Those who don a Benny or Bernice suit are sworn to secrecy while they’re students. And OSU Athletics, I discovered, does not keep a tidy list of all who have worn the head.

So when I got the idea for a story about the tales of those who once embodied our beloved beavers, I’ll admit I felt a flicker of doubt. How, exactly, do you find people who have been professionally anonymous?

We started, as one does, in the archives. Cora Lassen, the Stater graduate assistant, combed through yearbooks and old Daily Barometers to see whether the secrecy code had perhaps been looser in decades past. (It had not.) I emailed colleagues in case anyone’s former roommate had eventually confessed why they were mysteriously “never at games.” (A couple of leads there.)

Finally, we put out a call on social media.

And then, like a Benny launching from a trampoline to execute a perfect dunk, the responses came pouring in.

Emails. Names. Action shots. Did people have stories? Oh yes. Stories about meeting Oprah. Standing with Ken Austin — the man who originated the role — as a Reser crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to Benny. Being on court as the women’s basketball team cut down nets from their first regular-season title. And the particular terror of falling into bushes or getting stuck crossing a dark street.

Our writer Kip Carlson began making calls. He tapped into his own network. He followed leads from one former mascot to another. The list grew and grew. He finally stopped at 22 interviews, not because we ran out of names, but because we ran out of pages. There are, I now know, a great many alumni walking among us who can execute a flawless push-up routine while wearing a 10-pound beaver head.

All of those unseen Beavers were on my mind the day we took over center court at Gill Coliseum for this issue’s cover shoot.

Five current students — highly trained, deeply committed and absolutely not to be named here — agreed to spend a Sunday afternoon with us under bright lights. We outfitted them in mascot heads and suits from across the decades, so that whether you were cheering in 1988 or 2018, you’d spot a familiar grin.

Then we stepped back.

They slid across the hardwood in old-school, gloriously oversized booties. They marveled at the sheer scale of a 2010s-era head. They demonstrated exactly how much visibility one has through the nose mesh. (Not much.) They swapped stories about near-collisions with exuberant elementary schoolers and the art of communicating pure joy without ever saying a word.

In many ways, they are a study in contradiction, these students who exult in the spotlight while remaining hidden. They get no public credit, only the chance to make a child laugh, to make the fans roar, and to turn an ordinary Thursday night game into a cherished memory.

Judging by the flood of emails we received from their predecessors, those memories last for them as well as for us. So to the Bennys and Bernices of years past: We see you and all you’ve done to bring us together. Even if, technically, we’re not supposed to know who you are.

When I’m searching for a reason to feel optimistic about the future, I don’t have to look far — I find it every day at Oregon State University.

Two years ago, when Carissa O’Donnell, ’24, was nearing final exams, she shared with me the bittersweet feeling of graduation: “I just can’t imagine leaving Oregon State. I feel like I grew up here. But I also know I have to go and make some sort of difference.” In what feels like the blink of an eye, she has already earned a graduate degree from Columbia University’s Climate School, interned with the U.S. House of Representatives and worked directly with Michael Bloomberg’s foundation evaluating low-carbon economics. She’s also finding time to mentor current OSU students.

I first met Javier Garcia-Ramirez, ’24, when he was a sophomore studying engineering. As a first-generation student, he spoke proudly about his siblings, who were also OSU students, and a family life that emphasized hard work and well-being. As kind as he is ambitious, he graduated summa cum laude and secured a software engineering position in New York, all while volunteering for OSU’s alumni network.

Carly Thorkildson, ’24, lights up any room she enters. She was one of those undergrads who belonged to dozens of student organizations. One quarter, after seeing her at multiple events, I finally asked when she had time to sleep. “Ha, sleep is for amateurs,” she quipped. She graduated with honors, immediately excelled in her chosen field of water safety, and continues to volunteer on our Recent Alumni Advisory Council.

Each of these 2024 graduates was an Alumni Association scholarship recipient. Each excelled academically, served as a student leader, launched a career and is already giving back to Oregon State with their time, energy and networks.

It’s a privilege to work with some of Oregon State’s most promising undergraduate students and get to witness their energy, vision and commitment. I know they’ll leave a lasting impact on our campus, on Oregon and beyond.

Thanks to the generosity of thousands of OSU alumni and friends, the Alumni Association’s undergraduate scholarship program — the university’s longest standing — continues to open doors. Recipients often overcome significant personal and financial challenges to pursue their dreams.

With all due respect to those wonderful Class of 2024 recipients, I suspect this year’s group may be our most outstanding yet. (I say that every year and I always mean it!) There’s Bella Larsen, who spent last summer supporting public health in Uganda; Alana Kelley, who champions healthy attitudes and wellness for girls and young women; and Lily Oliphant, who mentors schoolchildren in robotics — and many others.

In a world that often feels uncertain, these undergraduate scholars remind me what’s possible. They are evidence that student success is worth an investment. They’re not only exceptional students; they also represent our most impressive community-builders and citizens. They care. They give back. And they make me profoundly optimistic about our future.

Join in supporting the next generation at When I’m searching for a reason to feel optimistic about the future, I don’t have to look far — I find it every day at Oregon State University.

Join in supporting the next generation.

Oregon State has experienced a 29-year streak of rising enrollment, but soon we’ll begin to feel the effects of the sharp drop in U.S. birth rates that followed the 2008 financial crisis. What opportunities do you see for OSU even as the traditional college-age population declines?

We’ve been very fortunate — though I wouldn’t ascribe it entirely to luck — to have had 29 years of increasing enrollments. But nationwide, we’re already beginning to see enrollment pressures growing, and that’s also true in Oregon. Of course, none of this is a surprise, and there’s been quite a bit of thinking and planning around it.

We’ve always been aware that Oregon is a small population state — somewhat over 4 million people — and that there would be demand for our offerings outside our borders. Ecampus has been an extraordinary instrument to serve both people inside and outside the state. So we’ve been thinking a lot about what would make it even more attractive.

Ecampus has been ranked in the Top 10 by U.S. News & World Report for 12 years. There are also new online programs that we’ve been creating — for example, in sports business and in healthcare administration. We’ve always been a good engineering school, so there’s a slew of engineering programs coming online. For example, online mechanical engineering has about 300 students in it. That tells you how attractive that program is.

So being agile, being quick, being creative about the programs that we offer is going to be very important. We’ve been talking a lot about micro-credentials. These are online certificates in specialized fields — I’m sure it comes as no surprise that AI and semiconductors are big! But in the non-STEM areas, for example, we’ve got microcredentials in consumer analytics and viral content creation.

The other thing that I think about a lot is the fact that transfer students are a big chunk of our population. Therefore, making the transfer process smoother is part of how we attract community college students and others into the mix. It can’t be business as usual. We cannot take increasing enrollment for granted.

Do we need enrollment to keep increasing? We’re already the biggest school in the state.

Part of it is our reach. I mean, we want, through our land-grant mission, to have influence — and being bigger does mean influence. You have many more of your graduates out in the world doing good things. There are also financial pressures that will inevitably lead you there because of the way costs are increasing. Those costs outstrip tuition and what the state can give us, so part of how you make up for that is through increasing enrollment numbers. There are, of course, limits to how big on-
campus enrollment can get. Ecampus offers exciting new offerings and an answer to the problem of physical constraints.

OSU’s land-grant mission can be hard to explain, but Oregonians feel the effects when funding for it is reduced. How do you explain the value of statewide engagement?

You’re right that it’s when a program disappears that you understand its value most deeply.

