket that catches the vomit as it expels. This is how she’ll learn what this shark has eaten. The first burst goes straight into her rubber boots. 

“We equate fear in the water with sharks,” Chapple said. “But so many other things are more dangerous — like driving through Portland.” 

Reporters frequently call Chapple after biting incidents. He stresses that the ocean is not our environment. Even Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky can’t compete with animals living there. We need to give sharks the same respect we’d give a grizzly bear at Yellowstone or a lion on the Serengeti. Can we learn to temper fear with appreciation and awe?

Chapple and his students go surfing, knowing sharks likely are nearby. If a great white is spotted, Chapple said, he’ll be the first to return to shore. 

But here’s what really scares him: “My big fear is that we will miss the opportunity to understand how important sharks really are, to understand what an intact ecosystem is like.” 

Over two days, we bring 11 sharks on board (one got away). The last is released in eight minutes flat. 

Once the cradle is back in the water, most sharks vamoose. But one doesn’t move. Chapple speaks to her gently: “Remember you can swim.” She stirs. Another moment passes.

Then, silent and graceful as a dancer, she vanishes.

Forgive me if this column sets aside Oregon State’s usual inclination toward modesty. Many of you have told me you wish we bragged more, like a nearby university known for flaunting its duck feathers. So allow me to do just that.

Let’s start with the magazine in your hands. This summer, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) recognized the Oregon Stater with four distinguished awards. Our redesign, which debuted this time last year, was named the best of the best — “a standout from cover to cover.” The winter issue’s shark adventure, “Fear in the Water,” by Cathleen Hockman-Wert, merited a gold award for feature writing. We also received two awards for opinion writing — a silver for “The Jaws Effect” by editor Scholle McFarland and a bronze for “When Beavers Unite” by yours truly.

I’m also proud to share that the OSU Alumni Association was honored by Insight Into Diversity magazine for our progress in, and commitment to, encouraging a culture of belonging and connection for our alumni.

National honors are nice to receive. They position OSU as a destination for talent and best practices, and they help reward hard work and ingenuity — work that builds our community of Beavers. As I see it, each of these acknowledgements is a manifestation of momentum occurring throughout this great university. Let’s brag about that, too.

In the last few years, OSU has successfully completed a state-of-the-art football stadium renovation, as well as capital projects for gymnastics, softball, baseball and track and field. Along the way, our awe-inspiring student-athletes have won on and off each playing surface. Jade Carey has just earned two medals in gymnastics — her second gold and a bronze — at the Summer Olympics, and OSU is the only school this year with first-round draft picks in baseball, football and soccer.

In 2024 alone, we elevated the university’s arts and sciences, opening the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts and breaking ground for OSU’s ambitious venture into next-generation technologies, the Jen-Hsun Huang and Lori Mills Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex. 

Then there’s you. This past year, more alumni and friends than ever participated in OSU events and volunteered to benefit students and university pursuits. And more
donors are providing more dollars than ever before. 

This Oregon Stater reflects the importance of optimism. These are just a few of the reasons to feel optimistic about this wonderful university. Keep on bragging, Beaver Nation. We are DAM PROUD!

Q: How do you – and how can we – stay hopeful making a difference with a shifting climate?

Faisal Osman, ’24

Recent graduate in public policy

I stay hopeful about making a difference with climate change by taking meaningful action, no matter how small — such as carpooling with my friends or utilizing Corvallis’ free bus system.  Everyone’s effort, combined with global movements and policy changes, contributes to a sustainable and just future. We have the opportunity to build a more equitable, resilient community. By working together, we can target inequities as part of ensuring a healthier planet for everyone in the future.

Jeremy Hoffman, Ph.D. ’16

Director of Climate Justice and Impact at Groundwork USA

I ask myself: Where can I act on climate change in my own backyard, in my neighborhood and in my larger community? I can grow native plants on my balcony and reduce the amount that I drive.  I can work with my neighbors to build pocket parks and advocate for better transportation options. And I can push for our city council to invest in climate solutions in frontline neighborhoods.

Bill Ripple, Ph.D. ’84

Distinguished professor, College of Forestry

Hope with passive waiting is not enough. The antidote to despair is action. In my case, that includes conducting climate-related research, engaging in local and global climate initiatives and working toward policy change. We made The Scientist’s Warning— produced by OSU — to advocate for turning scientific knowledge into action. Connecting with like-minded individuals and participating in collective climate efforts can empower individuals to create a hopeful mindset for the future.

Hannah Gosnell

Professor, College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences

What transforms my anxiety about the future into equanimity is the concept of Active Hope, which is something we do rather than have. It involves being clear about what we hope for and the role we can play in realizing it. As ecophilosopher Joanna Macy counsels, acting for the healing of the world makes the mess we’re in easier to face, and our lives become more meaningful and satisfying.

The end of summer in Corvallis brings a familiar sound — the rat-a-tat-tat of OSU’s drumline as band camp begins. If I press my face against the window, I can see them lined up in the shadow of Reser Stadium, their elbows all sharp angles, sticks flying over the faces of their drums.

Anyone in earshot knows how hard they work, laboring hour after hour on a single beat. (So much so that coworkers joke about whether we can expense ear plugs and ibuprofen.)

Thinking about them brings me back to this Stater, dubbed “The Optimism Issue.” We settled on this focus as a partial antidote to what could be some pretty rough months ahead. From a contentious election season, to wars abroad, to (closer to home) our first year in the Pac-2, I can feel myself steeling for the worst.

So we turned to our community for advice. In our cover story, “How to Keep Hope Alive” (see page 32), writer Cathleen Hockman-Wert asked Beavers immersed in finding solutions to some of the most intractable issues of our times what keeps them going.

I talked with President Murthy about the role optimism plays in leadership. She surprised me by pointing out something I hadn’t considered before: Optimism is, in part, a conviction that you have some control over your future. “All problem solvers,” she said, “have to be optimists.”

The exclamation point to that idea came with this issue’s Perspectives column (see page 13) when I asked four people how they stay hopeful that they can make a difference with climate change. In a first for the column, they all said the same thing: They do something. Or as Professor Bill Ripple put it: “The antidote to despair is action.”

The key, I realized, is seeing the value in what one person can do, because despair begins when we disparage that as too little.

Which brings us to the campus group that epitomizes optimism. Whether they’re drenched in rain or sweat, whether the Beavs are killing it or taking a drubbing, the nearly 300 members of the marching band keep the steady drumbeat of OSU spirit. We spent a day with them to learn how the magic happens (see page 40). And don’t miss our first companion video story — a chat with Associate Director of Bands Olin Hannum, MAT ’12.

Because when it’s all said and done, the students practicing outside my window can’t control the football game, college conferences or the weather, but they can do everything in their power to be prepared to play their part.

At optimism’s heart is this simple belief: You can do something, and it does matter. The sound of one drum carries.

PART OF THE REASON THAT THE COLLEGE EXPERIENCE stays with us is because there’s more to it than just going to classes and cramming for exams. From that first day gazing across the MU Quad, walking the paths of OSU-Cascades or logging in to OSU Ecampus, Oregon State students become part of a rich tradition reaching back to 1868. Not all traditions stick — and as we learned at press time, sometimes they’re unexpectedly interrupted — but they give us interesting insights into the community we love. Because even if you’re proudly stocked with orange gear and occasionally find yourself humming the OSU fight song, there’s always more to learn about what makes Beavers Beavers.

1.

ROOKS AND BOOKS

Beginning in 1919, students newly arrived on campus didn’t just absorb college tradition; they were quizzed on it. The administration-sanctioned Vigilance Committee, made up of sophomores, published the yearly Rook Bible, a pocket-size handbook aimed at “instilling Beaver spirit.” First-year students, or “rooks,” were required to have the book on their person at all times and memorize its pages.

In addition to a brief school history and a collection of songs and yells that rooks were expected to be at the ready to recite, the handbook outlined rules for behavior. These included saluting the college president, attending all athletic events, refraining from dating (“fussing”) at games and not smoking on campus. (Students voted to lift the smoking ban in 1947.) Rook cadets wore green arm bands, other male rooks wore a green cap or “rook lid,” and female rooks (“rookesses”) tied a green ribbon in their hair. At the end of May, during Junior Weekend, students tossed these symbols of their rook-titude on a bonfire in a ceremony called the “Burning of the Green,” signifying their advancement to sophomore status. 

Over the decades, the handbook’s purpose broadened and the rules — particularly their enforcement by what would likely be considered hazing today — loosened. By the 1960s, rook green was required only on certain days. And after the Burning of the Green moved to Homecoming — little more than a month after students started school — that ritual, too, lost its significance. By the 1969-1970 handbook, mentions of these traditions were gone, though they reappeared briefly and nostalgically in the mid-1990s.

—SCHOLLE MCFARLAND

2.

THE HOMECOMING BONFIRE

Originally known as the “Rook Bonfire,” this tradition — going back to the early 1900s — gave first-year students the chance to earn bragging rights by building the tallest bonfire in school history. “A lot of students really responded to it,” archivist Karl McCreary said in a 2018 Daily Barometer interview. “You can see that in the old bonfires, which were 50 feet high. They would take anything they found in town, put it into this one huge, massive pile and just light it on fire. That was something that just can’t be done today on that scale.” The last-known bonfire was in 2013, when a few modest stacks of wooden pallets were torched on one of the last dirt parking lots on campus. As McCreary observed: “This university is growing so much, [there is no space] where you can have a place where you can burn something safely and not have asphalt melt, windows blow out or have a conflagration. If they have it again, they might have to move it out of town.”

—KEVIN MILLER, ’78

3. Becoming Benny

How long has Benny been Benny? The Daily Barometer reported “pasteboard replicas of the Benny Beaver and Donald Duck families” decorating the walls for an inter-school dance way back in 1937. (Admission was 80 cents per couple.) But his transformation into the official school mascot — and a traditional part of game days — took a little longer. Here are some highlights:

1941

One of the earliest mentions of a beaver named Benny — “who laughed in the red faces of experts” after the college broke Stanford football’s 194113-game winning streak — appeared in the 1942 yearbook. Made of wood, chicken wire and plaster of Paris, this Benny was wheeled into football games by the Rally Squad. It met its unfortunate demise in the fall of 1945 when it was “smashed to death by unknown assailants,” according to the Oregon Stater. The editor of the Daily Barometer, Bob Knoll, ’48, warned against seeking retribution: “Dynamiting of certain southern branch installations will not bring poor dead Benny back on this Earth.” Photo Courtesy of OSU Special Collections and Archives

1952

The first Benny to rally a game day crowd made his debut Sept. 18, 1952. The late Ken Austin, ’53, put together a costume of old shag carpet and was known for antics including climbing goal posts. As he explained to the Oregon Stater in 2004, “I was told to ‘liven things up.’ I immediately came back with ‘… well, what if I act like a rodeo clown?’” Photo Courtesy of OSU Special Collections and Archives

1964

Though the costume changed — with upgrades by members of the Home Ec Club — the grin remained the same from 1959 to 1969. Benny is seen here in a photo from the 1964 yearbook, posing with Rally Squad members Sandy Anderson (left) and Sue Wiesner Koffel, ’66. Photo Courtesy of OSU Special Collections and Archives

1996

From 1984 to 1998, a fuzzier Benny was joined by a companion, Bernice. For Home­coming, Bernice donned a wedding dress and Benny sported a tux. Benny and Bernice were the second male and female mascot duo in NCAA history (after North Carolina State’s Mr. and Mrs. Wuf). Photo Courtesy of OSU Special Collections and Archives

Present

Today’s Benny, with his distinctive nose and buck teeth, has been around since 2005. Rumor has it that his head and costumes — along with the heads of all previous Bennys — are tucked away in a special room in Gill Coliseum. Photo by Karl Maasdam, ’93

4.

BRUCE THE MOOSE

Alumni who attended OSU through 1995 likely recognize the lovable, taxidermied muzzle of Bruce the Moose. About eight feet tall from hoof to antler tip, Bruce once stood sentry at the entrance to the Horner Museum, where it was a tradition to rub his shoulder for luck. 

Established 1925 (Bruce joined the collection in 1935), the museum gathered more than 60,000 artifacts and curiosities from around the world and was a draw for tourists and school children for decades. Its location, from 1950 to 1995, in the dank bowels of Gill Coliseum, had some drawbacks, as the Oregon Stater recounted: “Sticky syrup from soft drinks spilled by Beaver basketball fans dripped through the cracks of the coliseum floor and combined with dust loosened by thousands of stomping feet to endanger the collections and permanently damage several items.” 

After budget cuts, the museum was closed, and Bruce vanished into obscurity. But at long last, now you can find him at the entrance to the new Corvallis Museum on Southwest Second Street. Check Benton County Museums for details about how to pay a visit.

—SCHOLLE MCFARLAND

5.

THE ORANGE AND THE…BLACK?

Oregon State University has had many names — Corvallis College, Oregon Agricultural College, Oregon State College — but one thing’s for sure, its colors have always been orange and black, right? Not quite. For 25 years, navy blue was the school color, until a faculty committee replaced it with orange in 1893. Studentsadopted black as the secondary color soon after, but its status was, surprisingly, a matter of some dispute. (Some speculate the reluctance to embrace black was due to Lewis & Clark College in Portland — known then as Albany College — having already adopted orange and black as their colors.) As a 1965 article in the Oregon Stater put it: “Over the years many have led themselves to believe that OSU’s colors are orange and black. It ain’t so.” Still, time — and decades’ worth of swag — eventually settled the question. Today’s official university brand guidelines embrace both Beaver Orange (Pantone 1665) and Paddletail Black.

—SCHOLLE MCFARLAND

6.

KEEPSAKES OF COURTSHIP 

A variety of dance cards survive in OSU Special Collections and Archives.

Oregon State dances once came with an elaborate souvenir — the dance card. Tied with string around the wrist, these small booklets listed the evening’s songs with a space for the name of your dance partner next to each one. As they often captured first dances with future spouses, many survive in OSU’s archives, carefully preserved in scrapbooks. School dances started in 1897. Until the 1920s, there were just five a year, but soon student organizations got in the mix. “For a Hawaiian-themed dance in the 1950s, big glass tanks were brought in and filled with hundreds of goldfish,” archivist Tiah Edmunson-Morton wrote. “In 1951, the MU transformed into the merry land of Oz … Instead of the Emerald City, students were invited into the Orange City — and were invited to view the world through orange-colored glasses, which doubled as a dance card.” By 1967, with social mores around courtship in flux, the roughly 70-year tradition came to an end. Still, expressions like “my dance card is full” or “pencil me in” remain, echoes of this once important part of student life.

—SCHOLLE MCFARLAND

7.

A LITTLE BIT OF THE ISLANDS

The bright sound of a strumming ukulele. The lingering scent of roasted kalua pig. For 68 years, Oregon State has celebrated the culture of Hawaii with the Hō‘ike, meaning “show” or “exhibit,” and Lū’au, meaning “feast” — OSU’s largest student-run event. 

In the event’s first years, during the 1950s, only about 150 students hailed from Hawaii. (In 2022, there were 500.) Finding themselves 2,500 miles from home, they decided to bring a little bit of the islands to Corvallis and started an enduring tradition of sharing their culture with the OSU community and strengthening the school’s tightknit Hawaiian family. 

This spring, 90 student dancers filled the LaSells Stewart Center to showcase dancing traditions, telling stories passed down through generations in chants and songs. Parents on the home islands sent about 380 pounds of native flowers, bushels of island greenery and other cargo like handmade jewelry, pineapple gummies and frozen kulolo desserts. 

“Hula is about poetry and movement,” says Sandy Tsuneyoshi. Since the 1990s, the long-time OSU community leader affectionately known as “Aunty Sandy,” has mentored the Hui O Hawai’i student club that puts on the festivities. Volunteers and students-turned-chefs whip together menus in the Global Community Kitchen, blending local food and traditional fare: shoyu chicken, tofu poke and, of course, smoked kalua pork — 420 pounds worth this year. Tsuneyoshi has seen the event sell out venues for the past 27 years (except when the pandemic paused live events). This spring, Beavers snapped up all 1,200 tickets days before the festivities.

—SIOBHAN MURRAY

8.

THE GHOST OF WALDO HALL

Does an unearthly presence walk the floors of Waldo Hall? Does the former women’s dormitory house previous tenants who can never leave? Or is it simply a combination of urban legends and the quirks of a 116-year-old building that give it that uncanny feeling? For decades, students and faculty have asked these questions.

Amas Aduviri, director of the College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP), has had the same office on the third floor of Waldo Hall since 2005. During the early part of his career, he traveled frequently. He always carried pamphlets with him, but one night around 2009, as he was packing for an early morning flight to Washington, D.C., he realized he’d forgotten to grab some. 

When he got to the office, it was around midnight on a Saturday night. Campus was very quiet. Because Aduviri had heard plenty of stories about Waldo’s supernatural reputation, he was nervous going into the building so late. “My heart was racing,” he recalled. “I tried to go as fast as I could to get to my office.” 

When he reached the third floor, he found lights off. As he reached for the switch, he saw a white figure with something draped over its body hovering by the staircase down the hall. It whooshed silently up the stairs toward the fourth floor. He said he felt the rush of air as it disappeared. 

“I could feel the swish,” he said. “That freaked me out.” 