SNAP-Ed teaches people eligible for federal SNAP benefits how to eat and live healthily. In 2024, 24,000 Oregonians received direct education in these areas. Recently, federal funding for the program was eliminated, which was a devastating loss to OSU employees and the communities they served. Despite that, OSU Extension is working hard to deliver as much of the programming as they can.

Outdoor School is another example. OSU Extension runs the state’s weeklong nature education program for fifth and sixth graders. The state cut its funding by 20%, but we’ll continue Outdoor School with maybe a shorter program duration or other adjustments. You can see how important these programs are. People may not know what a land-grant school is, but they access our programs all the time.

Other OSU Extension programs that people certainly know about are 4-H and the Master Gardener program. Yes, degree granting is important. Yes, research is important. But this big deep connection to our community is also hugely important.

Do you have any stories from communities that illustrate why the work matters?

I’ve been making it a point to visit as many extension offices and experiment stations as possible. I’m always struck by the importance of the role that we play and the level of need that there is. There’s so much OSU does that should make us proud.

One example: I am a huge potato fan, and I’m married to a man who lives exclusively on potatoes, it seems! I was at the Klamath Basin Research and Extension Center, one of two potato research facilities that we run (along with the Hermiston Agricultural Research and Extension Center), and I learned an interesting fact. The work that we do supports 40% of the frozen potato production in North America — 40%! That’s more than a billion dollars in gross revenue to farmers.

You’re about to embark on your second OSU tour of Southeast Asia. What have you learned so far from visiting Beavers around the world?

There’s so much love of OSU in the hearts of Beavers everywhere. Of course, the young folks are very connected through social media. They follow us and keep track of the things that are happening — and they’re deeply invested.

But even people who have been out for a long time have so much nostalgia about their time at OSU and a lot of gratitude. I mean, we had these evening get-togethers, and people wouldn’t leave! There was just this amazing feeling of catching up with family after a long time

Follow President Murthy on LinkedIn.

We cheer student-athletes from the stands, celebrating buzzer-beaters, record-breaking routines and championship runs. But what happens after the final whistle? How do their experiences as Beavers affect the lives and careers that come next? Beyond the Field was created to answer those questions. Hosted by longtime broadcaster and OSU alum David Endres, ’82, this new podcast features candid, one-on-one conversations with Beaver greats from a range of sports and eras.

The first three episodes, available now, feature Mitch Canham, ’11; Sydney Wiese, ’17; and Les Gutches, ’97. Three more will be released weekly beginning April 10 (including Episode 5 with star gymnast Joy Selig, ’92, seen here in the recording studio). Produced in partnership with OSU Media Services and sponsored by Oregon Community Credit Union, these stories are a reminder that while seasons end, the OSU experience continues to shape lives. Start listening and Go Beavs!

Oregon State University research has helped shape a landmark moment for the planet: the enactment of the High Seas Treaty, which went into effect Jan. 17. Formally known as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement, it followed more than two decades of negotiations. Its aim is to safeguard the high seas, the two-thirds of the ocean beyond individual nations’ control. “It’s time to celebrate,” said Jane Lubchenco, OSU Wayne and Gladys Valley Chair of Marine Biology. “We have an unprecedented opportunity to protect and sustainably use the biodiversity in an area covering nearly half the planet. That area houses phenomenal biodiversity, but it’s declining and at risk. This new treaty is a very big deal and very good news — science is informing pioneering global policy, and needs to continue doing so.” Central to that science is The MPA Guide (MPA stands for “marine protected areas”), published in 2021 and led by OSU’s Kirsten Grorud-Colvert and Jenna Sullivan-Stack, who coordinated contributions from more than three dozen scientists to create a road map for planning, evaluating and monitoring marine protected areas. “The High Seas Treaty represents another huge milestone, and I’m really proud of the part OSU plays,” Grorud-Colvert said.

Beaver Brags

-million-year-old ice — the oldest ever directly dated — was discovered in East Antarctica by researchers with COLDEX, a collaboration of 15 U.S. institutions led by OSU.

of stewardship of the McDonald Research Forest, north of Corvallis, is what Oregon State’s College of Forestry is celebrating this year.

views is what a viral video about OSU’s O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Lab got across social media in 2025.

in the nation is what the OSU student literary magazine PRISM earned in the College Media Association’s Pinnacle awards.

Briefs

Cosmic Honor

A discovery that opened a new window on the universe has earned Oregon State astrophysicist Xavier Siemens the Bruno Rossi Prize, one of the highest honors in high-energy astrophysics. Siemens led an international team of nearly 200 researchers, including OSU students, that detected low-frequency gravitational waves — ripples in space-time first predicted by Albert Einstein. The discovery revealed a long-theorized, universe-spanning background of gravitational waves produced by pairs of supermassive black holes slowly merging.

Print. Move In.

Oregon State University researchers have developed a fast-curing, low-carbon building material designed to make 3-D printing homes and infrastructure faster and more practical. Unlike traditional concrete, the clay-based material hardens as it is printed, eliminating days-long curing delays and allowing construction across unsupported gaps such as window and door openings. Early tests show that it reaches residential-grade strength in just three days and reduces carbon emissions by replacing conventional cement with soil, hemp fibers and biochar

Skip the Scalpel

OSU College of Pharmacy researchers have developed new nanoparticles that make it possible to destroy melanoma tumors using low-power, skin-safe laser light instead of surgery or high-powered lasers that can damage healthy skin. The particles collect inside tumors and heat up when exposed to the laser, killing cancer cells while sparing surrounding tissue. In early mouse studies, tumors disappeared without invasive procedures.

Science with Spirit

The name of a new medical imaging breakthrough contains a playful nod to Oregon State’s favorite furry mascot. BVR-19 — a newly patented, manganese-based MRI contrast material — could help patients receive clearer diagnostic images while avoiding the health and environmental concerns tied to commonly used agents. Developed by Oregon State researchers, BVR-19 offers an alternative to conventional MRI contrast agents that rely on rarer, more toxic metals.

Top Honor for Military Beav

Oregon State student Nikki Gold is the first openly LGBTQ+ veteran to be named National Student Veteran of the Year by Student Veterans of America. The honor recognizes leadership, service and advocacy among student veterans nationwide. An undergraduate health student and second-generation Naval veteran, Gold was selected from more than 600,000 candidates across the country. Gold has been involved in peer support and suicide prevention initiatives at OSU and plans to attend law school after graduation.

History at Your Fingertips

A new interactive touch table outside the Special Collections and Archives Research Center on the fifth floor of the Valley Library in Corvallis lets visitors explore 150 years of Oregon State University stories in a dynamic, digital format. Drag and open “bubbles” of photos, text and videos that cover historic moments — from early broadcasts and inventions to cultural milestones. The exhibit was first developed for OSU’s 150th anniversary and is now available whenever the library is open.

For the past 10 years, the Beaver Caucus has helped Oregon State University supporters make their voices heard in the halls of government. What began as an effort to organize OSU’s influence in state policymaking has grown into a coalition that includes students, employees, alumni, donors and experts in the legislative process — all focused on advancing OSU’s priorities through coordinated advocacy.

When the Beaver Caucus launched in 2015, the university had no centralized system for mobilizing supporters. “We have always had good people rooting for us,” said Jill Eiland, ’73, vice president of the Beaver Caucus Board. “But we didn’t have an organized, orchestrated plan with messages people could help us deliver.” The Caucus was created in response to that need. It serves to coordinate strategies and train volunteers to communicate effectively with elected leaders.