Terrified, Aduviri rushed to his office, grabbed a stack of pamphlets and ran. He did not look back. 

Waldo Hall opened in 1907 as a women’s dormitory. It is an imposing Richardson Romanesque-style building, the first on campus with indoor plumbing. Funny, since the second-floor women’s bathroom is said to have some of the most supernatural activity, with reports of creepy feelings, singing and full-bodied apparitions. 

For 60 years , Waldo housed generations of young women and was home to many notable female faculty members, including the university’s first librarian, Ida Kidder. (She becomes important to this story later.) 

By the mid 1960s, severe neglect left the building at risk of being condemned, and for the safety of students, the dorms were emptied and the first three floors converted into office and classroom space. The fourth floor was sealed off. 

There’s something about an abandoned space that lends itself to stories, and to ghosts. People began to report seeing figures in the upper-story windows. Footsteps, the clicking of high heels, and the sound of furniture being moved around were all reported by those working below. Had specters made themselves at home or were graduate students sneaking onto the dusty floor for some private time? 

Several witnesses claimed to see a woman in 1920s-era attire wandering the building. Soon people began to wonder if this could be Ida Kidder, who had lived in Waldo during the turn of the 20th century. Tiah Edmunson-Morton is an archivist at OSU Special Collections and Archives, and previously offered a ghost tour around campus that included Waldo Hall lore. She said long-term building residents have passed down stories for years. “These definitely are good stories even if the facts behind them are a little shaky,” she said. 

As to why Ida Kidder ended up being the figure most associated with the haunting, she speculates it was easy to cast her as a friendly ghost. “The mythology round her really solidified as maternal, caretaker, etc., and that made her an attractive, benevolent ghost,” she said. “Because while people like to be scared, they also like to be comforted.” 

In 2010, after the infusion of stimulus money from the state, Waldo’s fourth floor was renovated and reopened as new office space. The conveniently creepy and dusty spot is now bright and lively once more. Aduviri, who saw the apparition before the remodel took place, says he hasn’t seen anything since. But, he adds, he also has made a point never again to visit the office late at night.

—THERESA HOGUE

9.

WELL-LOVED WATERING HOLES 

A half-century has passed since Greg Little, ’73, earned his business degree at Oregon State, squeezing in school-work around visits to Corvallis watering holes like the Oregon Museum, Mother’s Mat­tress Factory and Tavern, Lum Lee’s, Lamplighter, Goofy’s Tavern and the Beaver Hut. He notes that those last two were actually the same place — a bar sufficiently identity-challenged that it transitioned from Beaver Hut to Goofy’s and back, but with a strong North Star: a 10-tiny-beers-for-a-dollar special known as “Dimers.” (Dimers were so popular that you could also find them at Mother’s.) 

Less than two years after graduating, Little put his extracurricular studies to entrepreneurial use when he helped launch his own tavern, Squirrel’s, located at the corner of Southwest Second Street and Monroe Avenue. (Little got the nickname Squirrel as a sideline-chattering high school football player.) All these decades later, he is uniquely placed to talk about the tradition of Corvallis’ much-visited, well-loved bars. 

“We became known as the ‘downtown learning center,’” he said of Squirrel’s. “A lot of graduate students, they became regular customers. You could find your prof there, ask him questions and get information and not have to go to school per se. That’s always been kind of fun for us, having that rapport with that little bit older student.” 

Once upon a time, Squirrel’s was part of a Corvallis bar scene that included Little’s college-era haunts plus other locales like the Night Deposit, the Class Reunion, the Peacock, Nendel’s, Don’s Den, Toa Yuen, the Stein Tavern, Murphy’s Tavern (in Southtown), Price’s Tavern and the Thunderbird Lounge. 

The Peacock remains a downtown fixture, and Murphy’s relocated to downtown a few years ago, but all the other old stalwarts are gone — a testament to how hard it can be to run an enduring drinking establishment even in a college town. 

“Things have definitely changed. We still do quite a bit of beer, but others have gone to a lot of seltzers and ciders,” Little said. “I’ve got a few more years for sure. I just like the idea of a community gathering spot.”

—STEVE LUNDEBERG, ’85

10.

EVERYONE AN ATHLETE 

For over 100 years, Recreational Sports programs have helped students find community through the love of sport. 

“Every man an athlete” was the mantra of A.D. Browne, director of the newly formed Intramural Athletics Program in 1916. He set the ambitious goal of at least 95% student participation in intramural activities. His goal was expanded in 1928 by Ruth Glassow, director of physical education for women, who declared, “A sport for every woman.” 

Recreational Sports at Oregon State continues this legacy today as one of the oldest intramural programs in the nation. The Corvallis campus offers more than 50 intramural sport leagues, tournaments and events annually, and there are 39 student-run Sport Clubs (including seven equestrian-based ones). Basketball, volleyball and soccer continue to be popular, alongside new offerings. Adaptive sports include wheelchair basketball, sitting volleyball, goalball and beep ball. Esports allow students to compete on the virtual field, from NBA 2K to Mario Kart. 

Students can also navigate a canoe through the Dixon Recreation Center pool while playing water battleship, a competition where participants try to sink one another with buckets of water.

—BRIAN HUSTOLES

11.

WALKING IN HIS FOOTSTEPS

April 9, 1968. Five days after the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., a nation mourned, and the Oregon State community took to the streets.

OSU President James Jensen dismissed university classes from 10 a.m. to noon and closed the library and campus offices. More than 1,200 students, faculty and townspeople gathered at the Memorial Union and solemnly marched downtown: a gathering so large, the Daily Barometer reported, that as the first of the procession reached the courthouse, students were still lined up back to the Quad a mile away. 

One day earlier, legislation to make King’s birthday a federal holiday had been introduced in Congress. Though it would take 15 years before the holiday was signed into law, in the interim, OSU students and faculty began their own traditions to honor the great civil rights leader. 

The most enduring one began in 1983 when the university launched the Peace Breakfast, the centerpiece of OSU’s annual celebration of King’s life and legacy. Over the decades, the celebration has included guest lectures, films, community service, dances, awards and more. 

Students also honored King from the 1980s into the 2010s with a candlelit walk from the Lonnie B. Harris Black Cultural Center (LBHBCC) to the Memorial Union. In 2017, this became the current Peace March help after the breakfast. Co-hosted by the cultural center and the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, the one-mile march goes from the CH2M HILL Alumni Center, past the cultural center on Monroe and back to the Student Experience Center Plaza adjacent to the MU. 

“The MLK Peace March commemorates Dr. King and also carries significance in reference to the OSU Black student walkout of 1969,” said Jamar Bean, LBHBCC director, referring to the significant nonviolent student action that happened after a football coach threatened to remove student-athlete Fred Milton from the team unless he shaved his goatee. Seeing this as discrimination, the Black Student Union organized, and 47 Black students symbolically walked out of campus through the east gates. Talks afterward resulted in changes including the creation of the Educational Opportunities Program and the original Black Student Union Cultural Center.

“Dr. King’s legacy lives on in our students today,” Bean said, “and continues to inspire them to be agents of change when faced with injustice and oppression.”

—CATHLEEN HOCKMAN-WERT

12.

BECOMING A BEND BEAV

Around 2018, student staff at OSU-Cascades in Bend created a new way to welcome students to their young, tight-knit campus. At the start of Welcome Week, first-year students painted rocks to reflect their aspirations. Then, the day before classes began, they were gathered for a “secret tradition.” Just after sunset, the students walked silently in single file along a candlelit path to the top of a bluff overlooking campus. Staff explained it was time to become Bend Beavs and instructed them to throw their painted rocks into “the pit” so that a part of them would forever be a part of campus. “It symbolizes each student’s connection to OSU-Cascades and their lifetime title of a ‘Bend Beav,’” Quentin Comus, ’23, explained. Students were often left speechless and teary. As enrollment grows and the Bend campus’s rough edges are developed, Student Affairs is readying to transform this tradition into something new. That’s why the secret, fondly held by many OSU-Cascades alumni, can now be revealed.

—SCHOLLE MCFARLAND

13.

“OREGON STATE FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!”

Oregon State’s Fight Song is as instantly recognizable to Beaver fans today as it was more than a hundred years ago. A shortened version of “Hail to Old OAC,” written by alumnus Harold A. Wilkins in 1914, the Fight Song’s lyrics have changed slightly with the times to reflect the school’s changing name, as well as gender-neutral language (“We’ll cheer throughout the land,” for example, replacing “We’ll cheer for every man”). Through it all, the spirit has remained the same. If you’re in Corvallis Friday night before a home game, you might catch the band playing it as they tour downtown bars after practice (find their route here). Watch a fun video of the 2018 Oregon State Choir surprising the MU Lounge here.

—SCHOLLE MCFARLAND

14.

PRIDE WEEK

In the early hours of April 29, 1994, members of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Alliance were camped out in a big tent on the MU Quad. It was only the third year Oregon State had celebrated what’s now known as Pride Week and the second with a tent. The first tent had been egged. Three people, later charged with criminal mischief, tried to pull up the stakes and knock it down. Holding space on the Quad, the students had concluded, required a 24-hour presence. 

What sounded like a shot rang out around 2 a.m. 

A figure was seen running away with what appeared to be a long-barreled gun. No one was ever caught or charged.

What happened next was a pivotal moment in OSU history. With university administration silent, student body President Brian Clem, ’94, and President-elect April (Waddy) Berg, ’99, stepped in. They organized a tent city to surround the Pride Tent. Members of student government and others camped out that night in solidarity; local merchants donated caffeinated supplies. 

“We’re here basically just to show our support for LGBA,” Berg told the Daily Barometer. “When something like this happens to one community, it happens to everyone.” 

About a month later, OSU President John Byrne established the Campus Commission on Hate Crimes and Hate Related Activity. The next year, Pride Week organizer Amy Millward noted a change in tone on campus: “We received so much support…people actually came to us to offer their help.”

University of Oregon students had established a Pride Week nearly 20 years earlier — they even advertised in the Barometer. “[In Eugene,] OSU is known as ‘Oregon Straight,’” Randy Shilts, managing editor of UO’s student newspaper, told the Barometer in 1975. (Shilts later authored the best-selling book  And the Band Played On, chronicling the AIDS epidemic.) 

But once OSU’s Pride Week tradition began, student organizers kept it coming back each May, despite controversy, conflict and — at least for the first decade — a steady stream of angry letters. Over the past 30 years, the week has featured speakers, dances, panel discussions and more in the name of, as the 1996 yearbook put it, “friendship and visibility.” 

Camping out in the tent remained a part of the tradition for years, though later it became more festive and involved marshmallows. After the Pride Center building opened in the fall of 2004, students instead held a “slumber party” there.

—SCHOLLE MCFARLAND

15.

GRADUATION TEAS

Nearly all that remains of a tradition that started and stopped from the 1930s through the 1990s are about 100 teacups and saucers carefully wrapped and stored in the Hawthorn Suite in Milam Hall. In the 1930s, women graduates across campus began gathering upstairs in the Women’s Building for tea as part of a Commencement celebration. Nationwide, it was rare for a woman to attend college at this time. In 1930-31, only a quarter of college students were women. To honor the occasion, each participant donated a teacup and saucer, signing their name and graduation year on the bottom. At some point, the tea parties stopped, but women in physical education picked it back up, and the custom continued through the mid-1980s, led by staff in the then College of Health and Physical Education (now called the College of Health, see p. 20). In the mid-1990s, faculty briefly revived the tradition, using the cups at a Commencement brunch. This time, the event included men. Former staff member Michelle Mahana recalls a male graduate shyly producing a cup and saucer, saying his grandmother had requested he take part in the tradition as she had. After a few years, the tea parties died out once more, leaving behind cups, saucers and memories.

—KATHRYN STROPPEL

16.

CUSTOM CAPS

Commencement is perhaps the most traditional of university events, tying the experi­ence of today’s graduates to those across the decades. Within the great event are myriad noteworthy OSU tradi­tions. Once frowned upon, decorating graduation caps (which appears to have started in the 1990s) is now so common that the OSU Alumni Association has held cap de­coration events, and a May piece in The New York Times Style Section featured compa­nies making tidy profits cre­ating trendsetting cap designs. Meanwhile, many graduates of OSU’s Civil and Construction Engineering program wear black hardhats instead. 

17.

DIPLOMA IN HAND

Even as the number of graduates at the Corvallis ceremony has soared above 7,000, OSU has clung to the idea that grads should get their real diplomas at Commencement, rather than (as they’d get at most other large universities and many small ones) a note saying “Congrats, yours is in the mail.” This tricky business used to be accomplished by forcing students to march and sit in alphabetical order within their college groups, but now it’s based on a constantly self-correcting system involving cards that get handed in as graduates approach the podiums, and a small army of employees and volunteers who scramble to keep diplomas in the right order.

18.

REMOVING THE GOWN, TAKING THE OATH

A particularly moving Commencement tradition happens when a senior military officer goes to the podium. Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) grads — 30 this past June — remove their cap and gown, stand in military headwear and uniform, and accept their commissions as officers.

19.

ONE UNIVERSITY, MANY SPECIAL MOMENTS

Graduates of OSU-Cascades follow the bagpipes in a ceremony in Bend, while across the Corvallis campus before and after the main Commencement ceremony, groups of graduates gather for special moments together. 

OSU Ecampus typically has brought together its graduates-to-be in the Valley Library Rotunda — or, more recently, at the MU — on Commencement morning. Some students are meeting their professors and seeing the campus in person for the first time. 

Outside one of these gatherings a few years ago, a young mother in cap and gown took photo after photo of the surroundings, including an old-style lamppost outside Kerr Hall, as her parents stood nearby, each holding one of her children. Asked what she was doing, the soon-to-be Ecampus grad said, “This is my university, and I’ve never seen it before!”

—Kevin Miller, ’78

The news reached the Omaha Room overlooking Goss Stadium at Coleman Field on July 14: the Cleveland Guardians had made Oregon State second baseman Travis Bazzana the No. 1 overall pick of the Major League Baseball draft. His family, teammates and friends erupted in celebration.

“The moment was kind of crazy,” Bazzana told reporters. “As soon as it hit, it was like something exploded. Everyone kind of jumped up around me. … It’s just one of those moments — such a crazy moment — that you can’t really put into words because it would kind of understate it. It was amazing.”

It was a big week for Beaver baseball: days later, Adley Rutschman, ’20, and Steven Kwan — both members of OSU’s 2018 national championship team — started for the American League in the MLB All-Star Game.

Bazzana’s selection gave Oregon State a notable distinction as the only school with first-round draft picks this year by Major League Baseball, National Football League and Major League Soccer teams. Offensive lineman Taliese Fuaga was the 14th overall pick by the NFL’s New Orleans Saints, and forward Logan Farrington was the third overall pick by FC Dallas of MLS.

“Oregon State has been, and always will be, a place where student-athletes can learn, grow and develop in their respective sports,” Oregon State Vice President and Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Scott Barnes said. “Logan Farrington, Taliese Fuaga and Travis Bazzana are perfect examples of individuals who put in the work to have the opportunity to play professionally at the highest level.

“We also have five former Beaver student-athletes, one current coach and current gymnast Jade Carey participating at the Olympics this summer,” he continued, “proving that Oregon State has excellent coaching, facilities and resources to compete with the very best in the world.”

Bazzana was a consensus first-team All-American in 2024, batting .407 with a school-record 28 home runs and setting Beaver career records in numerous categories, including hits, home runs, runs scored and stolen bases. Bazzana’s selection made OSU one of only four schools in the nation with at least two No. 1 overall selections in the MLB draft. Rutschman was the top pick in 2019.

Fuaga was the first-ever OSU offensive lineman selected in the NFL’s first round. He was named to multiple All-America first teams in 2023 and was a two-time All-Pac-12 selection.

Farrington was the third Beaver men’s soccer player ever taken among the top three picks in the MLS SuperDraft. He scored 15 goals in 2023, earning All-America honors and helping Oregon State into the national semifinals.

When Oregon Staters watched the Pac-12 Conference disintegrate this summer, leaving OSU and Washington State alone in the wreck­age, it seem­ed unprecedented: A solid part of the sporting world had crumbled. But Beavers have gone through this before.

In the late 1950s, a series of events led to the dissolution of the Pac-12’s predecessor — the Pacific Coast Conference — leaving Oregon State without a conference home for five consecutive years.

The PCC included eight of the 12 universities involved in the realignment happening now. Many issues that roiled intercollegiate athletics then are still at play, from paying players to market sizes, to money in general.

The particulars of the PCC dissolution and the Pac-12 breakup aren’t identical: the PCC situation involved dramatic differences in institutional philosophies on governing intercollegiate athletics, and the money issue was more about ticket sales than television revenue. But the result was the same: Decades of history and tradition among the West Coast’s highest-profile universities were tossed aside as a conference splintered. Then and now, an Oregon State football program that had gained national prominence was left to face an uncertain future.

The parallels offer interesting insights into the situation Beavers find themselves in today.

SCANDALS AND SUBTERFUGE

The dominoes of the PCC’s demise began falling in 1951, when University of Oregon head coach Jim Aiken was forced to resign because he’d been compensating players and using a “Football 101” class as extra practice time.