Caucus leaders point to a number of high-profile outcomes as evidence of the group’s impact. One is the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts, OSU’s new performing and visual arts center in Corvallis. Alumna Patricia Valian Reser, ’60, ’19 (Hon. Ph.D.), kicked off the construction project with a key $25 million gift. The Caucus used that momentum to launch a campaign for state funding. OSU students, employees and leaders spoke with decision-makers about the benefits an arts center would bring to the region. Legislators also heard from K-12 teachers in their districts about what the center would mean for arts education. In the end, the state provided $38 million to complete the project.

“We’re effective because we’re all in the same boat, rowing together,” said Tony Williams, ’87, a professional advocate and Beaver Caucus board member. He said that once OSU’s leadership identifies priorities, the Caucus creates a unified approach for talking with legislators and activates its grassroots network of advocates.

In other sessions, Caucus advocates helped guarantee funds for capital projects including the Jen-Hsun Huang and Lori Mills Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex and the OSU-Cascades Student Success Center. The group has also continued to advocate for increased public university funding and expanded tuition assistance for Oregon students.

We’re effective because we’re all in the same boat, rowing together.

Such victories are never guaranteed. Oregon trails many other states in public university funding — ranking 46th nationally in 2024 according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association — and federal funding for research has grown increasingly uncertain. In response to these pressures, the Caucus has diversified its focus, advocating for OSU interests at both local and federal levels.

For current board member and former state representative Greg Macpherson, one moment illustrates the Beaver Caucus’ power. After all but two member universities abandoned the Pac-12, OSU’s media rights revenue was expected to drop 44%, putting student-athletes’ scholarships at risk. The organization urged supporters to attend a pivotal legislative session sporting Beaver gear. Participants were already invested. They just needed to know what to do.

“We had that room nearly filled with people wearing orange,” said Macpherson. Lawmakers ultimately approved $10 million in state funding to fill the gap.

Learn more about the Beaver Caucus.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story stated that Oregon ranked 36th for public university funding. That ranking was for the state’s total public investment in higher education and included community college funding. For public university funding alone, actually Oregon ranks 46th in the nation.

While the field of geography is often thought of as the study of spatial relationships, some geographers are as concerned with time as they are with space. Temporal change in places experiencing conflict or disaster, —and the reasons for that change — is what drives Associate Professor Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.

Van Den Hoek and the Conflict Ecology lab that he leads use satellite imagery to characterize long-term, nationwide changes in conflict settings where it’s often too dangerous to collect information on the ground. He uses a combination of technologies to track the destruction of infrastructure, changes in land use related to conflict, and the movement of people — all with the goal of providing critical information to aid organizations and the media.

Much of what the world knows about the progression of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza is due to the work of Van Den Hoek and his team.

Much of what the world knows about the progression of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza is due to the work of Van Den Hoek and his team: The maps they have created have been staples of wartime reporting in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Public Radio and other outlets.

What does war look like from space? Van Den Hoek and his team look at a range of changes, such as the destruction of buildings and roads in urban settings, loss or abandonment of agriculture and the establishment of refugee settlements. “Increasingly we’re looking at other signals, too, like atmospheric conditions, pollution, greenhouse gas emissions attributable to large-scale war, smoke signals and more,” he says.

It’s the integration of these disparate techniques and tools that truly helps Van Den Hoek understand the progress of conflict rather than just its footprint. “We consider ourselves to be conducting conflict-engaged, rather than simply conflict-aware, work,” he explains. While a conflict-aware project might look at a single parameter in a conflict zone, like deforestation, and attribute that change to the conflict, his approach engages more deeply in understanding the damage patterns that result from more specific factors like changes in territorial control.

He explains that the difference lies in using a suite of complementary approaches to study change, and linking that data to other kinds of information, including mainstream and social media reports, the history of the conflict area, troop deployment information and any data that can be collected on the ground.

The study of urban conflict areas is challenging, but in some ways it is a little easier than looking at change in other types of landscapes. All studies of change need a baseline, and Van Den Hoek explains that he “exploits the fact that cities tend to look largely the same year after year,” as opposed to agricultural areas that change seasonally and over spans of years.

With a solid baseline drawn from pre-war records, Van Den Hoek and his team examine images of urban conflict and look for building damage using a kind of open-source radar imagery captured weekly by the European Space Agency. This imaging, taken from a side angle rather than strictly from above (like the imagery used by Google or Apple Maps), detects the loss of buildings as well as changes like scorch marks that might indicate internal damage. Review of the imagery is automated using algorithms written and updated by Van Den Hoek and his team; results of their analyses for urban areas include numbers and percentages of buildings damaged.

The Data Behind the Headlines: When major news outlets want to understand the devastating impact of war, they often turn to OSU’s Jamon Van Den Hoek and his Conflict Ecology lab. In the 2024 article “What Ukraine Has Lost,” The New York Times’ graphics editor Marco Hernandez and senior editor Tim Wallace created an arresting set of charts, using the lab’s data, that provided the first visualizations of the war’s destruction. “I consider myself very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Jamon,” Hernandez said. “The work he does is exceptional and has made it possible to inform our readers not only about what is happening in Ukraine but in many other parts of the world, with an accuracy and efficiency that no one else has been able to achieve before.” Infographic by 2024 The New York Times company

Each new analysis of changes in Gaza, Ukraine or elsewhere is sent to Van Den Hoek’s list of hundreds of media contacts and non-governmental and aid organizations, who use it to inform the world and, when possible, to take humanitarian action. His lab’s work has revealed that nearly 200,000 buildings have been destroyed so far in Gaza, and twice that many have been destroyed in Ukraine.

While Gaza and Ukraine garner the most Western media attention, Van Den Hoek would like his work to raise awareness of lesser-known but similarly destructive conflicts, too. “There are half a dozen conflict areas in the world that should be getting more attention. Sudan, for example, has for months been identified as the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis,” he says.

Van Den Hoek says the hardest impact to monitor is also the most important, and the one he cares about most deeply: the effects of conflicts on people. His approach can’t say whether there were people in a building when it was destroyed, or where survivors went after an attack. But his team is trying to track the migration of people in war zones and gain insights into what post-conflict life looks like for both refugees (people who leave their country due to disaster) and internally displaced people (those who leave home but stay within their own country’s borders).

There are half a dozen conflict areas in the world that should be getting more attention.

“There’s a weight, a burden to this work. I want to do it in a way that’s helpful to others, and I recognize that it affects a lot of extremely vulnerable people,” he says.

“I think the continuing goal is to do this work in a rigorous way, with shareable outcomes that are relevant not to understanding the war per se but understanding how to lessen the harm on civilians.

“The global humanitarian system is in tatters right now, in the worst shape it’s been in for a long time. I’m hoping for a turning point and hoping that our work of the last couple of years can serve as an example of what can be done transparently and collaboratively.”

In the Corvallis Community Center’s Chandler Ballroom, a ghost appeared. The room was packed with women when Leonora Kerr burst into the room, wearing an elaborate black feathered hat, to roaring laughter and applause.

She was the wife of William Jasper Kerr, Oregon State president from 1907 to 1932. And her appearance marked the final meeting of the organization she founded in 1908: the OSU Folk Club.

Of course, this wasn’t a real ghost. On this particular October afternoon, the apparition was played by Freda Vars, M.S. ’66, a member of the Folk Club for 58 years and the club’s unofficial historian.