That set off a chain reaction of allegations and dismissals. In January 1956, the University of Washington fired head coach John Cherberg; burning bridges as he left, Cherberg told the press about a booster group that paid Husky players. A round robin of finger-pointing ensued. Universities accused one other of providing outlawed extra benefits to football players, including fake work programs in which they were paid to do nothing. (At that time, the PCC did not allow athletic scholarships, while many other conferences did.) By 1957, numerous student-athletes had been declared ineligible and the conference had penalized the Univer­sity of Washington, UCLA, University of Southern California and UC Berkeley (California) with bowl bans and fines.

We wanted students playing at athletics, not athletes playing as students.

---

The PCC was known as a conference that strongly valued academics above athletics, investing governing authority in its faculty athletic representatives — one faculty member from each school — rather than the athletic directors or presidents and chancellors.

“We wanted students playing at athletics, not athletes playing as students,” said Robert Sproul, UC Berkeley’s president from 1930 to 1952 and the president of the entire University of California system from 1952 to 1958.

But some fans and many in the press, particularly in Southern California, wanted to loosen the grip of the academic side. One of the leaders of the PCC’s faculty athletic representatives, the University of Oregon’s Orlando Hollis, was villainized by Los Angeles media and referred to as “Orlando Hollis, Avenging Angel and well-known inventor of unworkable athletic codes” by Ned Cronin of the Los Angeles Times.

College football historian Mark Schipper put it this way in an August interview with Portland journalist John Canzano: “The football powers saw the big stage — major-college football — while schools like Oregon, Oregon State, Washington State and, at that time, Idaho saw a much lower ceiling and wanted to bring the big powers down to their level.”

The conference’s larger schools were also weary of smaller Northwest schools receiving more ticket revenue from their away games than they were giving to the larger schools when they played in Corvallis, Pullman and Eugene. In 1957, after USC, UCLA and California announced their intention to depart the PCC, Sports Illustrated magazine observed: “The ostensible reason for the schools’ withdrawal was the refusal of the PCC to approve their athletic policies. A more likely reason lies in the ABCs of fiscal football: the University of Michigan or, say, Oklahoma is a much better bet to fill the 100,000-plus seats in Los Angeles Coliseum than Oregon State or Washington State. After June 30, 1959, when California’s withdrawal becomes effective, the three California colleges can freely schedule the colossi of the South and Midwest to the pleasing whir of turnstiles.”

Not as big a factor as ticket sales, but quickly making inroads, was television. The first sports color telecast took place in 1951, moving sports into a whole new age. Oregon State President A.L. Strand noted in the December 1954 Oregon Stater: “Our budgets have become so dependent on such things as Rose Bowl and TV receipts that athletic directors shudder at the mere thought of losing that source of easy dollars.”

As football historian Schipper commented: “In many ways it is slightly different circumstances but a direct parallel to what’s happening today out West.” 

Any attempt to drive a wedge between Oregon State College and The University of Oregon would only hurt us both.

THE CONFERENCE BREAKS APART

By 1957, the four California schools and big-city Washington were making noises about forming their own conference, one run without interference from faculty representatives. In December 1957, PCC Commissioner Victor Schmidt — charged with enforcing the harsh penalties the faculty athletic representatives had levied — resigned under fire.

Not long after that, President Strand wrote UW President Henry Schmitz, acknowledging the differences between Oregon State and Washington in size and setting, but noting that as a founding member of the conference, Oregon State had a right to be heard. Strand’s letter (provided by former University of Idaho archivist Ben Camp) sounds as if it could have been written in the past year:

“The conference was formed, like all other such organizations, on a geographic basis and the intervening years have not changed that strong factor in bringing the institutions together,” he wrote. “Air travel has greatly extended the range of football teams, but basketball, baseball, track, swimming, tennis and golf are still beholden to geographic limitations. All of these sports, which are minor to football, are important to our athletic programs and any disruption to them will be seriously felt by all our institutions …. In the long run, don’t your fortunes lie with your friends in the north?”

Other animosities were also at play within the conference. In Games Colleges Play, author John Thelin writes that in the last decade of the PCC, “intercollegiate football became the vehicle that drove other political agendas in higher education, including power struggles within the University of California (between Cal and UCLA), keen campus rivalries within the city of Los Angeles, and pride that pitted California against the states of Oregon and Washington.”

The schisms had grown too large, and on Aug. 10, 1958, in Portland — where Oregon State, Oregon, Washington and California had formed the conference in 1915 — the PCC unanimously voted to dissolve after the 1958–59 season. Almost immediately, USC, UCLA, California and Washington formed the Athletic Association of  Western Universities, which Stanford joined soon thereafter. (Rumor had it, Oregon State was to be invited as well. See “When one wouldn’t leave the other,” for more about how the Oregon schools ended up sticking together.)

Members of the new AAWU declined a strong central authority. In lieu of the oversight they so disliked, they would be expected to adhere to a sort of honor code when it came to NCAA regulations. Glenn Seaborg, the UC chancellor, summed up the new process in Sports Illustrated: “If a member institution has reason to believe that another is violating either the letter or spirit of [the new rules], it may undertake to resolve the differences by discussion with that institution … You might say a man-to-man challenge.”

The changes left Oregon State, which had won or shared the last two PCC football titles, without a conference. Competing as an independent in the early 1960s, the Beavers experienced one of the golden eras in the university’s athletic history, highlighted by Terry Baker’s 1962 Heisman Trophy and a Liberty Bowl victory; men’s basketball’s three NCAA tournament appearances and spot in the 1963 Final Four; the 1961 NCAA cross country championship; and baseball finishing in the national rankings in 1962 and 1963.

In 1962, Washington State was invited to join the AAWU, but OSU and Oregon were still on the outside. On March 31, 1964, the announcement came that the Beavers and Ducks would rejoin their former conference mates that summer and be eligible for the Rose Bowl beginning that fall. Indeed, the Beavers took the 1964 AAWU crown and earned a berth in the 1965 Rose Bowl.

A History of OSU’s Sport Conferences

All photos courtesy of OSU Special Collections and Archives.

1915: Oregon State forms the Pacific Coast Conference with UO, UW and California. Competition begins the next year. 

1957–58: Oregon State wins back-to-back PCC football titles, going to the Rose Bowl in 1957 and tying for the title the following season. 

1959–63: After the PCC dissolves, OSU thrives as an independent school: winning championships in cross country; finishing in the national baseball rankings in 1962 and 1963; and appearing in three NCAA men’s basketball tournaments and the 1963 Final Four. 

1964: OSU earns a berth in the Rose Bowl the Beavers’ first year in the Athletic Association of Western Universities. (The name is officially changed to the Pacific-8 in 1968.) 

1980–82: Oregon State’s “Orange Express” wins three consecutive Pacific-10 men’s basketball titles, breaking UCLA’s string of 13 straight championships.

1986: The conference expands to include women’s sports. OSU wins its first Pac-10 women’s gymnastics title in 1991, the first of four in a six-year stretch.

2000: OSU is part of a three- way tie for the Pac-10 football championship. Beavers beat Notre Dame 41-9 in the Jan. 1, 2001, Fiesta Bowl. 

2015: OSU wins the Pac-12 women’s basketball championship, the first of three in a row for the Beavers. In 2016, OSU also wins the conference tournament.

2018: OSU wins its third NCAA Division I Baseball National Championship, defeating Arkansas in the 2018 College World Series.

2023: The Pac-12 collapses. Only OSU and WSU will remain in the “Pac-2” as of the summer of 2024. 

LOOKING BACK TO LOOK FORWARD

President Strand’s 65-year-old writings offer a perspective that might be useful to Oregon Staters viewing an uncertain future.

In the summer of 1958, Idaho President Donald Theophilus wrote the presidents of other Northwest schools urging continued scheduling ties among them; Strand responded in the affirmative, and then added:

“I’ll tell you what I think is going to happen. Some of the California institutions, particularly those in LA, will have their fling. Last night there was a UP [United Press] dispatch in the local paper. Its origin was Los Angeles. It gloated over the demise of the PCC. Now, it said, the large institutions with large stadiums can really make some money out of football …. Cal, Stanford and Washington can likewise fill their stadiums. How wonderful this will be ….”

Noting that potential discord among California schools might crack the new alignment, Strand concluded: “Nevertheless, this super-colossal virus will have to be attenuated and that will take time. After that, maybe, there’ll be hope for a new organization … Calm your fears, brother; just sit back and watch the show. It’s going to be good.”

WHEN ONE WOULDN’T LEAVE THE OTHER

While many of Oregon State President A.L. Strand’s remarks in the late 1950s seem relevant today, there’s at least one issue where his words no longer ring true — the Oregon schools’ commitment to stay together.

When talk heated up in 1957 about the four California schools and Washington leaving the PCC, Oregon State’s stature had risen, thanks to football Head Coach Tommy Prothro Jr., who guided the Beavers to the 1956 PCC title and a berth in the 1957 Rose Bowl. Word was that if the conference broke apart, Oregon State College — and not the University of Oregon — might be included in the new grouping.

Ted Carlson, ’50, then editor of the Oregon Stater, heard talk both inside OSC and from contacts at other institutions that the PCC might expel the University of Oregon in retribution for faculty athletic representative Orlando Hollis’ role in the conference cheating investigation.

Carlson wasn’t opposed to the idea of OSC making the leap alone and said as much in the Oregon Stater: “Our teams are solid and strong. Our teams are representative of the largest school in the state. Naturally we like to meet the best competition we can.” That resulted in the Oregon Journal publishing a story with a banner headline reading “OSC Alumni Paper Snubs UO.”

In response, President Strand told the Journal, “Any attempt to drive a wedge between Oregon State College and the University of Oregon would only hurt us both. I wish to make it clear that I repudiate most of the things in the article.”

The article earned Carlson a trip to Strand’s office. After a long career teaching journalism at OSU, he is now 96 and living in Lake Oswego. “He admonished me a little bit,” Carlson recollects. When the Pac-12 story broke this fall, he was struck by the differences between then and now. “Here President Strand was going to stick together, which he did. Old loyal Oregon State.”

As a university president, does optimism play a part in your work? The future belongs to the hopeful — the future belongs to the optimists — because they’re the only ones who can think and plan and make things happen. I don’t think you can ever inspire anybody unless you bring hope and energy. And so, there is no successful leader who is not an optimist.

When faced with challenging times, is there something from your past that you draw on to help you stay motivated? I come from a family of pessimists. I’m joking, of course, but not entirely. The reason was that growing up in India at that time, a lot wasn’t in your control. The U.S. is a country of optimists, a country of open frontiers. Not so everywhere, and not so particularly in societies where that forward arc of progress is not always evident. The people I grew up with, the adults I grew up with, were constantly planning for things to go bust. You had to secure yourself against the possibility of things falling apart because they could. The way they dealt with everyday setbacks and uncertainties was with a certain kind of dark humor. I, too, deal with a lot of everyday stuff through humor. Without, it would just become too much.

It does seem essentially optimistic to go to a different country. I agree. I think if you didn’t have hope and you didn’t have ambition, there would be no reason to take such a huge risk. Of course, I was young and didn’t understand some of the risks, which was also helpful. But for me, optimism really came when I arrived in this country and suddenly realized, oh my gosh, there’s a different way of thinking. I’ve always been a dreamer and wanted to do things, and suddenly I found a place that had that kind of orientation. That’s what optimism brings — this control over your future.

It’s interesting just how many people in our community are tackling problems that might seem unsolvable. I was just thinking the other day that doers have to be optimists. Why would you be looking for solutions if you weren’t? Our community’s orientation is toward workable, translatable solutions. If you weren’t an optimist, none of that would be possible. All problem solvers have to be optimists.

We’re headed into a contentious election season. What role do you think OSU has in fostering democracy? I’ve been thinking about this a lot, particularly with respect to the Israel-Hamas war protests that have been going on. Our university is full of passionate and idealistic young people, and that is a good thing. They want OSU to make statements in support of the things they believe in. I get that, too. But we’ve declined to do that, and for very good reasons. Universities have a very particular role that no other institution has in our society. We want the collision of ideas, we want uncomfortable conversations — and from these collisions, for new ideas and approaches to emerge. If you don’t allow that to happen, then I think the university isn’t fulfilling its mission. 

As a land-grant university, we are a big mixture of urban and rural, and that brings together very different political viewpoints, cultural values and histories — all valid because they come out of the lived experiences of human beings. It’s a particularly rich mixture of ideas, and it is ripe for productive collisions. If those can be managed carefully, if we allow ourselves to speak and to listen, then what can come out of it can be truly valuable. That’s the thing that we’re trying to preserve.

I think what our alumni should know is that we enter into these debates, into this time of contention, with a framing that reaffirms our principles as a university. We’ve been thinking deeply in terms of how we should respond to huge world events, huge events happening in our own country. We must reaffirm our most fundamental principles, which are to be a beacon of free speech, academic freedom and free expression, and to leave the arena of debate open so that everyone can speak and be heard.

What makes you hopeful? It’s commencement season now, and if there’s anything that makes me hopeful, it’s got to be commencement. I mean, just the idea that a young person comes into this institution at 18 years old and then leaves knowing things, having achieved adulthood, achieved competency, achieved maturity. They go out into the world and become creative builders of the future. If there’s no hope in that, then there’s no hope anywhere. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Maybe the whorls of hormones adrift in the air are to blame. Or maybe it’s the sudden freedom away from home, or the sheer disorienting unfamiliarity of being at college — whatever the case, for many undergraduates, entering college also means joining that great human search for someone to hold.

Since the late 1800s at Oregon State, there’s even been a tree dedicated to the cause. In 1901, a gray poplar just southeast of Community Hall, formerly known as Benton Hall, became known as the Trysting Tree because students found it a relatively private place for after-hours rendezvous. (Maybe too private, the Board of Regents decided in 1898, training two bright lights on its branches. “The tree seemed to have magical effects on the students, especially in the springtime,” the Daily Barometer, then the Co-Ed Barometer, reported in 1923.)

The name stuck. And though the gray poplar that remains is not the original — it was cut down and replaced due to disease — the tree that still bears the title has watched over everything from romantic entanglements to marriage proposals.

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that a campus with a landmark dedicated to student love has served as both a catalyst and a backdrop for the never ending drama of dating. Throughout Oregon State’s history, its places and practices have shaped and sparked countless love stories. This is a story about those stories.

In the beginning, it wasn’t always easy to find ways to fan romantic flames on campus. In fact, the university went to lengths to make it quite difficult.

“All communications between ladies and gentlemen on the College premises are expressly forbidden,” reads the 1881-1882 general catalog. Social interactions between the sexes were strictly regulated in Oregon during that period, and the college campus was no different. So it remained for some 70 years to follow.

“It was the nature of society at the time — anything having to do with sex was just verboten,” says Larry Landis, former director of OSU’s Special Collections and Archives Research Center. “I think that extended to anything that could be construed as a romantic interaction between men and women who attended the college.”

Breaking those rules could have serious consequences, ranging from demerits (100 of which amounted to a dismissal) to outright expulsion. In 1926, George Oppen, who would become a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, asked Mary Colby out. “We drove out into the country, sat and talked, made love, and talked until morning,” Mary writes in her autobiography, Meaning a Life. “I was expelled from the college for coming in past the dormitory curfew.” Consequences tended to be more severe for women: George faced only suspension, but he chose to withdraw from school to remain with Mary.

The college did soften its original “no fraternizing” stance, however, to create venues and events where students could socialize under supervision. Starting in 1897, sanctioned campus dances were especially important. These were often elaborate, rigorously produced and put on in collaboration with Oregon State’s military department. (At this time, all male students received military training.) Picture cadets in smart uniforms, women with dance cards — small booklets with space to pencil in the dance partner for each waltz or two-step or polka — tied around their wrists, and faculty chaperones keeping careful watch. Until about 1967, when dance cards fell out of use, they remained important keepsakes, serving as a written record of first dances and fateful nights.

George & Mary Oppen

“Parked in the fields / All night / So many years ago, / We saw / A lake beside us / When the moon rose.” So begins “The Forms of Love,” the poet George Oppen’s lyrical account of his first date with Mary Colby, whom he met in an English class at Oregon State College in 1926. They stayed out all night. Upon returning to campus in the morning, having broken curfew, Mary was expelled. George was merely suspended, but he, too, left the college; they moved to San Francisco, married, and remained together for the rest of their lives. They hitchhiked across the United States; started a small press in France; organized unions during the Great Depression; and wrote. In 1969, George received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection Of Being Numerous. As Mary writes in Meaning a Life: “Young George and Mary, or George and Mary now — so long as it is George and Mary it is life as I have known and lived it, as we have known and lived it.”

Photo by Stephen Johnson

In 1905, the first Greek organization, the fraternity Gamma Delta Phi, earned a permanent charter at OSU. Alpha Chi Omega followed as the university’s first national sorority in 1915. Women were absolutely prohibited from going into fraternity houses without a chaperone, but fraternities and sororities co-hosted their own mixers and dances.

Over the following decades, dances multiplied and became more playful. Mortar Board, an honorary club for senior women, hosted an annual event called the Reversia Dance, in which “strong men shudder, play coy and in general, act like they think the women have acted,” according to the 1953 yearbook. Women asked men to the dance, gifted them massive corsages that blossomed extravagantly over their lapels, and paid their dates’ way. “The purpose of this dance,” the yearbook continues, “is unknown to the men who attend, but everyone enjoys it just the same.”