Vars spoke of the club’s history. Founded as a networking and cultural group for women associated with the university, the club soon began supporting campus projects, including construction of the Memorial Union. Then came the Great Depression. “In 1930, with the stock market crash,” said Vars, “they began raising their own money to give away student scholarships.”

Left: Folk Club members tested playground equipment they funded. Right: All the club’s living past presidents gathered in 1991. Courtesy of OSU Special Collections & Archives

This proved to be the beginning of a nearly century-long tradition. The Folk Club has distributed more than $1.5 million in scholarships, with the majority raised through the OSU Folk Club Thrift Shop. Opened in 1949 and staffed entirely with volunteers, the shop now sits at the corner of Second Street and Jackson Avenue.

Back in the ballroom, the club’s vice president, Mary Ann Matzke, addressed a special guest. Traditionally, the wife of Oregon State’s president served as honorary president of the Folk Club. “Well, times have changed!” Matzke said. “I’d like to name Dr. Jayathi Murthy our honorary president for this year.”

OSU’s 16th president would serve for only a few days, but the symbolic gesture was indicative of the changing times partially responsible for the club’s disbandment. “I think what we saw was a change in our society,” said Ann Kimerling, a member since 1976. “When I arrived here, a lot of women stayed at home, raised families, and if they had careers it was part-time.”

According to Kimerling, membership dropped steadily over the next 50 years, from around 450 women in the 1980s to just around 100 in 2025. “Everybody in Folk Club got older,” said Vars. With a lack of new members, the club found itself cycling through the same tight group for leadership positions.

Leonora Kerr began the Folk Club in 1908 for women affiliated with the university.

At the club’s final meeting, close friendships were evident. “Whenever people sent in their dues, they sent me cards, or little notes, and just little hellos,” said club treasurer Elizabeth Spatafora. “It made me feel so connected to everyone — some of you are my very best friends now.”

Though the club may be gone, the thrift shop’s familiar orange-and-black storefront is not. It’s now called the Corvallis Community Thrift Shop, and its volunteer staff — including many former Folk Club members — will continue providing financial support to students and community members.

And the history of the Folk Club will live on, thanks to OSU’s Special Collections and Archives and the diligent recordkeeping of members. As Vars said: “I hope someday someone’s going to come and do a project on women’s organizations at the university, and find this wonderful wealth of information.”

1. Enjoying the Evening

By Clemens Starck, OSU Facilities Services staff

From the late carpenter-poet Clemens Starck comes one final collection, marked by his plainspoken wit and clear-eyed attention to work and place in the Northwest. Starck received the William Stafford Memorial Poetry Award and won the Oregon Book Award for Journeyman’s Wages in 1995. Learn more.

2. Gods of the Smoke Machine

By Scott Latta, MFA ’15

Scott Latta draws on memoir and reporting to examine American megachurch culture and its human cost. Meet survivors, attorneys and advocates working to hold institutions to account in this intimate and unsettling look at faith and the misuse of power. Latta received the Southampton Review’s Frank McCourt Memoir Prize in 2016. Learn more.

3. I Will Give Them an Everlasting Name

By Samuel Cox, ’91

Centering on the verbal accounts of eight survivors, a rescuer and a camp liberator, this book tells the stories of 10 people who found themselves in Jacksonville, Florida, after experiencing the atrocities of the Holocaust in Europe. Learn more.

4. The Psychic

By Nancy Bush, ’75

A page-turning suspense novel from New York Times bestselling author Nancy Bush, this intensely eerie story follows Veronica Quick as her ever-present premonitions lead her deeper into a grisly murder case. Learn more.

1950s

William R. Johnston, ’57, published the memoir CHOICES — My Life’s Choice Points, Mine and Those of Others During my First 87 Years, now available from Amazon.

1970s

Ruth Beyer, ’77, long-time attorney at Stoel Rives, LLP, and currently senior vice president and general counsel for Precision Castparts, received the Thomas Lamb Eliot Service to Philanthropy Award from the Association of Fundraising Professionals of Oregon and SW Washington on Nov. 17, 2025.

James C. Carnahan, ’74, was elected to a two-year term as president of the Baker County Livestock Association, a division of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association. He retired in June of 2024 after 50 years as a civil engineer, including four years as a U.S. Marine Corps engineering officer, 31 years as a consulting engineer in Central Oregon, and 15 years as a U.S. Forest Service bridges and dams engineer. He has also served on the OSU-Cascades advisory board and the Central Oregon Community College board, among other community activities.

Penny Fentiman, ’79, Oregon State University bowling instructor, won her sixth title in the Oregon State U.S. Bowling Congress Queens Tournament and an invitation to the National USBC Queens Tournament, taking place in Las Vegas this April. The Queens Tournament is one of the most prestigious women’s bowling competitions in the country.

Graham Parker, ’73, emeritus senior staff engineer at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, was honored with the Utility Energy Forum’s Graham Parker Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his decades of leadership in energy efficiency.

Charles Robinson, ’70, published the book, Ice Age Flood Tour. It provides readers with a self-guided automobile tour of the Ice Age Flood in Eastern Washington and the Columbia River Gorge and features photographs of the geologic features along the route and detailed maps. Learn more.

Photo by Story Gorge

Jeanne Carver, M.S. ’78

Jeanne Carver, M.S. ’78, founder and president of Oregon-based Shaniko Wool Company, once again helped outfit Team USA for the 2026 Winter Olympics. This marks the fifth Olympic Games that her company’s merino wool has been used in the team’s Ralph Lauren-made uniforms. Shaniko was the first farm group in the U.S. to be certified under the Responsible Wool Standard, and its work showcases sustainable agriculture and American craftsmanship on a global stage.

1980s

Wanda Crannell, ’88, advisor and instructor in the College of Agricultural Sciences, and Doris Cancel-Tirado, MPH ’12, Ph.D. ’12, associate dean for student services and well-being in the College of Health, were honored with OSU Extension Service’s Community Engaged Scholarship Team Award at the 2025 OSU Engagement Conference for their work as team leads for OSU’s Puerto Rico Service-Learning Initiative.

Angela Snow, ’81, former vice president and senior design ambassador at Nike and honorary OSU Foundation trustee, co-chaired the Portland Art Museum’s Connection Campaign, which recently celebrated the completion of a significant expansion and renovation of the museum made possible by the $116 million campaign.

Katy Wright, ’83, a retired endodontist and former member of the OSU varsity women’s golf team, placed third in the 2025 Veterans Golf Association National Championship at Olympia Fields Country Club in Chicago.

1990s

Shelby Filley, Ph.D. ’98, professor of animal and rangeland science and the OSU Extension Service area livestock and forage specialist, retired after 27 years of service.

Victoria Nguyen, ’95, MAIS ’06, director of Global Workforce Strategy and Talent Enablement for Genesys, was awarded Oregon State University’s 2026 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Alumni Legacy Award in recognition of the impact of her volunteerism and professional work.

Joth Ricci, ’90, former CEO of Dutch Bros., Stumptown Coffee and Adelsheim Vineyards, and his family purchased Winderlea Vineyard and Winery in Dundee, Oregon. Anna Ricci, ’21, MBA ’23, now serves as the winery’s director of engagement and ownership relations.

2000s

Emmanuel Agamloh, Ph.D. ’06, associate professor of electrical engineering at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, was named an IEEE Fellow in recognition of his contributions to electric motor test procedures and efficiency standards.

Trini Amador IV, ’07, owner of Gracianna Winery in Sonoma County, California, celebrated a standout 2025 awards season, with the winery earning 15 awards — including Gold, Double Gold and Best of Class honors — across three major competitions. The 2023 Mercedes Riverblock Estate Pinot Noir was the winery’s most decorated wine, earning a Best of Class and Double Gold win.

Josh Axelrod, ’06, COO of Aldrich and member of the Board of Advisors for OSU College of Business, and Trey Winthrop, ’93, CEO of Bob’s Red Mill and OSU Foundation trustee, were named Portland Business Executives of the Year by the Portland Business Journal.

Lori Bautista, ’04, became a National Institute of Governmental Purchasing Certified Procurement Professional in November. She is one of only seven Oklahomans who currently hold the certification.

Trent Bray, ’07, former Beaver head football coach, was hired as defensive coordinator for Washington State University.

Inoke Breckterfield, ’08, former defensive line coach for Baylor University, is returning to Corvallis to serve as the Beavers’ defensive line coach. Breckterfield played for OSU from 1995 to 1998 and was a Third Team Associated Press All-American and won the Pac-10’s Morris Trophy Award.

Brian Hall, ’03, CEO of NIC Industries; Toby Luther, ’96, president and CEO of Lone Rock Resources; and Laura Naumes, ’81, vice president of Naumes Inc., were named to Governor Tina Kotek’s new Prosperity Council this January. The council is tasked with advising the governor on how to accelerate Oregon’s economy, create jobs and recruit and grow the state’s businesses.

Delfina Homen,’04, an intellectual property litigator, was elected as partner at the Portland-based law firm Miller Nash LLP.

Gary Newbloom, ’09, founder and CEO of Membrion, was named a Hydro20 honoree for his breakthrough work in industrial wastewater treatment.

Cody Sheehy, M.S. ’07, Emmy-award-winning filmmaker and founder of Rhumbline Media, directed The Last Dive, about a man’s 20-year-long relationship with a giant Pacific manta ray. Released in the summer of 2025, the film was honored with the award for Best Cinematography in a Documentary Feature at the Tribeca Festival in New York City. Learn more.

Skye Walker, ’01, an Encinitas, California-based artist and muralist, was featured in the magazine SDVoyager. Read the story.

Photo by QEPrize/Jason Alden

Jen-Hsun Huang, ’84, ’09 (Hon. Ph.D.)

Jen-Hsun Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, emerged as one of the world’s most recognized technology leaders in 2025, named Person of the Year by both Time and the Financial Times and receiving the 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering — presented by King Charles III — in honor of NVIDIA’s foundational work in AI and machine learning. The Cambridge Union Society and the Hawking family also awarded Huang the Professor Stephen Hawking Fellowship in recognition of his impact on scientific advancement.

2010s

Lacey Beaty, ’12, mayor of the city of Beaverton, and Charlene Zidell, ’71, vice president of strategic partnerships and legacy vision for Zidell Industries, were named to Portland Business Journal’s 2026 “Women of Influence” list. The award recognizes trailblazing women leaders in Oregon and Southwest Washington from a cross section of organizations in tech, healthcare, education and more.

Megan Partch, Ph.D. ’18, chief health officer at Father Joe’s Villages in San Diego, California, was recognized by San Diego Business Journal as a Women of Influence in Healthcare. Father Joe’s Villages opened a 44-bed detox program in September 2025 to support community members experiencing homelessness and substance use disorder. Previously, the City of San Diego had only two detox beds available to individuals with state-funded benefits.

Photo courtesy of Morgan Stosic

Morgan Stosic, ’19

Morgan Stosic, ’19, research scientist and psychologist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, was named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list of innovators in transportation and aerospace. As a lead scientist at Johnson Space Center’s Behavioral Health and Performance Laboratory, she analyzes astronauts’ facial expressions, voices and body movements to detect markers of fatigue, cognition and team cohesion. This data is being used to develop a next-generation spacesuit that will be worn by astronauts exploring the Moon’s South Pole.

2020s

Burke De Boer, ’24, published Songs of the Cyberspace Cattle Drive, a collection of essays profiling singer-songwriters from across the American West, available through Amazon. Learn more.

Lauren Haas, MCoun ’25, an elementary school counselor in Central Oregon and advocate for amplifying adoptee voices, published the book A Heart that Holds it All: A Story of Adoption, available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Josh Misko, ’23, co-founder and COO of Seatfun, a ticketing and marketing company, announced that the startup closed a funding round at a multi-million dollar valuation. Read more.

Michelle Winham-Gee, ’22, Ph.D. ’24, a fluids and computational engineering doctoral student at Stanford University, was named part of the Department of Energy’s Computational Science Graduate Fellowships 35th cohort.

Emily Zamarripa, ’20, plant propagation specialist, and Noah Koker, ’24, lead field technician, both with the OSU-Cascades HERS Lab, were recognized at the 2025 OSU Engagement Conference. The two are members of the award-winning East Cascades Native Plant Hub, which earned the OSU-Community Partnership Engagement Award for addressing a national shortage of native plant materials critical to post-wildfire restoration and ecological recovery.

Photo courtesy of Giulia Wood

Giulia Wood, ’23

Giulia Wood, ’23, was named Oregon State’s first Marshall Scholar. This prestigious scholarship program for outstanding U.S. students funds up to three years of graduate study at any university in the United Kingdom. After finishing her master’s in Ocean, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences at OSU this spring, Wood will pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Liverpool, studying Antarctic krill physiology and their role in biogeochemical cycling in the Southern Ocean.

Fill out the form to share your good news with the alumni community.

We know Oregon State is special. You know it, too. But how do you translate that pride to your social feed? We asked alumni who work in social media and marketing to share simple, effective ways to amplify OSU online. A single post may seem small, but shared widely, it can create momentum — sending ripples outward and elevating Oregon State’s presence in ways that add up. Here are five tips.

1. Share real moments — not perfect ones.

The highly staged Instagram posts of yesteryear have given way to something more genuine. That’s good news for Beavs. “Candid photos, throwbacks, game days, campus visits or everyday OSU pride go a long way — no polished content required,” said Sara Boraston, ’15, senior director of marketing at Teladoc Health. A quick snap from Gill, Goss or your favorite campus spot can spark connection.

2. Engage, don’t just scroll.

A like is nice. A comment, reply or share is better. Social media platforms reward conversation, so interacting with OSU’s posts helps expand their reach. Leave a comment, reply to a story, add your own photo or share a post.

3. Add something personal.

If you share an OSU post on LinkedIn, Facebook or elsewhere, consider adding a sentence about why it matters to you. Mention the professor who changed your life or an experience that shaped your career. Personal context turns a repost into a story of its own.

4. Help the next generation see themselves here.

Younger audiences respond best to video-first storytelling. Whether it’s a candid reaction clip at a game or words of encouragement for new grads, your perspective helps future students and supporters imagine their own connection to OSU.

5. Offer a call to action.

“Create one simple call to action that is consistent and easy to do,” said Jonathan Riley, ’09, CEO at Better Marketing. Tag someone in a #ThrowbackThursday post. Encourage fellow Oregonians to support an important vote. Suggest that classmates join you at an alumni event. A small, clear invitation gives others a natural way to join in.