The coed code offered advice for what to do if a swooning suitor showed up to express his love through song.

And then there was “fussing” — slang for dating. The campus-wide obsession with dating is evidenced by the fact that the student directory itself was known as the Fusser’s Guide. An analog face book long before there was Facebook, it contained the names, addresses, phone numbers and even, for a period, the marital status of everyone on campus. (In keeping with the theme, the covers of many in the 1940s came adorned with cupids and hearts.) 

Most first meetings would have taken place publicly. Students didn’t have personal phones in their rooms, so prospective suitors had to figure out where the other person lived, call and request to speak to them. (You can imagine how giggles might have spread down the dormitory hall when a young woman was summoned to the phone.) 

To understand the fateful matchups the book could produce, one need look no further than Ray Hewitt, ’71, and Janet Schamber, ’69. As winter break drew to a close in 1968, Hewitt paged through the Fusser’s Guide, calling girls who lived near his parents’ Idaho home to see if they might need a ride back to campus. The result? A 53-year-long (and counting) marriage.

The Fusser’s Guide kept its name into the ’70s, well after the term fell out of use. “That was just the name of the publication,” says Mary Jo (Casciato) Binker, ’73, who edited the Fusser’s Guide as a journalism and communications student. “No one I knew used that term to talk about dating.”

The idea that romantic intrigue would play out on campus, and warnings about how it might go wrong, were also baked into the student code of conduct. “LEST YOU FORGET,” proclaims the 1920 Rook Bible in its orientation for new students, “YOU MUST NEVER … Fuss at athletic events. Fuss on weeknights.” Apparently mixing dating and sports was especially off limits because it could distract from rooting for the Beavers.

David & Mary Lou Wagner

When David and Mary Lou Wagner married in 2017, it was not the first time they had gotten together. They actually first dated back in 1955, when Mary Lou, ’57, was a dance instructor at the Memorial Union and David, ’56, was her student. Things seemed to be going well — until the summer, when something went sideways. David, who had gone home to Aurora, called Mary Lou down in Boulder, Colorado, and when she came on the line, “It was a flat phone call,” he says. “It was like, ‘Huh, what happened?’” The relationship was over, but he never forgot her. More than 50 years later, after they each had been married twice, David reached out, reigniting their old flame. At first, they just spent hours on the phone; David called Mary Lou mornings on his commute to Salem, where he works as a physician. (When David told his son and daughters that he was dating Mary Lou, they were ecstatic. “One of them almost knocked me over,” he says.) Seven years ago, they married. Asked what had changed in their relationship more than 50 years on, David says, “No more flat phone calls.” They live up in what’s now Wilsonville, on the site of David’s family farm. And they’re regular attendees at Oregon State baseball games.

Courtesy of David and Mary Lou Wagner

The Co-Ed Code, a handbook for women students, gave guidance for how one might respond to romantic advances. “Now here’s the part of your ‘private affair’ you’ve probably been dreaming about — dating,” says the 1949 handbook. It reeled off “popular boy-and-girl functions,” including lectures, movies, concerts, church events and dinners. Importantly, it offered advice for what to do if a swooning suitor showed up to express his love through song — namely, if it’s not your serenade, then mind your own business. Serenading was a very public part of certain Greek pinning ceremonies, in which a fraternity member gave his girlfriend a pin as an emblem of his devotion. (For decades, the Daily Barometer included a “Pins and Rings” column.)

“As soon as you hear a serenade, you should be absolutely quiet,” the Co-Ed Code instructs. “Turn out your lights at once.” What if it’s an “improperly conducted serenade,” perhaps with a singer drawing courage from copious amounts of alcohol? These “should receive an attitude of complete indifference in an effort to curb them.”

Sometimes, life at Oregon State aligned with — and was quickly changed by — larger, national social phenomena. Following World War II, the university experienced an influx of veterans and married students. Birth control was legalized for married couples in 1965 and then for all Americans in 1972. College campuses became focal points for civil rights activism in the ’60s and ’70s. There was the Vietnam War and the countercultural movement. All of this had a profound impact on student life. Codes of conduct and dress codes relaxed. Modesty-maintaining rules for women’s attire dropped from the student handbook in 1970, and co-ed dorms were established soon after.

“There were a lot of overhanging traditions that were kind of going by the wayside because it was a different era,” says Binker, who attended Oregon State from 1969 to 1973. The atmosphere trended toward giving women more agency, including in their relationships; at the same time, she noticed that there was still strong pressure to couple up: “Even with all that broader political, social change,” she says, “the actual way things played out, people wanted to find somebody and to get married.”

Ellen & Carolyn Dishman

It was about a week into the winter term of their first year. Ellen Weigant and Carolyn Dishman had just moved in together — as roommates — when they realized there was a spark. This made things a little complicated: neither had been especially aware that they were queer, and the late ’90s campus climate was not especially welcoming of same-sex relationships. Eventually, they became leading figures in the movement to establish a queer cultural center on campus. “I do think that it brought us closer together, to work so hard to accomplish something,” Ellen says. It must have helped fuel their determination to marry, too, which they did four separate times due to the vicissitudes of Oregon same-sex marriage laws. After the Oregon Supreme Court overturned an earlier constitutional amendment, Ellen and Carolyn gave it another try in 2014. “That one stuck,” Ellen says.

Courtesy of Ellen and Carolyn Dishman

It’s also worth pointing out the implicit assumption, demonstrated across a range of traditions and practices, that romantic relationships would develop between men and women largely excluding Oregon State’s queer students. Dating among men and women “was very public on purpose,” said Natalia Fernandez, curator of the OSU Queer Archives, “whereas in this community, it was private for so many reasons, whether it was people were being actively discriminated against [or] people were still figuring out identities for themselves.”

After all, consensual same-sex sexual activity was illegal in Oregon until 1972. Well into the ’90s, the decade of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act, gay rights were still furiously debated in op-eds in the Daily Barometer: “How anyone can call love perverted or immoral is beyond me,” one student wrote in response to a conservative piece published in 1992. “Who cares whether people in love are of opposite genders or the same?”

How anyone can call love perverted or immoral is beyond me.

But queer students began carving out more space for themselves on campus in the ’70s. With the emergence of organized national civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights movements, students were increasingly organizing around identity, according to Cindy Konrad, the director of Oregon State’s Pride Center. In 1973, the Women’s Center opened and became “a real focal point for LGBT people,” Konrad says; four years later, students established the first LGBT club to gain university recognition.

Nancy & Gregory Buechler

Picture this: a rainy December evening, typical of a western Oregon winter, 1982. Nancy Ford, ’85, is waiting in her all-women’s dorm for her floor’s scheduled meeting with residents of an all-men’s dorm for what they called a “Cinderella Dinner.” “The ladies participating each threw a shoe into a box,” Nancy explains, “which was dutifully carried across the street, where your dinner date was based on who chose your shoe.” That night, Nancy, then a sophomore, was wearing cowboy boots. Gregory Buechler, ’85, spotted the boot amid all the tennis shoes and was intrigued. They talked all through dinner. They have been married for 38 years.

Courtesy of Nancy and Gregory Buechler

In 1999, Carolyn and Ellen (Weigant) Dishman, who had recently begun dating, started attending meetings of OSU’s queer student group, soon known as the Rainbow Continuum. After a meeting, they took note each time they spotted other gay students — taking comfort in seeing their relationship reflected elsewhere in the student body. “It was like a celebrity sighting on campus for us,” Ellen says. “Like, ‘There’s somebody like me right there.’”

In 2000, members of the Rainbow Continuum began lobbying to create the Queer Resource Center. On March 14, 2001, more than 350 people piled into the Memorial Union ballroom to observe a Student Fees Committee hearing. The committee voted unanimously in favor of the proposal, approving a $7,000 budget. In 2004, the building became the Pride Center.

The center, and queer student clubs before it, were part of an effort by students to make these relationships more visible, and to normalize them on campus. In the process, it became a place not only for community and connection, but also where love sometimes bloomed, Konrad says.

Heather & Sam Davidson

In October 1979, Sam Davidson, ’83, posted a notice in the corridor of Bloss Hall: He would draw your portrait for $5. Heather Cudd, ’82, took him up on the offer. They sat in Sam’s room, talking and listening to Springsteen’s Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. They became friends — and eventually dated and got engaged. “We were happily in love for about six months, and then I messed things up,” Heather says. “I was young and immature, not ready for marriage, and panicked, breaking the whole thing off.” Nearly 30 years later, a mutual friend suggested that Heather should try to track Sam down. She sent a birthday card. He replied with his phone number. Cut to the next summer, when they married — “best friends and soulmates reunited,” Heather says.

Courtesy of Heather and Sam Davidson

Before social media, there was the Daily Barometer. In the ’70s, and to an even greater extent in the ’80s, the newspaper published personal ads in its classified section. Students bought space to trade coy, romantic missives, addressing each other by initials or nicknames and even writing rhyming couplets. They might profess admiration or slyly reference a recent date.

Dating apps in general, they’re everywhere. I don’t think there’s a whole lot of meeting people organically.

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“It’s kind of public flirting,” says Kevin Miller, ’78, the former editor of the Oregon Stater and the Daily Barometer. “Imagine if there was a Tinder, but you had to post on a big wall in the middle of the campus.”

The trend reached a fever pitch around Valentine’s Day. One night, a young man desperate for the right words sought help from several Barometer staff members, Miller recalls. As the deadline for the Feb. 14 edition approached, the man paced the newspaper’s office — his fate in the writers’ hands.

Issac Magana & Christian Matheis

“Instantly, I was just kind of awestruck,” says Christian Matheis, ’01, M.A. ’04, recalling the first time he met Isaac Magaña, ’04, on the fourth floor of Bloss Hall in 1999. Isaac, on the other hand, had no idea Christian was interested: “I was completely oblivious,” he says. Over the next few months, each started devising more excuses to see the other until, at the annual Residential Life Casino Night, they became a couple. They were the first domestic partnership in Benton County, and, due to administrative issues in Multnomah County, possibly in the entire state. Later, they chose not to marry: “Our love is too big for marriage,” Christian says.

Courtesy of Issac Magana & Christian Matheis

The results of labors of love like this live forever in the Barometer archives. Witness February 1982, from Sociology Tom to Lori Johnson: “I think you’re sweet, I think you’re cute, I’m lousy at poetry, so how about dinner?” February 1983, amid two full pages of personal ads, from a secret admirer to John T. Green: “From time to time / Our paths have crossed / One look at you and / My heart was lost.” February 1984, in “Love & Bodily Fondleness” from RB to Muff: “It’s not enough to be my creampuff, be my Valentine too!”

Already, courtship had gone from something conducted entirely in public, under supervision, to something that was more dispersed and individual. Formal dances had been supplanted as a main mode of socializing; instead, students were more likely to meet and form relationships — romantic or otherwise — in clubs, classes or study groups. Future spouses Lori, ’85, and Jen-Hsun Huang, ’84, ’09 (Hon. Ph.D.), now the president and CEO of the tech company NVIDIA, met as lab partners. “I tried to impress her — not with my looks, of course, but with my strong capability to complete homework,” Huang told the New Yorker in 2023.

Chad & Pamela Parlow

The first time Chad Parlow, ’99, asked out Pamela Perkins, ’00, to whom he’s now been married for 20 years, it didn’t go so well. “Would you like to go get a coffee?” he asked. “I don’t like coffee,” she replied. Undeterred, Chad countered: “You can get something else to drink besides coffee.” Pamela still didn’t bite. “I have a drink right here,” she said. Chad trudged back to his dorm defeated— but when he saw her in the hallway a week later, he thought he’d try one more time. He invited her to a party; this time, she said yes. As an engineer, she’s “nothing if not literal,” Chad says now. “She didn’t realize I was trying to ‘ask her out.’”

Courtesy of Chad & Pamela Parlow

The advent of the internet wrought another change. It “provided opportunities for those who were more introverted, who needed another communication vehicle through which they can express themselves,” says Larry Roper, VP for Student Affairs at Oregon State from 1995 to 2014.

“It’s hard to recall the large number of students with whom I spoke who had never dated before they came to college,” Roper says. With a laugh, he adds: “It was always this, ‘How do I meet somebody? And, how do I ask somebody to go on a date with me?’ The expectation was, if I’m ever going to find anybody, this is where I have to do it.”

Though a fall 2023 survey by Axios and Generation Lab found that a majority of college-age students in relationships met in person, rather than through a screen, Emma Coke says that in her experience, dating apps rule on campus. “They’re everywhere,” says Coke, the editor-in-chief of the Beaver’s Digest, Oregon State’s undergraduate lifestyle magazine. “I don’t think there’s a whole lot of meeting people organically.”

Sometimes, she says, her friends ask her to “play Tinder” — swiping through the app on their behalf, since she is already in a relationship. This February, the Beaver’s Digest published an issue devoted to romantic relationships, including stories about hookup culture (“still super prevalent”), dating long-distance, sexual health and more.

Many students see college as “the time when they’re on their own and they have to create their own life and their own future,” Roper says. “For some people, a partner is part of that.”

No matter how they started, lasting love stories whose opening lines were written in the student years are now interwoven with OSU’s history, as evidenced by the tens of thousands of couples in the alumni database — as well as alumni who reconnect later in life.

This is an OSU love story: Its protagonists are roommates and lab partners, members of study groups, dance classes and extracurricular field trips. It’s the shy approach and the brave request that a potential partner hold a spot on their figurative dance card for you. It’s to nestle beneath the boughs of the Trysting Tree, on the side away from the bright lights, and to thumb the pages of the Fusser’s Guide, searching for the one who caught your gaze.

Kameron & Hannah Kadooka

Kameron Kadooka, ’12, hadn’t officially started his first year at Oregon State, but he already had a crush. The setting was McAlexander Fieldhouse; the woman who’d caught his eye, Hannah McMahon, ’12, a peer in the outdoor leadership program Footsteps. Throughout his first year, they spent hours together as friends — including an outing to Waldo Hall to hunt for the residence’s famed ghost. “Hannah ended up accidentally giving me a fat lip after I tried to scare her,” Kameron says. They finally started dating senior year. When he proposed, it was in McAlexander. “I thought it was fitting to start the rest of our lives together right where it all started,” he says. 

Courtesy of Kameron and Hannah Kadooka

Cheers and jubilation rang out in Bercy Arena as Jade Carey (at center) celebrated with teammates Jordan Chiles, Sunisa Lee and Simone Biles on July 30 after winning the artistic gymnastics team gold at the Paris Olympics. Carey battled through sickness to earn the team medal, as well as an individual bronze in vault — a welcome redemption after she stumbled during that event in 2021. When added to her Tokyo Olympics gold medal in floor exercise, this brings Carey’s Olympic and World Championship medal total to 10. She is the fifth most-decorated U.S. female gymnast of all time and an eight-time All-American. Carey holds multiple OSU records. She alone accounts for one-third of all the “perfect 10” scores earned for gymnastic performances in school history. To top it off,  she was named to the Academic All-America First team.

A robot might not be an obvious choice to lead a meditation session — after all, what could an artificial “mind” know about mindfulness? — but take a moment to visualize this: Warm light filters through the windows of OSU’s Marigold Center, the home of the Contemplative Studies Initiative. At the room’s center is Heather Knight, assistant professor of computer science, and her robot Theora — four feet tall, sleek white, 65 pounds, mindfulness guru. “Turn your attention to the night sky,” Theora says, “envisioning the moon as a powerful motherboard radiating cosmic energy.” Knight, along with an interdisciplinary team of graduate students, has programmed Theora to use large-language models to guide and respond to human meditation practices. (Knight’s work often pairs performing arts with robotics; she also runs a bot theater company called Marilyn Monrobot.) This workshop, in June 2024, was the last in a series of six designed to coincide with each month’s new moon. Next up? A robot meditation retreat (for humans).

The social distancing dots outside grocery stores are peeling. Shortages of toilet paper, baby formula and yeast are no more. The daily recounting of casualties is done. But even as the worst of the pandemic recedes into the rearview mirror, the fact is that four years ago the world changed. Oregon State’s public service-minded researchers and outreach specialists remain focused on learning from all we went through. From lasting changes to the way classes are taught to inventive ways to protect our health as a community, here’s a look at some of the lessons.

1.

FLEXIBILITY MAKES COLLEGE CLASSES BETTER

When the nation hunkered down in March 2020, nearly 2,000 OSU faculty members had two weeks to reboot spring term courses in fully remote mode. The Center for Teaching and Learning and its partners consulted with hundreds of faculty, while Ecampus and its nationally renowned team of instructional designers scaled up training and extended their expertise to the entire faculty.

Most faculty members knew of and had even used the Canvas online learning management system, but suddenly it and Zoom were the hub of nearly all instruction at OSU. When students resisted the less personal approach, many instructors shipped out boxes of materials for hands-on lab activities, while others designed small Zoom breakout room activities where everyone worked to keep the fun in learning.

At first it seemed to work, said Regan A. R. Gurung, associate vice provost and executive director of the Center for Teaching and Learning: “I teach a 400-person class and often can barely see facial features of those in the back. Teaching remotely made every student the same size on my screen and in some ways provided more equal access to me.” But as the pandemic wore on, more students wearied of the format and turned off their cameras. 

Gurung collaborated with more than 40 educators at universities across the country on the book Higher Education Beyond COVID, released in fall 2023. A key takeaway: Faculty and students did better when remote classes were organized but flexible, providing multiple ways for students to learn and engage.

Gurung sees evidence of lasting benefits to the upheaval caused by COVID. Almost all general-purpose classrooms across the Corva-llis campus are now wired and equipped for web collaboration. The Cen-ter for Teaching and Learning is training faculty in new methods that ensure that the system will be more prepared for all sorts of future disruptions, from extreme weather to wildfires.

Many now record classes so students who are sick — or who might benefit from listening to the material again — don’t miss out. Some also still provide live Zoom access so students can participate if they can’t make it in person.

“The pandemic had higher education scrutinize much of what we took for granted, or at the very least, the pedagogical practices that had not changed in a long time,” said Gurung. 

— Siobhan Murray

The pandemic had higher education scrutinize much of what we took for granted, or at the very least, the pedagogical practices that had not changed in a long time.

2.

IN A CRISIS, A LAB IS A LAB

It’s hard to make public health decisions when basic information is scarce. The nation faced the onset of the pandemic with COVID-19 testing supplies and facilities in short supply. But the scientists at the Oregon Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, housed within OSU’s Carlson College of Veterinary Medicine, knew they had the expertise and equipment to serve the people of Oregon as well as their pets.

Many pathogens that affect animals also affect humans — rabies, swine flu and COVID-19 are well-known examples. The OVDL, like other veterinary labs across the country, recognizes the connections between the health of people, animals and the environment. The lab also has the capacity to test at scale, as many pathogens spread rapidly among livestock operations housing thousands of animals.

Early on, when the lab’s leadership reached out to public health officials and offered to help with human COVID-19 testing, “They pretty much poo-pooed the idea because we were ‘just a vet lab’,” said Donna Mulrooney, quality assurance manager for the OVDL.

The lab pushed its case while also applying for, and receiving, a federal certification that allowed it to handle human samples. Oregon’s public health officials were won over, and the OVDL process-ed more than 300,000 PCR tests from across the state. Included were all PCR tests for Oregon State University’s TRACE COVID-19 public health surveillance project. 

— Jens Odegaard

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3.

SOMETIMES ONLINE LEARNING IS ACCESSIBLE LEARNING

Biscuitroots, buttercups, red bells and silver lupine — Rachel Werling, coordinator of the Extension Land Steward Program, often guided groups along the trails of southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley to enjoy these and other wildflowers in the spring. With group hikes shut down by COVID, she posted two wildflower walks online.

The videos have been viewed almost 1,000 times. “Thank you. Thank you,” one viewer wrote. “I am disabled and cannot (yet) hike to see these and I am thrilled to see new and old flower friends. This means so much that when I saw the lupines, I cried!”

Until 2020, the Oregon State University Extension Service relied on in-person outreach for classes, workshops and events. Then COVID-19 led to a boom in virtual attendees from all over the United States and abroad.

When the Oregon City-based Tree School Clackamas — a one-day event about managing and caring for private woodlands — was shut down by the pandemic, the 2020 Tree School Online was born of necessity. The webinars drew more than twice the attendees of the in-person events in 2019. That growth continued into 2021, and the recorded webinars have been watched nearly 17,000 times on YouTube.

Though some parts of in-person classes can’t be beat — it’s not so easy to get hands-on experience using a chainsaw through Zoom — the pandemic dramatically broadened the use of online trainings.

“We learned that the format of Tree School Online worked very well, bringing in a diverse group of speakers, offering live webinars and recording the sessions to make them accessible for future use,” said Glenn Ahrens, M.S. ’90, OSU Extension forester in Clackamas, Hood River and Marion counties.

As it turns out, remote babysitting workshops work well, too. The first year COVID pushed the training online in the Columbia River Gorge, 38 teens earned their Oregon 4-H Babysitter Certificate. In 2022 and 2023, a statewide virtual babysitting workshop certified a total of 368 youths from across the state. 

— Chris Branam

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The next time a highly contagious disease jumps from animals to humans … researchers will not be caught unawares.

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4.

BURNOUT REQUIRES MORE THAN ONE SOLUTION

As the COVID-19 virus swept the nation, boundaries between work and personal life blurred while people worked from makeshift home offices, faced their own or family members’ illness, cared for children and loved ones, and dealt with unpredictable and constantly changing circumstances. Burnout threatened success in all areas.

In the spring of 2020, OSU faculty members Kathy Becker-Blease, Katie Gallagher and Regan A. R. Gurung launched the “Punch Through Pandemics” online course to explore the science of stress and find evidence-based skills for coping. It enrolled 200 OSU students and was offered free to the public, with nearly 4,000 people across the world participating. (See the professors’ tips in the sidebar “Beating Burnout.”)

Among the suggestions: spend time in nature, cultivate plants at home, practice meditation, take walks and engage in other exercise (like cold-water swimming). Gurung remembers a student who shared views from a hike he was on with his class via Zoom. Other students shared art they had created.

Two years into the pandemic, Gurung followed up with the Brightside Project, inviting students and faculty to share essays, memes, poetry, music and more about how they managed the ups and downs of the COVID-19 era. The pieces from that project are archived at OSU’s Valley Library.

People primarily cite rest and relaxation as cures for burnout, but after delving into faculty stories for the book Higher Education Beyond COVID, Inara Scott, senior associate dean in the College of Business and Gomo Family Professor, realized avoiding burnout is not a one-size-fits-all proposition.

“The recommendations I kept hearing — most of which seemed to involve stepping away from work and ‘self-care’ — didn’t seem to hit the mark for me or many people I knew,” said Scott. “My burnout comes when I feel like I’m not making a difference. For my form of burnout, it’s important for me to lean into those experiences that make meaning and help me see the impact of my work on students and faculty.” 

— Siobhan Murray

5.

LEARNING INTERRUPTED BY COVID WON’T GET BETTER ON ITS OWN

The COVID-19 pandemic caused the biggest disruption in the history of American education. Most of Oregon’s 553,000 public school students went without in-person classes for more than a year. Now a $6.9 million federal contract is helping the OSU College of Education build a program known as Equitable Accelerated Learning in K-8 Literacies and Mathematics (or ALK-8). It brings together kindergarten through 8th-grade instructional leaders, OSU education faculty and Oregon Department of Education experts to learn how to support students and teachers as they work to identify and regain what was lost.

“We continue to have larger numbers of students that are not yet reading at grade level compared to pre-pandemic outcomes,” said Chrissy Chapman, director of teaching and learning for the Woodburn School District. She’s part of an ALK-8 working group seeking effective ways to help bilingual students access grade-level content and fill learning gaps. Many children lacked access to necessary technology or internet bandwidth. Online learning also proved extra challenging for students with disabilities and language barriers.

The program now supports 14 working groups comprising nearly 600 teachers, teacher leaders and other educators across 80 Oregon school districts, addressing topics such as using new techniques to teach math and improving how English is taught in multilingual classrooms. The focus is supporting high-quality education statewide.

“The members of the working groups have some of the greatest insight into potential improvements because they are directly connected to designing, refining and implementing solutions to the challenges students and teachers are facing,” said Jana Bouma-Gearhart, associate dean of research for the College of Education. 

In August, the groups will present their ideas at a conference held on the OSU Corvallis campus. All materials and resources they produce will be available to educators through the Oregon Department of Education’s Open Learning Hub.

— Marsh Myers

BEATING BURNOUT

In 2020, Katie Gallagher, coordinator of Oregon State’s Contemplative Studies Program, and Professors Kathy Becker-Blease and Regan A. R. Gurung taught an online class designed to help students and community members cope with pandemic burnout. Here are some of their tips:

• Remember your “why.” Align your time and energy with what is meaningful to you.
• Block out time away from news, technology and social media.
• Practice mindfulness activities, like walking meditations in nature, doodling and listening to calming music. It’s all about taking deep breaths in … and out! (See suggestions here.)
• Make regular time for the important people in your life and show them they’re important.
• Let your self-care activities nour ish you versus being just more “shoulds” on your to-do list. What activity feels like a welcome gift?
• Find small, sincere ways to take stock of, and celebrate, your accomplishments.
• Treat and talk to yourself like you would a good friend— with understanding, generosity and compassion. (Find ways to practice here.)

6.

VETERINARY RESEARCHERS CAN HELP PROTECT US AGAINST FUTURE OUTBREAKS

The next time a highly contagious disease jumps from animals to humans, Carlson College of Veterinary Medicine researchers will not be caught unawares, partly thanks to a two year, $1 million cooperative agreement with the U.S Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to continue work to understand, detect and combat zoonotic diseases. 

Brian Dolan, an associate professor of immunology at the college, leads a team testing wild animal specimens for the virus responsible for COVID-19. They want to learn which animal species can harbor and transmit the virus. They’ll also sequence the viral genome of SARS-CoV-2 whenever they find it to determine whether the strain is related to recent COVID variants spreading among humans or if it has evolved independently through animals.

“There’s always the potential for the virus to establish itself within an animal species permanently, and if that happens, there’s potential for it to be passed around among wild animals and then later spill over into humans,” said Dolan, noting that this unlikely scenario could have disastrous implications.

The research focuses on mam-ma-lian species that may encounter humans, such as rodents and bats. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and various wildlife rehabilitators help provide samples.

“From my standpoint, this project re-emphasizes the ‘one health’ mission of the lab,” said Kurt Williams, director of the college’s diagnostic facility. “We don’t deal only with diseases that affect nonhuman animals; we do lots of work that directly relates to public health.”

— Molly Rosbach

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Human systems, like cities, can be very good at making things ‘go viral’.

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7.

CITIES ARE LIKE ORGANISMS — THEY NEED IMMUNE SYSTEMS

Viruses can reproduce rapidly, taking over cells and turning them into viral factories within hours. Individuals’ immune systems need to rise to the challenge, but what happens when they can’t, and a whole population gets sick?

As the early days of the pandemic demonstrated, cities can struggle to stop the momentum of a spreading disease. Armed with community input and lessons learned over the past four years, a multidisciplinary team of researchers at Oregon State University is designing city-scale feedback loops to act as a kind of immune system for a population as a whole.

“We believe future cities will give people access to real-time local data on infection risk,” said ecologist Benjamin Dalziel, project leader. “You’ll be able to use that information in your daily life, like how you use a weather report. The more people do that, the slower the spread will be.”

The team is supported by $1 million from the National Science Foundation, through its Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention Program (PIPP). 

The project began in 2022 with a series of workshops in cities across Oregon. “One key that communities stressed was the importance of sharing timely data between different groups and organizations — much like how different systems in the body communicate to mount an immune response,” said team member Katherine McLaughlin, an applied statistician.

The researchers aim to establish a center at OSU that combines mathematical and computational modeling with engineering, public health and public engagement. The Center for Pandemic-Resilient Cities (CPARC; pronounced like “spark”) will prototype city-scale feedback loops that link environmental monitoring with epidemic forecasting and communication, so responders won’t have to play catchup after an outbreak begins.

Led by the College of Science, the effort capitalizes on OSU’s strong tradition of multidisciplinary work and includes six university colleges. In the College of Engineering, Tyler Radniecki and Christine Kelly are developing innovations in waste-water sensing, a low-cost method of monitoring that involves testing sewage samples for disease. 

Teams from the College of Health and OSU Extension and Engagement are working to ensure that the science incorporates the characteristics of different communities. For example, responders in cities with a lot of tourism need to know whether infection is spreading locally, such as within schools, or is arriving from other cities, as responses will be different in each case.

Faculty from the College of Liberal Arts (Daniel Faltesek) are researching how to use interactive media to communicate infectious disease forecasts to people in the city, to close the loop between prediction and prevention.

“Human systems, like cities, can be very good at making things ‘go viral,’” said project leader Dalziel. “Using mathematics, engineering and community engagement, we can develop systems that make helpful responses go viral, too.”

— Hannah Ashton 

If you’re on the road in Oregon this winter, be on the lookout for a new Oregon State University license plate. The black, orange and white plates proudly sport the words “The Beaver State,” in reference to the university’s mascot, the state’s nickname and the state flag. Tree rings in the background serve as a visual nod to the standard Oregon license plate with a Douglas fir, the state tree. Before the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles would begin production, the university had to prove there was a market by selling 3,000 vouchers for the plate. That landmark was accomplished this summer, so it’s now expected to go on sale — and start appearing on vehicles — in early 2025. The license plate costs $40, about $35 of which will go to the university to support athletics and strategic university marketing initiatives. Be one of the first to know when it’s available by filling out the form.

A record 696 Oregon State community members came together for the annual Native American flute circle this May. Present and past students of Music 108 — one of the most popular baccalaureate core courses at OSU — played the flute while nearly 200 others kept time with egg shakers. They performed three songs, from a traditional Tribal melody to Elton John’s “Can You Feel the Love Tonight.”

Senior Instructor Jan Michael Looking Wolf Reibach, who teaches Music 108, started the tradition in 2015. “We play our flutes in a circle to honor the beauty of our diversity and shared connection to Mother Earth,” Reibach, a Kalapuya Tribal Elder of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, told The Daily Barometer. “I am so proud of how bright our students shine together.” See last year’s performance below.

Beaver Brags

in the country is where Vogue ranked OSU in its list of the nation’s best fashion schools, noting its strengths in activewear and sustainability.

were donated by the OSU community during this year’s statewide food drive — three times the amount of all other state entities combined.

of all degrees awarded last spring went to Beavers studying online through the university’s Ecampus.

was awarded to OSU’s Global Hemp Innovation Center for work with 13 Native American tribes to spur economic development by developing manufacturing for products made from hemp.

Briefs

ENERGY-EFFICIENT AI

Projections show artificial intelligence accounting for half a percent of global energy consumption by 2027 — as much energy annually as the entire country of the Netherlands. OSU College of Engineering resear­cher Sieun Chae has helped develop a new artificial intelligence chip that could improve energy efficiency six times over the current industry standard. Based on a novel material platform, it allows for both computa­tion and data storage, mimicking the way biological neural networks handle information storage and processing. 

NEWPORT HOUSING IN THE WORKS

Construction is underway on a 77-unit housing project that will support students, staff, visiting scientists and others working and learning at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. The $16.5 million, 34,000-square-foot housing project is being built about three-quarters of a mile from the Hatfield campus, outside the tsunami inundation zone, and will open as early as fall 2025.

UP YOUR GARDENING SKILLS

Home gardens are not only a great way to relieve stress; they can also be an important part of strengthening food security. OSU Extension’s Master Gardener program has a series of webinars to help gardeners level up their skills. For people looking to preserve the summer’s bounty, the OSU Extension Food Safety and Preservation hotline is open through Oct. 11 for all your canning freezing and fermenting questions. Call 800-354-7319.

Tickets are on sale now for the 2024-2025 season at the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts (PRAx). Built around the theme “Water and Watersheds,” the lineup includes performances by PRAx’s inaugural artist-in-residence, jazz luminary and five-time Grammy Award winner Esperanza Spalding.

To launch the season, PRAx partners with the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences to present Rising, a performance combining music, dance and spoken word to reflect on rising temperatures, sea levels and humanity’s increasing awareness of how changing oceans affect us. The exhibition How to Carry Water will be on display in the Stirek Gallery from Sept. 20 to Dec. 21, with artists from multiple disciplines exploring alternative methods for witnessing the human relationship with water.

As part of the partnership with Spalding, a cohort of OSU students from various artistic disciplines will work with the Portland-based artist on a yearlong collaborative installation.

What’s so cool about Esperanza Spalding is that she’s this big, iconic figure, one of the greatest jazz musicians of this generation; she has a giant global stage and iconicity, but her work is deeply rooted in community.

She created her most recent album, Songwrights Apothecary Lab, after spending several months in three communities in the U.S. , collaborating with musicians, researchers and health care practitioners. Spalding’s OSU residency will be focused on a similar project, and she will give two public performances with her dance company, Off Brand G, April 17-18, 2025, in Detrick Hall.

“What’s so cool about Esperanza Spalding is that she’s this big, iconic figure, one of the greatest jazz musicians of this generation; she has a giant global stage and iconicity, but her work is deeply rooted in community,” said Peter Betjemann, Patricia Valian Reser executive director of PRAx.

PRAx stands for Patricia Reser Arts, with the “x” signifying the center’s intersections between the arts and other academic disciplines. The center is named for Patricia Valian Reser, OSU alumna and volunteer leader, who has given $36 million to the OSU Foundation for the arts, including $25 million for PRAx. See the full season lineup of dance, music, theater and more.

Professor Lorenzo Ciannelli’s father was a fisherman. Growing up in Italy, Ciannelli would accompany his dad and wonder about the lives of the fish they pulled on board: What kind of habitat did they live in? What did they eat? Why did he and his father some­times catch a mountain of fish and sometimes none at all? As an oceanographer in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, he asks the same questions. His current project seeks to learn about fish and other animals in understudied fjords in Greenland, where Arctic settlements depend on fishing for their livelihoods, but warming seas are bringing change. In 2023, he and graduate student Haley Carlton traveled with a team to Sermilik Fjord in southeast Greenland, an area dominated by a marine- terminating glacier and the fresh, cold water it delivers to the fjord and the salty ocean beyond. Using bongo nets and trawls, they plied the waters, counting and measuring the species they caught. So far, they’ve been sur­prised by the differences between populations found in water influenced by fresh meltwater versus the rich oceanic waters near the continental shelf. Next summer, the team travels to Greenland’s Inglefield Fjord to compare results.