1940s

Katharine Graham Kohler, ’47, Carefree, AZ, Pi Beta Phi • Marvin M. Janzen, ’49, Eugene, OR

1950s

Janet R. Bell, ’50, Spring Lake, MI, Alpha Xi Delta, Panhellenic • Shirley Carr Carl, ’51, Portland, OR • Garvin D. Crabtree, ’51, Orlando, FL • Janice Fisher Janzen, ’51, Eugene, OR • Ruel A. Robinson, ’51, Portland, OR • Henry L. Downing, ’52 ’54, Portland, OR • Jack O’Dell Saling, ’52 ’53, Wood Village, OR, Beta Theta Pi • Lorraine Larsen Bauder, ’53, Medway, MA • Anne C. Darrow, ’53, Seattle, WA, Alpha Phi • Orra E. Kerns, ’53 ’55, Vancouver, WA, Sigma Alpha Epsilon • Harriett B. Sterns, ’53 ’54, Gainesville, FL, Delta Zeta • Glenda Cotton Fillinger, ’54, Lafayette, CA, Kappa Kappa Gamma • Wendell M. Taylor, ’54, Walnut Creek, CA, Lambda Chi Alpha • John Gottfried Krautscheid, ’55, Hillsboro, OR, Phi Kappa Theta • Lawrence E. Weinert, ’55, Antioch, CA • Donald L. Barklow, ’56, Meridian, ID, Acacia • Robert L. Barnes, ’57, Tualatin, OR • Frances M. Barnes, ’57, Tualatin, OR • Joanne Bowlin, ’57, Happy Valley, OR, Delta Gamma • Donna Henry Dent, ’57, Sutherlin, OR, Delta Zeta • Joan Kay Ruggles, ’57, Hollister, CA, Sigma Kappa • Gustavus M. Supe Jr., ’57, Kailua, HI, Theta Xi • Richard C. Tutt, ’57, Eugene, OR • Ronald A. Winger, ’57, Silverdale, WA • Abby Brice Aanerud, ’58, Seattle, WA, Alpha Chi Omega • Richard Ballweber, ’58, Portland, OR • Robert Allen Fronk Jr., ’58 ’69, Weatherford, TX • Joseph B. Holder, ’58, Sisters, OR • Verle Weitzman Pilling, ’58, Bend, OR, Kappa Kappa Gamma • Gordon E. Roselund, ’58, Green Valley, AZ • Roland Francis Rousseau, ’58, Sigma Nu • William David Huntting, ’59 ’65, Lake Oswego, OR, Kappa Sigma • Charles Burt Mack, ’59, San Gabriel, CA, Sigma Alpha Epsilon

Photo courtesy of Oregon State University Foundation

R. Stevens Gilley Sr., ’56

Robert “Steve” Gilley died on Aug. 19, 2025, at the age of 90. After graduating from Oregon State, he began a career in real estate that took him from Portland to New York, San Francisco and Hawaii. He founded and led companies and held leadership roles across the country. Through it all he remained devoted to Oregon State, serving as OSU Alumni Association board president from 1975 to 1977 and on the OSU Foundation Board of Trustees from 1973 to 1988. He was proud to share his Beaver spirit with grandchildren Emma Gilley, ’21; Ben Poulsen, ’23; and Hudson Barnes, ’24. A consummate host of family gatherings and man of many passions, he rode horses, sailed in the Pacific and Atlantic, and found community wherever he lived, nurturing long friendships. He is survived by his wife of 60 years, Patricia Ann Petersen; children Scott Howden, Mark Gilley, Bob Gilley and Liz Peatman; 11 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

1960s

Ronald E. Wrolstad, ’60, Corvallis, OR, Alpha Gamma Rho • Joan Saubert Cummings, ’61, Rio Verde, AZ • James Eltinge Grinnell, ’61, Sonora, CA, Delta Tau Delta • Joe Huston Kesey, ’61, Eugene, OR, Sigma Nu • Joseph A. Lukes, ’61, Santa Rosa, CA • Edward Darrell Nienow, ’61, Lafayette, CA • Nancy Jo Brock, ’62, Marysville, WA • Galen D. DeShon, ’63, Washougal, WA • Michael B. Peterson, ’63, Bothell, WA, Kappa Delta Rho • Lavern Lee Alton, ’64, Walnut Creek, CA • Keith O. Mohr, ’64 ’65, Sugar Grove, IL • Linda Viking Powell, ’64, Blythe, CA • Anne Buchholz Brownlee, ’65, Spokane Valley, WA • Charles Searles Everhart, ’65 ’70 ’72, Kaunakakai, HI • Ronald D. Miller, ’65, Severna Park, MD • George Harmon Constantine Jr, ’66, Portland, OR • Ronald Wendell Kirsher Jr., ’66 • Robert John McKittrick, ’66, Springfield, OR • Robert James Sherman, ’66 ’69, Saint Paul, MN • Peter Guild Pittock, ’67, Portland, OR • George Carter Sharp Jr., ’67 ’68 ’69, Lakewood, WA, Alpha Tau Omega • Samuel T. Tani, ’67, Benson, AZ • Helen Kelley, ’69, Portland, OR, Kappa Delta • Linda Nell Sharp, ’69, San Francisco, CA

1970s

Michael S. White, ’70 ’72, Sacramento, CA, Phi Delta Theta • Marvin E. Brownell, ’71, Sun Lakes, AZ • Anthony J. George Jr., ’71, Scottsdale, AZ • Bareld Egge Groenwold, ’71, Heathsville, VA • Donna Sue Johnson, ’71, Golden, CO • Michael A. McKillip, ’71, Tualatin, OR • Kenneth F. Meeuwsen, ’71, Cornelius, OR, Alpha Gamma Rho • John Louis Normandin, ’72, Pendleton, OR • Jon R. Brazier, ’73, Medford, OR • Louis Charles Grothaus IV, ’73 ’75, Seattle, WA • Mark R. Knox, ’73, Camas, WA, Delta Chi • Karl W. Love, ’73, Coos Bay, OR • Sam P. Starfas, ’73, Santa Barbara, CA • Jeffrey A. Zinn, ’73, Fairfax, VA • Kevin Carson Bacon, ’74, Tacoma, WA • Kelly Stovall Frost, ’75, Tucson, AZ • Michael E. Boren, ’76, Saint Helens, OR • Jere Ky Putnam, ’76, Corvallis, OR • Gustav Rand Alberthal, ’77, Portland, OR • Cindy Elaine Morrill, ’77, Avondale, AZ • David Leslie Carlson, ’78, Maple Valley, WA • Michael Szramek, ’78, Walla Walla, WA

1980s

John Robert Vandehey, ’81, Portland, OR • Gail Barbara Nickerson, ’82, Corvallis, OR • David Neil Schmitt, ’82 ’86, Richardson, TX • Susan Keiko Sasano, ’83 ’85, Salem, OR • Nicholas John Smith, ’84, Nanaimo, BC • Roger C. Bonzer, ’85, Beaverton, OR • Karen Kennette Pixler, ’85, Murrieta, CA • Caroline Frances Norelius, ’86, Wilmington, NC

Photo courtesy of Benton County

Linda Modrell, ’81, MBA ’89

Linda Modrell died Nov. 8, 2025. She was 82. A four-term Benton County commissioner, she helped establish three county natural areas and develop a network of community health clinics serving low-income residents. But her most memorable act as a public servant came in March 2004, when she voted to stop issuing all marriage licenses until same-sex couples had the right to marry. The decision sparked both a recall effort and national media attention. The standoff lasted five months before the commission began issuing licenses again. Oregon legalized same-sex marriage a decade later, just months before she retired. “She was a force to be reckoned with — in a good way,” longtime Corvallis City Councilor George Grosch told the Philomath News. Before politics, Modrell worked on the team that developed the Oregon Health Plan as well as for Oregon State University. She is survived by her partner, Keith McCreight, Ph.D. ’81; her sons, Brett Modrell, ’86, and Jason Modrell, ’89; a sister and two brothers; and three grandchildren.