And the Winners Are…

If you need a little help feeling optimistic, look no further than the ranks of Beavers making the world better. This fall, on Sept. 19 at 6 p.m., the OSU Alumni Association celebrates the contributions and legacy of outstanding members of our community with the Black and Orange Awards. Here’s a look at 2024’s honorees.

Sue & Gerald Vickers

Joan Austin Honorary Alumni Award

Enthusiastically going above and beyond to bolster philanthropic momentum for OSU Athletics and student-athletes, Sue and Gerald Vickers’ generosity has been pivotal to the development of Reser Stadium, the Valley Football  Center, Gill Coliseum, OSU Basketball Center, Goss Stadium, the new Baseball Hitting Facility and more. The couple was honored with the Martin Chaves Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016. Watch Vicker’s video.

Barbara LaSalle, ’64

E.B. Lemon Distinguished Alumni Award

LaSalle’s unshakeable bond with Beaver Nation began during her first days in Corvallis, as part of varsity rowing, yearbook and the Kappa Alpha Theta sor­ority. She is a regional ambassador and member of the 1868 Society, playing a significant role in forging relationships that have a transformational impact on the university. Watch LaSalle’s video.

Sara and Bob, ’65, Rothschild

Dan W. Poling Service Award

When Sara and Bob Rothschild first traveled to Africa in 2004, they had no idea the trip would lead them to inspire generations of students. In 2005, they established the Robert and Sara Rothschild Family Foundation, a philanthropic organization that partnered with the Botswana Government to build 20 libraries in rural areas. In 2017, they brought their passion for international awareness to OSU with the funding of the Robert and Sara Rothschild Endowed Chair in Global Health. Watch Rothschild’s video.

George Cabrera, ’68, Ed.M. ’69, Ed.M. ’72

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Alumni Legacy Award

An educator and emeritus professor, U.S. Army veteran, coach, mentor and vol­unteer, whose tireless efforts have fostered inclusion and equity within edu­cational institutions and the Latinx communities of McMinnville. Cabrera is known to his peers for standing beside the most vulnerable. He has been instrumental in creat­ing pathways for underrepresented students to access higher education. Watch Cabrera’s video.

Cathy, ’76, and Jim Rudd (Hon. alum. ’06)

Martin Chaves Lifetime Achievement Award

The Rudds’ generosity has buoyed OSU Athletics, particularly football and men’s basketball. Ardent supporters of Oregon State, both have served in volunteer leadership roles with the OSU Foundation. Cathy is a past member of the College of Health’s Campaign Cabinet as well as the President’s Club Leadership Council. Jim, named an OSU honorary alumnus in 2006, is a past chair, and a current board member for, the Athletic Director’s Board of Advisors. Watch Rudd’s video.

Lori Rush, ’78

Jean and C.H. “Scram” Graham Leadership Award

The founder and president of Rush Recruiting and HR, Rush excels at capturing organizational culture, fostering relationships and helping others — traits that have made her a much-admired OSU Alumni Association Board of Directors member since 2013. She served as board chair during turbulent times of pandemic and university leadership changes. To this day, she drives efforts that maintain and strengthen connections between former board members and volunteers her expertise through OSUAA career programs and the Beaver Caucus. Watch Rush’s video.

Daniel De León, M.S. ’22

Don and Shirley Wirth Young Alumni Award

With a passion for engineering, De León encourages Oregon Latino youth to pursue STEM education and careers. At Oregon State, he worked to foster a sense of community among Latinx graduate students, and he continues to recruit for OSU engineering graduate programs. He also promotes STEM learning at Portland elementary schools, teaches at Mariachi STEAM summer camps and has been a guest speaker at the Portland Metro STEM Partnership STEMposium and for Hillsboro School District’s Latino Youth Program. Watch León’s video.

Alumni Fellows

Kirk Maag, ’05

Alumni fellow, Honored by the College of Agricultural Sciences

An environmental and natural resources attorney and partner at Stoel Rives LLP in Portland, Maag is a leader in Oregon’s agricultural and natural resources community, making a daily impact on the lives of many in the industry. He holds roles as the president of the Oregon Future Farmers of America Foundation Board of Directors and the Cultivating Change Foundation Board of Directors.

Eric MacKender, ’00

Alumni Fellow, honored by the Honors College

Committed to giving back after earning a scholarship to fund his education, MacKender became a financial suppor­ter of OSU and the Honors College soon after being recruited to Chevron. He was named to the College of Engineer­ing’s Council of Outstanding Early Career Engineers in 2018 and joined the Honors College Board of Regents in 2014, continuing his unwavering commitment to student support.

Patricia (Pat) McDonald, ’86

Alumni Fellow, Honored by the College of Engineering

For more than 30 years, McDonald has balanc­ed building her career at Intel with serving her community. Known for mentoring early career engineers and championing women’s success in STEM, she has served on the Dean’s Leadership Council for the College of Engineering, as part of the Celebration of Women in Engineering Career Diversity panel and more.

Joel Peterson, ’69

Alumni Fellow, Honored by the College of Science

Nicknamed “the Godfather of Zin” by the Smithsonian Institution, Peterson has a notable winemaking career that includes founding Ravenswood Winery in 1976, being inducted into the Vintners Hall of Fame, having his tools featured in national exhibitions, and serving on num­erous vintners and growers associations and boards. Since 2014, he has been a member of the College of Science’s Board of Advisors, having previously served on the college’s Board of Visitors.

Julie Pullen, Ph.D. ’00

Alumni Fellow, Honored by the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences

As a climate scientist, oceanographer and meteorologist, Pullen is on the frontlines of creating climate resilience sol­utions. She is the founding partner and chief scientist with Propeller Ventures, a climate-tech venture fund that invests in early-stage ocean and climate tech companies. In addition to her professional accomplishments, Pullen generously gives her time to volunteer and advocate for OSU.

Elizabeth “Lizzy” Ragan, ’13

Alumni Fellow, Honored by the College of Health

A standout student while at OSU, Ragan has contributed substantially to the field of infectious diseases. Her exten­sive experience in health outcomes and pandemic prevention earned her an appointment to the 2022-23 class of White House Fellows in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Today, she serves as the senior advisor to the deputy under secretary for health in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Suzanne Simard, M.S. ’89, Ph.D. ’95

Alumni Fellow, Honored by the College of Forestry

A pioneer in the study of plant communi­cation and intelligence, Simard has gained global recognition. Her revolution­ary work in forest ecology led to the recognition of the overlooked but potentially important role of plant cooperation in determining forest responses to climate change and disturbance. Read more about her work in Re-seeing Trees.

Trey Winthrop, ’93

Alumni Fellow, Honored by the College of Business

Winthrop’s 17-year tenure with Bob’s Red Mill has included leading the corporation through its transition to a 100% employee-owned company in 2020, as CFO, and becoming CEO in 2022. He has served as a member of the OSU Portland Business Roundtable and currently sits on the College of Business Dean’s Council of Excellence.

Network Award

OSU Innovation and Design Network

Outstanding Alumni Network Award

Established in 2009 in partnership with the OSU Alumni Association, the OSU Innovation and Design Network has fostered a robust, inclusive and uplifting community for students and alumni. Through signature events including Industry Connect, Industry Talks and Industry Socials, it has created opportunities for networking, knowledge-sharing, and celebrating and advancing design fields. The network has been particularly successful in bringing together Portland based design professionals and OSU students. Watch OSUIDN’s video.

It’s a whole new ballgame — and every other sort of athletic contest — since defections whittled the Pac-12 Conference down to just two members. As two does not a conference schedule make, Oregon State and Washington State will align with a variety of other conferences, as well as compete in some sports as independents. What does this all mean for fans trying to follow their favorite sports? The Pac 12 Network, where many games were televised, shut down at midnight on June 30. This year, home football games will be broadcast for national audiences on the CW Network and Fox Sports. Check osubeavers.com for schedules as well as up-to-date viewing information for other sports. Here’s a look at who the Beavs will be playing.

THE CONFERENCE LANDSCAPE

Sport by Sport

The Beavs face new rivals this year, but just how that plays out will vary sport by sport. Here are the details. Scroll to left to see them all:

Football

Conference: Pac-12/Mountain West Conference Affiliation level: OSU and WSU have a scheduling agreement with the MWC; the two teams are not eligible for the MWC championship. Postseason: Can qualify for 12-team college football playoff and bowl games.

Volleyball

Conference: West Coast Conference Affiliation level: Full member, eligible to win conference championship. Postseason: Can earn automatic berth by winning conference title or being selected as an at-large team.

Wrestling

Conference: Pac-12 Affiliation level: Full member; eligible to win conference championship. Postseason: Conference will be allocated a number of individual automatic qualifiers to the NCAA Championships.

Basketball 

Conference: West Coast Conference Affiliation level: Full member, eligible to win regular season and tournament championships. Postseason: Can earn automatic berth by winning conference title or being selected as an at-large team.

Women’s Cross Country

Conference: West Coast Conference Affiliation level: Full member; eligible to win conference championship meet. Postseason: Top two teams in NCAA Regional meet qualify for NCAA Championships, along with 15 at-large teams.

Golf

Conference: West Coast Conference Affiliation level: Full member; eligible to win conference championship meet. Postseason: Can earn automatic berth by winning conference title or being selected as an at-large team.

Soccer

Conference: West Coast Conference Affiliation level: Full member, eligible to win conference championships. Postseason: Can earn automatic berth by winning conference title or being selected as an at-large team.

Women’s Track & Field

Conference: Independent Affiliation level: Not applicable. Postseason: Can qualify for NCAA West Regional by recording a mark good enough to earn a position in an individual event or relay event.

Baseball

Conference: None; competing as an independent Affiliation level: Not applicable. Postseason: Can be selected as an at-large team.

Softball

Conference: West Coast Conference Affiliation level: Full member, eligible to win conference championship. Postseason: Can earn automatic berth by winning conference title or being selected as an at-large team.

Women’s Gymnastics 

Conference: Independent Affiliation level: Not applicable. Postseason: Can earn berth in NCAA Regionals based on ranking of regional qualifying score.

Women’s Rowing

Conference: West Coast Conference Affiliation level: Full member; eligible for conference championship. Postseason: Can earn an automatic berth to NCAA Championships by winning conference title or being selected as an at-large team.

Men’s Rowing

Conference: Independent Affiliation level: Not applicable. Postseason: Can earn berth in Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championships based on placing at Western Sprints regatta.

“I’m a home forest person,” says forest ecologist Suzanne Simard, M.A. ’89, Ph.D. ’96. “I really believe that the beauty of tending our forests, of looking after them, lies in our understanding of the place — so I never wanted to go very far from my forest.”

It’s an early weekday morning, and as we chat over Zoom, Simard sits in a faintly lit empty classroom at the University of British Columbia, where she’s a professor in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences. She has spent just about her whole life and career in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, where she’s made her greatest scientific breakthroughs. Simard is a pioneer in the study of the mycorrhizal network, a web of subterranean fungal connections between tree roots that, she proposes, allows trees to exchange resources and help each other thrive.

Despite this emphasis on nearness and familiarity — “ecology means the study of home,” she says — these ideas have reached far. Very far. In 2016, Simard delivered a TED Talk that has been viewed eight million times. She was the inspiration for the character of Patricia Westerford, a forest ecologist, in Richard Powers’ Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 novel The Overstory. Her research has been referenced on Ted Lasso and has appeared on the front cover of the journal Nature; she has published a bestselling memoir, Finding the Mother Tree; and just this year, she was named to the Time 100 “Most Influential People of 2024” list.

In some ways, Simard’s career resembles the growth rings of the trees to which she has devoted her research: a series of concentric circles, expanding their reach and growing more complex. She grew up in western Canada, the eldest daughter in a family of foresters who practiced horse logging: “I come from, you know, thousands of generations of woodcutters,” she says, laughing. “So it’s in my bones and blood and my DNA.”

Swimming against the tide is not easy in science; it takes courage.

Simard studied forestry as an undergraduate at UBC and worked a seasonal job with a logging company in her early 20s, when she began to grow curious about the connections between trees. She observed the detrimental impact of the clear-cutting practices that had replaced the sustainable logging her family had participated in for decades; they might yield more wood in the short term but seemed to have long-term consequences for the forest’s ability to regenerate. Many of the trees that she replanted after a clear-cut — as many as 10% — grew sick and died. She wanted to understand why. She completed a master’s degree in forestry at Oregon State, studying how alders and other shrubs then thought to be weeds competed with pine saplings, but she still wasn’t satisfied with her research.

Starting from a young age, Simard had an instinct that a forest was more than a collection of individual trees. Following a stint with the Canadian Forest Service, she came to OSU to pursue a doctorate studying forests more holistically — trees as members of an interconnected community.

“We emphasize domination and competition in the management of trees in forests,” she writes in Finding the Mother Tree. She wanted to ask a contradictory question: “Are forests structured mainly by competition, or is cooperation as or even more important?” She studied Douglas firs and paper birches, showing that radioactive carbon isotopes respired by one tree could be passed along to adjacent trees — and that the pathway was likely the filaments of ghostly white mycorrhizae spider-webbing just under the topsoil of the forest floor, connecting one tree to the next. These connections are significant not only to the logging industry, she asserts, but also to the understanding of how forests respond to stress, particularly in the face of climate change.

Resistance to her research, which was published in Nature in 1997, came swiftly. Her work “was (and is) a direct challenge to the prevailing competition paradigm. It meant that the forest was not a collection of individuals but included the potential for a web of interconnections and interdependence,” says Dave Perry, emeritus professor of forest ecosystems and society at OSU and Simard’s doctoral supervisor. “Swimming against the tide is not easy in science; it takes courage.”

Simard was not the first researcher to propose that trees exchange resources, Perry adds, but she brought the concept to the mainstream — particularly with her TED Talk and the publication of Finding the Mother Tree. With astonishing intimacy, the memoir chronicles her childhood, the death of her brother, romances, her divorce and a bout with cancer, alongside the development of her career. She draws metaphors from the landscape to help illuminate her experiences, and vice versa.

“You can write journal papers, and it doesn’t really change,” Simard says of her decision to write the book. “I kept thinking, ‘It’s because people don’t read these journal papers. They read stories.’” Other writers, like Powers, had used aspects of her research and of her biography in their writing, and just as she’d felt something was missing from science’s understanding of forest ecosystems, she felt that something was missing from the way her research was being portrayed. “I wanted to tell the story myself,” she says, “and I wanted it told from a female perspective.”

When she says this, she isn’t simply referring to her own point of view as a woman in science. One of the central metaphors of her memoir is that of the titular “mother tree,” which is what she calls each of the towering old-growth behemoths that appear to anchor the mycorrhizal network, shuttling resources to younger and more vulnerable saplings. “It felt like mothering to me. With the elders tending to the young,” she writes. “Yes, that’s it. Mother Trees.”

If the response to her work is any indication, Simard’s language seems to have tapped into a desire to see ourselves as part of, rather than distinct from, the landscape. Still, there are those who say that her metaphors aren’t sufficiently grounded in research. “I was trained as a scientist, and I have great pride in being a scientist,” she says. “There’s been a huge backlash against me writing in this way, and that’s been very difficult for me as a scientist.”

Released in 2021, Finding the Mother Tree became a bestseller and was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, Time and The Wall Street Journal.

Simard observes that some of the backlash to her research in the ’90s is rooted in a suspicion of language perceived as feminine. “It’s not trivial that there is this gendered bias in forestry. When I started out, there were very few girls who actually worked in forestry or in the forest industry,” she says.

Still, science, and culture at large, might finally be making more space for this kind of narrative. Just as many other scientists have since embraced her research on the mycorrhizal network (her Nature article has been cited more than 500 times), Simard has observed institutions and policymakers increasingly considering the knowledge of Indigenous land stewards, whose ways of talking about forests bear similarities to her own. For the scientific establishment, Simard “had legitimized ancient knowledge that the dominant culture had lost and badly needs back,” Perry says.

Before we end our call, I mention the Time 100 list. “That’s hilarious,” she says. “Why?” I ask.

“I feel like the accidental Time 100 person,” she says. “I was like, ‘Really? Did they get the right person?’”

But it was no accident; Simard is one of three scientists on the list whose work involves climate change. “Her 200-plus peer-reviewed articles have deeply informed the thinking of conservationists and environmentalists working to help preserve forests,” Time reports. Lately, she has been working on an ongoing, interdisciplinary climate study that she calls the “Mother Tree Project,” which examines how culling the oldest trees in a stand affects carbon stores, biodiversity and overall forest resiliency. In the face of extractive forestry practices, wildfires and global warming, Simard’s work may prove to be a key to staving off the worst effects of climate change.

“I have had the incredible wonder of watching forests recover from so much,” she says. “We throw so much at them. They burn down. They get eaten by insects. They get clear cut. They get moved around and pushed around. And yet every spring the leaves come out and the blossoms bloom and the forests come back.”

A high-pitched call pierces the milky morning haze. Hundreds of feet up, a dark shape hurtles across a dim sky. It swoops into the tree canopy and disappears.

For almost 200 years after scientists first described the marbled murrelet, it eluded us. They saw the bird foraging on the open sea but had no clue where it roosted. Then, in 1974, a California tree trimmer discovered the first murrelet nest in the upper reaches of an ancient tree. Scientists now knew it was a bird of two worlds: a tree-nesting seabird that travels up to 47 miles inland to nest in old-growth forests. Going straight from sea to branch, it may go its entire life without its webbed feet touching the earth.

The murrelet’s dependence on both ocean and forest made the homely bird — which some call a “baked potato with a beak” — uniquely vulnerable to climate change. It also put it in the crosshairs of controversy. The murrelet served as a rallying cry, alongside the northern spotted owl and salmon, for environmentalists during the 1990s “Timber Wars,” the battle over whether to log or preserve the last of the Pacific Northwest’s old-growth trees.

Now artificial intelligence developed by Oregon State and the U.S. Forest Service is making it possible to find the bird — and potentially other elusive species such as the Roosevelt elk and red-tailed hawk — more efficiently than ever before.

Why does that matter? Until now, there hasn’t been enough information to guide conservation and forest plans. Since finding that a murrelet is nesting in, or occupying, a stand of trees determines whether the trees are protected or can be cut, timber managers often must venture into a forest 20 times over multiple years for pre-logging surveys to confirm that murrelets aren’t present.

This new method opens the way to more-informed decisions that could determine whether the murrelet — and the forests on which it depends — survive or disappear.

Listening to the Forest

How do you find a needle in a haystack, or in this case a murrelet in a 2,000-mile strip of densely forested Pacific coast? Previously, researchers navigated swells on inflatable boats, plucked the birds one by one from the open sea to radio tag them, circled above the forest in roaring planes to pick up their signals and then bushwhacked through thick forests before sunrise to spot their nesting trees.

But a team of scientists from OSU and the U.S. Forest Service had a different idea: What you can’t see you might be able to hear. Researchers set up acoustic recording devices to listen to coastal forests. Then they developed a machine learning algorithm to mine the recordings for the murrelet’s most audible call.

How do you find a needle in a haystack, or in this case a murrelet in a 2,000-mile strip of densely forested Pacific coast?

“Our current work suggests that we have uncovered a survey technique that is not only cheaper, safer for field crews and less invasive to the species, but also increases our ability to detect this iconic bird in forests,” said Adam Duarte of the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, lead author of the study.

Perhaps surprisingly, the team’s artificial intelligence tool —which is a convolutional neural network, or CNN — analyzes pictures rather than sound. Audio is converted into spectrograms, visualizations that show what pitches are being heard and how loud they are over time. The murrelet’s distinctive “keer” call, when mapped this way, curves like a question mark.

The scientists taught the CNN to recognize this shape by showing it verified spectrograms of keer calls. It now identifies murrelet calls correctly more than 90% of the time, making it a highly accurate tool for murrelet monitoring.

High-Tech Sleuthing

The OSU and U.S. Forest Service team is among the first to develop artificial intelligence tools for monitoring wildlife on a broad scale. The program was originally deployed to monitor spotted owls, and it helped researchers make a population estimate, something that had never been done before. College of Forestry doctoral student Matthew Weldy is now finishing an algorithm that can identify almost 150 additional species.

“We’re within striking distance of having the full suite of monitoring services for vocal wildlife species from the Canadian border through the Cascade Mountains and Coast Range of Oregon and Washington to the redwoods of California,” said Damon Lesmeister of the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, who led the bioacoustics effort for the study. “It’s hard to get your head around 25 million acres, which is the scale at which we’re working.”

Just last year, the team collected 2 million hours of sound from 4,000 acoustic recorders in federally managed forests in the Oregon Coast Range and Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. These data are stored in two supercomputers at OSU’s Center for Quantitative Life Sciences.

“If a person were to sit there and work 24/7 listening to those recordings and trying to identify murrelet calls, it would take them 640 years,” said Lesmeister. “It’s totally unfeasible for a human to listen and watch for the birds for that long.”

“A lot of people think computers are going to take over biology, but I don’t see it that way,” said co-author Matt Betts, Ruth H. Spaniol Chair of Renewable Resources in the College of Forestry. 

“In my life, I’ve probably done 6,000 point counts: I have stood in one place for ten minutes 6,000 times to record what birds I hear. These new advancements free me up to do much more interesting and detailed work like catching birds, banding them, getting their survival rates and finding nests. That makes me happy.”

Olin Hannum, Associate Director of Bands at OSU, invites us to explore the vibrant and energetic world of the marching band as they prepare for Beaver football game days. From the early morning rehearsals to the electrifying halftime performances, Hannum offers an inside look at the precision, passion, and teamwork that go into every note and movement.

Rain or shine, win or lose, our marching band plays on. Flash back to this time last year as band members geared up for a home game. 

It’s exactly 5:35 p.m. on a cloudy Friday, and the members of the Oregon State University Marching Band are packed into two tunnels on the north side of Reser Stadium.

This is a game day — kickoff for the Beavers football game against Utah is about a half an hour away — and everything for the next 25 minutes or so hinges on precise timing. The band’s pregame show starts in about 11 minutes. This game is being nationally televised, so time matters there as well.

By this point — before the nearly 300 members of the band have played even one note in front of a packed stadium — they’ve been in their uniforms for more than four hours: band members report

At this moment, as they wait in the tunnels at Reser, it will be nearly another five hours before they leave the stadium.

Meanwhile, a pair of military jets is zooming toward Reser for a flyover that’s timed to occur as the band reaches a specific spot in its performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The flyover is scheduled for exactly 5:54 and 30 seconds. If the band doesn’t hit the mark, it’s not as if the jets can just turn around for a do-over.

But that’s about 20 minutes away. Right now, they await the signal to march onto the field.

It’s time for The Spirit and Sound of Oregon State University to take the field — an OSU tradition that dates back to at least 1890.

Tradition and Good Times

Since those early days, the OSU Marching Band has grown to become the largest student group on campus, and the 2023-24 edition is one of the largest ever fielded. By the time the full band, including its new first-year members, had gathered for band camp in the days before the start of classes, it was 285 members strong.

Only about 10% of its members are music majors; in fact, 65 different majors, covering all of OSU’s colleges, are represented in the band’s ranks.

The reasons students give for joining the band are legion, but ask around enough, and certain themes emerge: Many have parents or relatives who played in marching bands. Others like the opportunity to perform before tens of thousands of people. Still others just enjoy playing fun music in a collegial atmosphere.

Says Trinity Henderson, one of the four leaders of the trumpet section (the largest section in the band): “It’s an automatic way to have a giant group of friends.”

With so many members, Olin Hannum, OSU’s associate director of bands, has to rely heavily on its student leaders. “When you have numbers like that, organization is from the top down,” he says. 

So student leadership is a constant with the band — from signaling instructions all the way to choosing the halftime shows.

But while the halftime shows change, the band’s 11-minute pregame routine has been essentially the same since 1968. In fact, Hannum says he hears complaints if he messes around too much with it.

And no wonder: The show plays like a greatest-hits revue of OSU fight songs, with “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the marching band chestnut “Rock and Roll Part II” thrown in for good measure. Much of the music was written by former OSU band directors.

The pregame always includes the maneuver known as the “Beaver Spell-Out,” with the members of the band spelling out the letters “O”, “S” and “U” across the field. Legendary band director James Douglass wrote the music for that section.

The pregame show is a celebration of tradition, says Justin Preece, the band’s percussion coordinator and drumline instructor.

“And that’s something that multiple generations of fans can recognize,” Preece says. “And they do — octogenarians standing up, clapping enthusiastically and singing. Kids who haven’t hit double digits do the same thing. And that’s a nice unifying moment.”

A Precision Pregame

On the field, at the north end zone, band assistant Dave Manela, wearing a headset, worries that the cloud cover might prevent the flyover, now less than 10 minutes away, by two jets racing toward Reser. These flyovers almost never come off on time, he says, and he would know — as a student at OSU, he played tenor sax in the band before graduating with a computer engineering degree. He’s another example of how the band attracts students from throughout the campus.

Finally, at 5:47 p.m., the drumline takes the field, followed by the members of the marching band, drawing a big cheer from the crowd.

New members — those not quite yet drilled in the marching routines — move to the west sideline and play along with the music. The video screen in Reser shows a view of the band as seen from the second deck of the stadium — if you’re seated too close to the ground, you don’t have a high-enough perch to make out whatever the band is spelling.

After a few tunes, the band is ready to play “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but the timing isn’t quite right yet for the flyover. So Eric Leung, the director of bands at OSU and the conductor for the anthem, gets the signal: Stretch. The opening drum roll plays for an additional 15 or so seconds before Leung brings in the rest of the band. It’s 5:53 and six seconds.

Eighty-four seconds later — just as the band reaches the “home of the brave” part of the song — two jets scream over the stadium.

They’re right on time.

And the rest of the pregame routine — complete with the Beaver spell-out — goes fine, despite earlier worries. After the show, band members dash for their assigned seats in the south end of the stadium. Preece applauds them as they clamber up the steps off the field, even as the opening kickoff, boomed high into the air, heads their way.

“That was awesome,” Preece says. “Good job, everybody.”

Band members won’t march again until halftime. But they still have hours of work ahead.

The Game’s Soundtrack

With the game underway, band members scramble back to their seats to provide the musical soundtrack for the game — a soundtrack that can change at a moment’s notice, depending on what happens on the field.

Hannum handles conducting duties during the game, using hand signals to cue the selections he wants played at certain points.

The most frequent is the five-note snippet of music played every time the Beavers rack up a first down. (Another former OSU band director, Brad Townsend, wrote that piece.) On this night, as the Beavers collect 15 first downs, the tune — appropriately named “First Down” — rings out 15 times.

But Hannum, who watches the video board as he directs to keep tabs on the game and to get a sense of what music might be appropriate, can call on any of 14 different selections — and has a hand signal to go with each one.

“Generally, I try to follow the game script,” he says. “If we’re on offense and the team is right in front of us, I’ll hold off on playing to let them communicate. The opposite is true if it’s the opposing offense; I’ll try to play something disruptive.”

It’s not all “Seven Nation Army” and “First Down,” though: A fan with an ear for classical music can pick up snippets from Holst’s “The Planets” and “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana. Whenever a player is injured on the field — Beaver or opponent — the band stops and members take a knee.

Hard Work and Halftime Magic

The first half zips by. At 7:24 p.m., less than 90 minutes after kickoff, they get the signal to assemble for the halftime show and start heading back down to the field.

The 70-second selection the band plays as it takes the field for the halftime show (it’s called, naturally, “Take the Field”) is created fresh each season by Hannum and Preece, the drumline instructor. 

In each new version, they sneak in snippets from OSU fight songs. During early rehearsals, the two challenge band members to identify the hidden Easter eggs; Dutch Bros gift cards go to students who get it right.

Tonight, the band is performing — for the first and only time — a tribute to Dolly Parton. The idea surprised Hannum when it first surfaced.

The process of creating the band’s three or four halftime shows each season starts months beforehand, when students and others are invited to suggest themes for new shows. That session typically yields about 50 ideas, Hannum says, which eventually get whittled down to three or four actual shows.

“We’re looking for shows that are going to be interesting, not only to the audience that’s experiencing it, but also to the students who are working on it,” Hannum says. “We’re looking for things that are in the tempos that work well for step sizes and for marching to those pieces of music. We’re looking for interesting concepts that haven’t been done before — or haven’t been done a lot. There are certain cliches in marching bands.”

So, for example, you won’t hear the OSU Marching Band doing an Earth, Wind & Fire show any time soon, even though Hannum is an EW&F fan. “It’s been done,” he says. “It’s been done a million times. The Beatles have been done a million times. What are the shows that haven’t been done a million times?”

He says he’s constantly surprised by the suggestions he gets from the students. 

“I get exposed to all kinds of weird cool stuff,” he says, like certain genres of Korean pop. (A song by the K-pop band Blackpink worked its way into the band’s tribute to girl groups. Another show featured music from Avatar: The Last Airbender.)

And, as Hannum learned, students these days are very much into the music of Dolly Parton. “I wouldn’t have predicted that,” he says. 

The Parton show features four well-known tunes: “I Will Always Love You,” “Jolene,” “Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That” and “Nine to Five.” Once Hannum and company obtain licensing rights to perform the songs, they start working on custom-made arrangements that fit the band.

“We arrange the wind parts, and then that arrangement gets sent off to the drumline people,” Hannum says. “And then that whole thing gets sent off to the color guard instructor, who writes the choreography for the color guard. When all of those charts are done, I write drill.”

It used to be that marching band directors worked out drill routines outlining every step of a routine by using graph paper — hundreds and thousands of sheets of graph paper, each with dots showing the location of every member of the band.

Today, those dots are created digitally — but the goal is the same: to ensure that every member knows where to stand to be one piece of a bigger picture. Just a few members out of place means that picture can get fuzzy in a hurry.

When Hannum finishes creating a drill, he shares it with each of the band members, who download the program on their smartphones, identify the dot that represents them, and get a sense of how the drill is supposed to work and how and when they have to move.

Each halftime program involves a different set of visual challenges for the band members. For the Parton program tonight, the band spells out the word “ALWAYS” during “I Will Always Love You.” Then they reform into the shape of a guitar. Along the way, they put down their instruments to perform a little two-step. Finally, they spell out the name “Dolly!” (See it all in action here.)

During rehearsals, it has proven to be a tricky bit of business to get the two “L”s in the name straight. But tonight, it’s better — the second “L” might be a little off to a practiced eye, but the thousands of spectators can easily make out what they’re spelling.

The show takes almost exactly 10 minutes. It represents hours of work — and some shows, like this tribute, are performed only once.

The Last Serenade

The Beavers build on a 7-0 halftime lead and pull away for a 21-7 win. The players head to the locker room.

It’s 9:22 p.m. — more than eight hours after the band’s initial call — but the musicians still have work to do as fans stream out the stadium.

At the end of every home game, band aficionados — friends, family, music fans — head over to the south end zone to watch the band perform tunes like “Radar Love” and the inevitable “Beer Barrel Polka.”

Somebody watching calls out for “Free Bird.”

The band does not play “Free Bird.”

Instead, the final selection is always the alma mater, “Carry Me Back to OSU.”

More than 20 minutes later — it’s 9:44 p.m. — the show ends. Instruments go back into cases. Equipment is packed up. The members of The Sound and Spirit of OSU head out into the night.

“It was what I was hoping for,” Hannum says about the season’s first full band performance. “I’m always expecting things to go well. If I’m ever pessimistic about things, I tend to rehearse down to it.”

But he’s already looking ahead.

“Monday’s going to be a pregame day,” he says. “Take the field.”

Beavers love food, as evidenced by the letters we continue to receive about the spring 2023 Food Issue more than a year later. So, when we heard the recent news about the makers of Nutella supporting the university’s ongoing hazelnut research — the science that saved the nut from blight in the 2000s — we wondered if there might be a way to put our own spin on the silky-soft hazelnut spread. This vegan- (or allergy-) friendly version can be made without dairy if you opt for dark chocolate chips. And since 99% of domestic hazelnuts are grown in Oregon, it’s not difficult to source them locally. We plan to include recipes connected to OSU research, history and people on an occasional basis. If you have a suggestion, write us at stater@osualum.com.

BENNY’S HOMEMADE HAZELNUT SPREAD

Output: 2 ½ cups

Total Cook Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

3 cups raw Oregon-grown hazelnuts
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon salt

1. Roast the hazelnuts for 12-13 minutes at 350 F.

2. Transfer the nuts to a large cloth towel. Sandwich them between layers of cloth and then use your hands to roll the nuts in the towel, removing most of the skins. 

3. Add peeled hazelnuts to a food processor or high- speed blender. Blend until a liquid butter is formed, about 8-10 minutes. 

4. Add the vanilla and salt and blend well.

5. Melt the chocolate by either heating it gently over a double boiler or carefully microwaving it in 30- second intervals. 

6. Add the melted chocolate a little at a time to the hazelnut mixture and blend until incorporated. Great on toast, bananas, pancakes, sandwiches, ice cream and more. 

In 2020, Brett Comsa was spending 10 hours a day making molds of teeth at a Portland dental lab when he finally accepted what he already knew: His career plan needed work.

The 25-year-old Idaho native had flunked out of college once “because I didn’t have any idea why I was doing it.” A job opportunity for his partner had landed the couple in Portland, where Comsa staved off the boredom of the tooth room by listening to science podcasts. He especially liked the ones about marine science, and he started to think about going back to school.

He didn’t want to be a hard-core ocean scientist, but was drawn to the idea of a career related to the sea. Comsa reached out to Oregon State and promptly found himself on the phone with professor and oceanographer Jack Barth.

Barth was founding director of Oregon State’s Marine Science Initiative — now Marine and Coastal Opportunities — launched in 2016 to coordinate and multiply the impacts of OSU’s world-class programs in ocean science, fish and wildlife, and coastal engineering.

From its beginning, the initiative included a proposal for an interdisciplinary, arts and social sciences-based undergraduate marine studies degree housed in the College of Liberal Arts. Called MAST, for “MArine STudies,” it was intended to create ocean-literate professionals with the social and communications skills to interpret and translate complex ocean issues.