1990s

Daniel Harvey Jones, ’90, Corvallis, OR • Eileen Joyce Larkin, ’90, Elgin, OR

2000s

Daniel Katz, ’01, McMinnville, OR • Colin Daniel Poellot, ’01, Tully, NY • X iaowei Tian, ’11, Corvallis, OR • Caroline Marie Moses, ’18, Corvallis, OR • Mitchell Keith Freeman, ’25, Corvallis, OR

Photo courtesy of Michael Moses

Caroline Moses, ’18

Caroline Moses died on Oct. 19, 2025, near Lincoln City, Oregon, after being swept out to sea by a sneaker wave while on an annual family camping trip. She was 43. In her second year as a well-loved kindergarten and middle school art teacher at Zion Lutheran Christian School in Corvallis, Moses was also an accomplished artist. She exhibited frequently in local galleries and was a member of the all-women’s artist collective The Nest. One of her most notable works, Bessie’s Blue, is a mosaic mural on Monroe Avenue depicting the endangered Fender’s blue butterfly and composed of 6,000 hand-painted squares. Known for her kindness, creativity and mischievous sense of humor, she lived by the guiding philosophy, “It is irresponsible to live a life without passion.” She is survived by her husband, Michael Moses, ’09, M.S. ’19, and their two sons, Wilderness and River, as well as her parents, siblings, nieces and nephews.

Students

Molly Lillian Nelson, Portland, OR • Ronith Singh Sethi, Salem, OR • Merrick Mavi Woldridge, Portland, OR

Faculty, Staff and Friends

Olaf A. Boedtker, Corvallis, OR • James Michael Caldwell, Salem, OR • Dave Conser, Castle Rock, CO • Evin Gary Hodge, Portland, OR • Evan Jaqua, Portland, OR • Joan Johanson • Daniel Lew, Davis, CA • Patti Littlehales, Newport, OR • Dominique Matteson, West Hartford, CT • William D. Montgomery • Keith W. Muckleston, Milwaukie, OR • Jean R. Natter, Beaverton, OR • Hoa Nguyen • Colleen O’Toole, West Richland, WA • William G. Pearcy, Philomath, OR • Andrew Pinkowski, Lake Oswego, OR • Sandra K. Rea, Greendale, IN • Joseph E. Robertson Jr., Greensburg, IN • Barbara Ethel Rosenberg • Joey Running, Brownsville, OR • Susan R. Shields, Lake Oswego, OR • Sara J. White, San Carlos, CA • Catherine Worley, Corvallis, OR

Photo courtesy of OSU College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences

William G. Pearcy

William G. Pearcy, a pioneering Oregon State University oceanographer whose research helped transform scientific understanding of Pacific salmon in the open ocean, died Nov. 22, 2025. He was 96. One of five founding members of Oregon State’s Department of Oceanography, Pearcy built an internationally respected career as a biological oceanographer, publishing more than 150 scientific papers and authoring the landmark 1992 book Ocean Ecology of North Pacific Salmonids, a classic in the field. Pearcy contributed to early research submersible dives off the Pacific Northwest coast and received many of the profession’s highest honors, including from the American Fisheries Society, the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists and the North Pacific Marine Science Organization. In retirement, he tended a 60-acre farm near Philomath filled with fruit trees and sheep with his wife, Amy Schoener. He was predeceased by Schoener and is survived by his brother, David; his children, Lisanne, Mark and Karla Pearcy-Marston; and three granddaughters.

To share losses with the Oregon State community, please complete this form.

Members Make a Difference

Joining the OSU Alumni Association community is one of the most meaningful ways to stay connected and show your pride in your alma mater. Learn more about how membership can help you show your love for OSU, gain access to special perks and support OSU students and fellow alumni.

Students Offer Inspiration

From the vice president of Oregon State Investment Group to the vice president of the OSU Association of Latin American Students, our Student Alumni Ambassadors are amazing Beavs! Get to know this distinguished group of leaders dedicated to fostering meaningful connections between Oregon State University students and alumni.

Industry Connect brings students, alumni and professionals together to build connections and support one another’s careers. Photo by Julian K. McFadden, ’16

A Great Way to Support Fellow Beavs

Beaver Nation is a uniquely supportive network — and it’s yours for life. Connect with more than 230,000 alumni through our online platform OSU Connections, join industry- and affinity- based groups, or gain insights from Ask Alumni career webcasts. Recently, Industry Connect events and Mock Interviews offered alumni opportunities to build relationships, explore careers and sharpen skills. Whether you’re job-seeking, changing fields or a seasoned professional eager to mentor or hire others, you’ll find encouragement, expertise and community. Start exploring!

Connect and Learn Something Cool

Join Dam Good Connections in your region for easygoing networking alongside fascinating expert insights. See upcoming cities and dates, learn more and register.

At Dam Good Connections, Bay Area Beavs had a front-row seat to a scientific shark dissection led by Taylor Chapple and Alex McInturf of the OSU Big Fish Lab. Photo by Jim Gensheimer

Welcome, Class of 2026!

This year’s graduates are gearing up for their milestone moment. Support them as they step into their futures by sending an encouraging message or connecting through OSU Connections. Learn how at ForOregonState.org/Grad26.

A proud Class of 2025 graduate posed in front of the Oregon State Alumni Center on Commencement Day. Photo by Andres Nieves-Bernal

Save the Date

April 18

Dam Good Connections: Sacramento

April 29

Dam Proud Day

May

OSU Days of Service

May 8

Dam Good Connections: Seattle

May 12

OSU-Cascades Science Pub

May 12

Travel Talk: Cats

May 14

Ask Alumni: Transform Your Career and Community

May 16

Dam Good Connections: Bend

May 20

Bray Health Leadership and Innovation Lecture

May 28

Ask Alumni: Healthcare Administration

June 5

Engineering Expo

For the oncology team at Oregon State’s Lois Bates Acheson Veterinary Teaching Hospital, nothing matters more than giving people more time with their pets. They focus on providing animals the best quality of life after a cancer diagnosis, tailoring treatments to align with each family’s goals. They also know when to honor a hard-fought win. “Chemotherapy graduations are a meaningful way to celebrate a major milestone,” said Dr. Haley Leeper, hospital medical director and medical oncologist. “They honor the pet’s bravery, recognize the family’s support and acknowledge the entire veterinary team’s role in the journey.” On this day, the team celebrated a Doberman named Zeus as he posed near the “I Kicked Cancer’s Butt” wall. “Zeus is part of my family, just my guy,” said his owner, Axel Rivera. The service treats about 300 new patients each year. Part of the Gary R. Carlson, MD, College of Veterinary Medicine, it includes medical oncologists, residents, certified veterinary technicians and fourth-year veterinary students on clinical rotations. “As a teaching hospital, we give students vital experience in cancer care,” Leeper said. Photos of graduates like Zeus line office walls — daily reminders of hope.

For 35 years, William “Ropes” Barr Robertson, ’41, was a constant presence in Oregon State University Athletics — tending injuries, steadying nerves and shaping the lives of student-athletes across sports and generations.

Robertson served as OSU’s first — and for some years only — athletic trainer from 1945 to 1980. In 1972, he also helped launch the university’s academic athletic training program.