“When you have a degree called ‘studies,’ we’re always talking about interdisciplinarity,” commented Nicole von Germeten, the program’s lead administrator and a professor of history for two decades.

Thought to be unique among leading ocean research universities, MAST is offered at the Corvallis campus and via Ecampus. It offers broad choices of science and liberal arts classes, and students are guided into specialties likely to lead to careers or graduate school. The program is decidedly anchored in the College of Liberal Arts, with nearly all of the college’s programs contributing to the curriculum. 

While the full major is designed for undergraduates with a humanities interest — about 100 will be enrolled this fall — the new MAST minor may also appeal to science students looking for a way to expand their understanding of what it means to interact with the ocean. 

Curious students started reaching out even before the program’s finishing touches were in place. Comsa picked up prerequisites at Portland Community College so he could enroll as one of the first MAST majors. From the start, he said, the teachers and advisors encouraged him to build skills he’d need to make himself useful.

“I learned that I wanted to specialize in aquaculture, and I didn’t even know what that was when I started this,” he said. He also discovered a passion for the ethics of food production. He then won a fellowship interning with experts at the University of Maine’s Wabanaki Center as they genotyped mussels and studied challenges facing Indigenous shellfish harvesters. It was a profoundly long way from the tooth room.

Unlike Comsa, new MAST graduate Emma Coke, ’24, doesn’t remember when she didn’t have a passion for the coast. Her family had a beach place in Seaside, and her high school teachers cultivated her interest in science and current events. 

Coke loved journalism and especially enjoyed translating complex topics into forms accessible to others. The MAST program, which offers courses like Writing for Marine Studies and Literature of the Sea, helped turn her passions into an aspiration.

“I didn’t know environmental journalism was a thing,” she said. Coke graduated in June as the MAST program’s first College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Senior, recognized for “combining science and liberal arts disciplines with an ethical, outreach focus.” She secured a newspaper internship for the summer and plans to build a career as a science writer focused on marine issues.

Lauren Rice, ’23, now working on a master’s in marine resource management at Oregon State, has the distinction of being the first student to officially sign up as a MAST major. “I spent countless hours waist-deep in the ocean or exploring tidepools,” she said, “which is kind of a lot when you think about how cold the ocean is on the Northwest Coast.”

During Rice’s sophomore year, her MAST advisor asked her to pick a specialty within the major. She chose environmental and social justice, because she wanted to help people understand how a changing climate impacts communities that rely on marine resources.

“Part of how the degree was marketed to us was that we are being trained to be boundary spanners,” she said. “I was trained to be ocean-literate but still have an understanding of social processes and things like that.”

MAST students are encouraged to gather as much field experience as possible. Rice worked on the Haystack Rock Awareness Project at Cannon Beach as a tidepool interpreter and a website developer.

“I was out in and around the tidepools, translating the ecological knowledge that I gained from my degree for all kinds of people, some who knew tons about the ocean and some who were seeing the ocean for the first time,” she said.

We are being trained to be boundary spanners. I was trained to be ocean-literate but still have an understanding of social processes.

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As the MAST program evolves, it becomes more evident that it is especially attractive to students who, partly because of their own passions and partly because of the confidence and solid education they earn in MAST, are often interested in what’s over the horizon.

Jeremy Schaffer was raised mostly in the central Willamette Valley of Oregon, but his family lived in Newport for a while when he was in high school. At 14, he overcame his shyness to volunteer at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, helping people understand what they were seeing.

“Today, that’s really the focus of my major — education, outreach, that sort of thing,” he said. He worked as a kayaking tour guide in Newport’s Yaquina Bay but will take to the water in a much larger vessel this fall: he’ll spend a year on the crew of the three-masted schooner Denis Sullivan, sailing up and down the East Coast and into the Caribbean.

The trip will delay his graduation, he said, and he’s somewhat surprised that he mustered the courage to apply. “But then, when I told Jack [Barth], he was practically jumping out of his seat,” he said.

It’s easy to stay positive and motivated when everything is going well. But what about when your work — or your life — brings you up against problems that appear unsolvable? We talked to five Oregon State community members from across the generations who are tackling challenges ranging from disease to political polarization to eroding coastlines. What’s the secret to how they keep going? Here’s what they said.

TRUST THAT YOU’RE GETTING CLOSER

Joe Beckman has spent his life trying to solve a deadly puzzle: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease), a debilitating disease of the nervous system.

“The problem is much harder than I thought it would be,” said Beckman, a principal investigator at OSU’s Linus Pauling Institute (LPI) and global leader in the study of neurodegeneration. 

“I didn’t think I’d have nothing substantial to show patients in 30 years,” he said, “but I don’t really let it get me down.” He’s too certain that answers are out there.

No existing ALS therapy extends human life more than a few months. Each year, more than 20,000 people in the U.S. die from ALS, and it can be hereditary. For patients and their families, answers can’t come fast enough. Beckman remembers a public presentation when a member of the audience described the plight of her husband — breathing with a ventilator and unable to move from his wheelchair. He won’t live to see a cure, she said, but what about her three young sons? “Is there anything you can do for them?”

Each time Beckman’s lab announced a new finding, the volume of letters spiked from ALS patients wanting to volunteer for clinical trials, desperate for a glimmer of hope.

Beckman does remain hopeful — stubbornly so. Why, with progress so slow? 

“There are answers,” he said. “We’re just going to have to look under a lot more rocks to find them.”

Officially retired a couple years ago, he continues his research, building a collaborative network with ALS Northwest, former students and other scientists around the world, with the support of LPI endowed director Emily Ho. No administrative work means more time to focus on the science. “I spend most of my hours thinking about it,” he said.

The tools he uses now would have been unimaginable at the beginning of his career. Seeing them in action would have been like reaching into a TV and pulling out a functioning Star Trek tricorder. 

There are answers, we’re just going to have to look under a lot more rocks to find them.

As he puts it, we’ve gone from blindly hitting a cellular box with a hammer and looking at the results to viewing and measuring, in real time, what’s happening in a cell during an experiment. Beckman even founded a spinoff company based on new technology for mass spectrometry, which now benefits scientists studying everything from cancer-fighting drugs to methods for detecting explosives.

“You think, ‘I wish I had that 30 years ago.’ Undergrads complain about how hard it is.” A hint of Indiana Jones growl slips into his voice. “You don’t know how lucky you have it, kid!”

Sometimes nothing works. But every wrong answer is a step on the path to the right one. What upsets Beckman is not a “failed” experiment but when a grant application is rejected. It takes a few days rowing on the river before he stops swearing. Then he’s back to work, ready to prove them wrong.

When a breakthrough does come? The tougher the problem, the greater the joy. “How many jobs are there where you can realize something no one ever did before?” he said. “And then it’s even more exciting when you present it and someone says, ‘Oh, that changes the way I think about things,’ and it affects their work.

You’ve got to stay at it.

STAY CURIOUS 

Here’s Christopher Wolsko’s mission impossible: getting people to talk  nicely to — and really hear — each other.

Wolsko, an associate professor of psychology at OSU-Cascades, and his wife, Elizabeth Marino, associate professor of anthropology, are co-directors of the Laboratory for the American Conversation in Bend. They founded the lab in 2019 with a vision of helping communities address divisive issues by advancing the science of public discourse.

Whether addressing resource management, gun control or vaccinations, “hope lies in the ability to lower the temperature in these conversations,” Wolsko said. “What we’re teaching is not agreement but how to move forward in a less ego-threatened sort of way.”

An attitude of humility and curiosity is core to the process taught by the lab. (See “Don’t Give Up on Each Other,” above, for an approach you can try in your own life.) That same curiosity fortifies Wolsko for this work.

“Why do people hate each other? That’s really interesting,” he said cheerfully.

He noted that the culture wars have intensified through the interplay of contemporary news media, advertising and social media. They’re designed to scare the crap out of us. We constantly have our buttons pushed.

“It’s so powerful. I fall prey to the same stuff,” Wolsko said. 

He recommends disengaging as much as possible. Be informed, but seek a variety of news sources, not just an echo chamber that gives you a smug sense of pride in yourself and moral outrage at the “other side.”

“The key to sanity is to engage your world but to disengage your ego — to refrain from taking a sort of destructive delight in derogating the ‘problem’ individual or group. We have reached a point in these culture wars where we have begun to fetishize the enemy: ‘Can you believe this? They are so despicable!’ This is a dangerous path towards dehumanization,” Wolsko said. “Be an informed citizen but not a hateful citizen. I keep hope alive by not participating in hate.”

Wolsko observes that doing things that can make us happier in the moment — like putting away phones during dinner — have lasting positive effects. “Do the things in your life right now that create meaningful relationships,” he suggested. “That’s what’s going to make long-term change.”

Self-care is important, too. “Beth and I have a farm. Being outside, being engaged in a simple connection with the earth and its bounty that sustains us is super grounding.”

REMEMBER THAT THINGS CAN CHANGE

Kathleen Ferguson Carlson, ’99, is an Oregon Health & Science University professor of public health and the founding director of OHSU’s groundbreaking Gun Violence Prevention Research Center.

A biology graduate, she credits OSU professor Anne Rossignol for introducing her to the injury prevention side of public health. But at the beginning of Carlson’s career, academic discussion of  firearm-associated injury — to say nothing of research into its causes or prevention — was taboo. (Google “NRA versus CDC” to get the picture.)

Then came the tragic, repeating pattern of mass shootings. Carlson had elementary school-age children herself when 20 children and six adults died at Sandy Hook in December 2012. Five months later, tragedy came home. Carlson and her family had spent the day at Cannon Beach. “It was one of those rare, warm, still days at the coast in May — just magical, you know? I got the call, and I just collapsed.”

She had lost her grandfather, a World War II combat veteran, to firearm suicide. “It wasn’t long after we lost my grandma to an illness. I knew he was at risk,” she said. “Why did he have guns in the house?”

Originally from small-town Veneta, Carlson was raised in a family that used firearms for hunting, sport and personal protection. That background informs the work she does today with other researchers, health care professionals and community members, seeking to leverage public health tools to reduce firearm injury. More than 80% of Oregon gun deaths are suicides.

Hearing stories is a core part of this work, and that can be exhausting when grief and trauma are palpable. But sharing can allow people to connect, heal and solve problems. The fact is, Carlson points out, most of us are not far removed from gun violence.

And locked societal doors can open. In the 25 years since she graduated from OSU, Carlson has witnessed a huge and crucial shift from not even being able to say “firearm injury” in class to increasingly receiving support for research focused on preventing gun violence and suicide — research that leads to strategies that work. “There’s so much we have yet to do,” she said. That’s her message of hope.

To start, we need to understand the scope of the problem. Carlson’s center was recently allowed access to Oregon’s health monitoring systems in order to generate reliable data on nonfatal firearm injuries. That’s information we’ve never had before. When we know more about how firearm injuries occur, she said, as well as the social and environmental circumstances in which they’re occurring and who is most at risk, then we can start developing effective solutions.

“I don’t think I would put my eggs in this research basket if I didn’t think we can make a difference in this,” she said. “Every year, we are seeing more progress.”

FIND STRENGTH IN CONNECTION

For school principals struggling to close stubborn achievement gaps, Conrad Hurdle, ’96, MAT ’97, offers strategies to enhance educational systems and provide encouragement and hope — hope that they can do the work, and hope that they can get better.

“We still have large inequalities — students who aren’t able to read, for whom the system is failing,” said Hurdle, a member of the OSU Alumni Association Board of Directors. His job is to help leaders take small steps forward.

After working 20 years in public schools in the Portland area, including 15 years as a principal, the College of Education graduate founded FC Hurdle Consulting in 2018, aiming to help schools and government agencies reach across the barriers of cultural differences.

Hurdle helps educators develop cultural awareness, so they can respond to situations like a student’s seemingly innocuous but hurtful comments mocking  another student’s dialect. 

His work at the systems level includes helping principals engage families. “There can be a notion that some families, especially those identified as low income, aren’t interested in education,” he said. “How do we shift that mindset, and plan with these families instead of for them?”

At the same time, it’s important to cultivate educational environments that are healthy for teachers. Like other communities across the nation, Portland has a significant teacher shortage, and budget pressuresoften lead to cuts that place additional stress on the educators who remain. 

In a 2024 Gallup poll, 44% of K-12 education employees reported feeling burned out either “very often” or “always”: the highest level of any group in the U.S. workforce. Hurdle advises principals to try to counter that burnout by celebrating what’s working and by having transparent conversations with teachers as they work together to improve student outcomes.

“It’s not an easy task!” he said. “But to me, education is about hope. Overcoming adversity is a family trait that’s in my blood.”

He recalled the story of an ancestor, Andrew Jackson Hurdle, who escaped slavery during the Civil War, became a well-respected minister and then organized a Black college. He knew education was essential for his people to thrive.

“My faith has a lot to do with my hope,” Hurdle said. “And in my experience, resilience comes from being surrounded by colleagues and friends who give me energy in the work that I do.”

Every educator knows the importance of making a personal connection with students. But those connections are key for educators, too. 

“From my cultural background, remaining isolated and having an independent mindset is a huge mistake. Success comes through connecting with other people and organizations and building trust within those relationships.”

PURSUE A BETTER FUTURE 

Meredith Leung, Ph.D. ’24, laughed wryly. “I feel hopeful. I also feel like I have job security.”

Leung grew up in south Los Angeles, not far from the Sunken City of San Pedro, where homes crumbled into the ocean about a century ago. It’s a constantly and visibly changing landscape, where Leung remembers endless detours as roads were  repeatedly repaved.

Today, she develops computer models that forecast coastal hazards, such as flooding and erosion. After completing her geology doctorate at the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences last spring, she began her postdoc with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, launching her career with a collaborative initiative with Indigenous communities in Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and Louisiana as they adapt to climate change. The Rising Voices, Changing Coasts Hub brings together university-trained scientists and Indigenous knowledge-holders in a model centering strong relationships, mutual benefit and trust.

Technological advances — like remote sensing improvements and artificial intelligence to process massive sets of data — are allowing researchers to produce increasingly detailed and realistic simulations, leading to a better understanding of the complex interactions between human and natural systems. With this information, communities can make decisions that will shape their environment within members’ own lifetimes and potentially lessen the financial and social costs of evolving hazards.

Aim to bounce forward to the future we want, rather than bouncing back to the status quo.

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In fact, Leung said, we can shape a future that’s better than the past — more resilient and more equitable.

“There’s lots of evidence that marginalized communities are locked out of decision-making processes that make them more exposed to hazards and make it harder for them to recover in the aftermath,” she said. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

“In response to a changing climate, we can aim to bounce forward to the future we want, rather than bouncing back to the status quo. It’s not too late to make an imp­act.”

Don’t be spooked if, on the way to the Oregon coast this fall, you look through your windshield and notice that the hills have eyes … and a face, with a massive, gaping grin.

Is it aliens at work? Or hooligans with a penchant for arboreal graffiti? No. These are happy trees.

This giant smiley face in Polk County was the idea of two foresters with Hampton Lumber, the Beaver-founded company that owns the land on which the hillside stands — timberlands manager Dennis Creel, ’74, and OSU parent, forester and co-owner David Hampton.

Larch trees, a type of conifer with needles that turn gold in the fall, form the circular face, while evergreen Douglas fir trees form the wide eyes and grinning mouth. Lucky for Beaver Nation, this variety of hybrid larch trees lights the smile up in an orangey tint from Halloween to Thanksgiving.

In 2011, the foresters were contemplating a stand of trees that was ready to be harvested and stood on a hillside highly visible to people driving on Highway 18 between Grande Ronde and Willamina.

“We realized nobody’s going to like looking at this clearcut until it grows back,” said Creel. “The original thought was that people would look at the smiley face and forget about the ugliness of the clearcut. But it turns out, it really does bring joy to people.”

It was no small feat to create a 300-foot-wide circular design out of trees. Creel and Hampton went into the forest with rope in hand to stake out a giant circle. They began to have second thoughts after lumbering over the steep, uneven ground and sidestepping creeks to plot the shape with ribbon later knocked down by deer. Knowing drivers on the road below would be looking at the face at an angle, they stretched the circle into an oval, then found center points for the eyes and mouth.

“I suppose my OSU forest engineering education played a role in knowing how to do something like this,” Creel said, laughing.

Soon after, a reforestation team planted the usual Douglas firs — along with baby larch trees that had been raised in a local nursery — on the recently logged hillside.

The foresters kept their mouths shut for four years.

Then one day, Creel recounted, when Hampton was driving past the hillside, he looked up and saw the hillside smiling down on him. At a nearby café, locals traded rumors that someone had trespassed onto the timber company’s land and painted their trees.

Hampton Lumber soon set the story straight with media outlets across the world, from Oregon to Japan. “Smiley Face Forest: Oregon’s Happy Hillside” was even featured in a board game (Zillionaires: Road Trip USA) where players collect legendary American roadside attractions.

For the next 30 to 50 years, passersby will be able to catch a glimpse of this wholesome “forest art,” as Creel calls it, every fall, until the trees are ready to be harvested again. (Hampton Lumber has hinted that it will be open to design requests for the next generation of trees.)

“It’s just a smile back at the world,” said Mark Vroman, ’88, current timber manager, who said the team considered other messages before landing on a simple smile. “A happy face has absolutely no negative connotations. Nobody can disagree with that.