His nickname dated to World War II service with the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, where fellow soldier Gene Winters dubbed him “Rope-Sole” for the climbing shoes he wore. According to Robertson’s wife, Mary, one day Winters strolled into his Oregon State office and said, “How are ya doing, Ropes?” The athletes in the room loved it, and the nickname stuck.

Terry Baker, ’63, gave his trainer and friend “Ropes” Robertson this signed photo of the two of them together on the sidelines. Photo by Oregon Stater

On campus, Robertson was also known as the “poet laureate of the locker room.” A gifted storyteller, he rewrote verses on the fly to suit the lesson a player needed to hear. His signature performance was a dramatic recitation of “Casey at the Bat,” personalized anew for the moment and the listener.

Former Beavers MVP quarterback Steve Preece, ’68, says Robertson had an instinct for reading people and situations.

“He’d start talking about a friend of his and pretty soon you’d realize you’re in the middle of something he’d recited over and over,” Preece recalls. “I must have heard Mighty Casey 50 times, and each time you felt like you were Casey. He would be animated and almost in tears. He was a magician.”

That charm extended well beyond the training room. When Beavers basketball played Louisiana State University in December 1969, during Preece’s rookie year with the New Orleans Saints, Robertson came to a party at the house Preece shared with his teammates. Preece remembers him stepping up to an open microphone during the band’s intermission and telling stories for 30 minutes until he had to give up the stage — to protests and boos from the crowd.

But for the athletes he worked with, Robertson’s importance was less about performance than presence. “He kept me upright for four years,” Preece says. “And he did it for about 30 other guys, which is why they loved him. To Ropes, everything was fixable. He made you feel good; he got you.”

Terry Baker, ’63 — the only student-athlete ever to both win the Heisman Trophy and play in the Final Four — remembers that closeness well. “Ropes let me hang out at his house, he loaned me his car, and he liked to have a good time,” Baker says. “He was like a buddy.”

Baker laughs as he recalls sneaking out of a hotel room with basketball teammate Steve Pauly, ’66, one night in Idaho. When they returned, they found a locked-out Coach A.T. “Slats” Gill attempting to hoist Robertson through the transom window of his room. Gill’s son was deaf and couldn’t hear them knocking.

After Robertson’s death in November 1980, 400 people gathered at Gill Coliseum to honor “one of Oregon State’s great human beings.” Preece served as master of ceremonies, joined by other alumni sports legends including brothers Jimmy Clark, ’53, and Herman Clark, ’55. The governor declared the day “Bill Robertson Day.”

Then-OSU athletic director Dee Andros captured the sentiment well: “We have lost one of the great Beavers of all time. He was right at the top of my list of nice guys. He loved the kids, and that is what made him so good at his job.”

Today, Robertson’s legacy continues through the William “Ropes” Robertson Endowed Athletic Training Student Success Fund, benefiting students in the College of Health program he co-founded. Help support.

It’s about 20 minutes until tipoff and Benny Beaver is getting his game face on.

Actually, he’s getting his entire head on. And his tail. And fur. And basketball shoes.

Benny’s attire has changed over the decades, but his role has been constant: entertaining and energizing Beaver Nation at athletic contests and representing Oregon State University at a wide variety of events. The current mascot outfit and its predecessors hold indelible recollections for hundreds of Oregon Staters who have worn one of them since Benny was born on Oct. 4, 1952.

“Being Benny the Beaver was a privilege,” said Evan Thomson, ’19, who was a Benny from 2016 to 2019. “I’m so thankful for my time. I always took it very serious and made sure to proudly represent my school the best I could. I can’t imagine my life without being Benny, and I have stories to tell for the rest of my life.”

2026. The mascot locker room in Gill Coliseum holds costumes, supplies and many historic heads.

During the 2025-26 school year, 10 OSU students are serving as Bennys and Bernices. Following tradition, during their time in the suit their identities are revealed only on a need-to-know basis: mom and dad, maybe some friends or Greek brothers and sisters who might notice you’re never at a game with them.

Now, prior to a men’s basketball game against University of the Pacific, one of those 10 is hydrating big-time. Today’s Benny says this is Step One in his pregame routine: “First I have to physically prepare — like make sure I have a lot of water in me because it gets very hot in there.”

Suiting up involves putting on a thick fur onesie that weighs about 10 pounds — more once the sweat begins to seep in — and strapping on the tail; putting on the basketball uniform and lacing up the shoes; donning the huge Benny head, in which a skullcap is suspended to fit on the wearer’s head (vision is limited to what can be seen out of Benny’s nose); and finally, putting on the paws.

At this point, the wearer is breathing deeply the strong, aromatic musk of all those who have previously worn the suit.

“It’s awful,” said Darin Paine, ’01, a Benny and Bernice from 1997 to 2000. “It smells like sweat.”

It’s all part of the tradition that began almost 75 years ago.

Benny was the brainchild of Bill Sundstrom, ’54. Sundstrom grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area watching California’s mascot Oski the Bear. So when his Delta Tau Delta brother Ken Austin, ’53, wasn’t selected for the Rally Squad, Sundstrom shared his plan for an alternative position — creating a beaver mascot for Oregon State College.

Austin (who with his wife, Joan, later founded dental equipment manufacturer A-dec) liked the idea. Sundstrom’s description of Oski made Austin think of the rodeo clowns he’d seen at the St. Paul Rodeo near his hometown of Newberg. “So that was my mode of operation — to have some funny things to say or do, and I kind of patterned what I was going to do like that,” Austin said in a 2012 interview. “So I really created my own theme, which was, in those days, a little bit rude.”

Stunts included climbing a goalpost while the game was in progress, weaving his way through an opponent’s marching band and brandishing a 38-caliber revolver on the sideline to target officials’ flags after Beaver penalties. Constantly in one of that original Benny’s hands? A toilet plunger.

“It was just fun stuff. The sky was the limit,” Austin said. “To think it started a tradition is something else.”

1952: Benny debuted with the Rally Squad. “The true identity of the animal was not disclosed until the end of basketball season,” the Beaver Yearbook said. “Then the mask was lifted and Ken Austin was exposed as the masquerader.” *1953 Beaver yearbook*

From shag carpet to injection-molded plastic, Benny has worn many different faces.

The Rebirth of Benny

Benny was a regular sight at games until sometime around the early 1970s, when the tradition briefly went dormant. Rick Coutin, ’76, was left off the Rally Squad in 1972-73, but wanted to stay involved. He’d seen photos of Benny in old copies of the Daily Barometer and in the Beaver Yearbook. He asked Assistant Athletic Director Denny Hedges if there was a beaver outfit somewhere in Gill Coliseum. Hedges took him to the basement, dug out the old costume, and Benny was back for the 1972-73 men’s basketball season.

“I remember going out there — this was my inaugural — and I had to hold the head together with the body,” Coutin said. “So I started running around. I could hardly see through it, and that was my debut as Benny Beaver … I think a lot of people were laughing because it looked horrible.”

I think a lot of people were laughing because it looked horrible.

After a season running around in the suit and firing up fans, Coutin got a spot on the Rally Squad for 1973-74. And if his name sounds familiar, yes, he’s the cheerleader who was tripped by Oregon head coach Dick Harter while carrying the Chancellor’s Trophy past the Duck bench in the closing seconds of the season finale at Gill. But that’s a whole ’nother story.

Orange Express Days

One of the worst seasons in OSU sports history overlapped one of its greatest, and Ben Hermon, ’83, had a front-row seat for it all. He was Benny during 1980-81, when the football team went winless, and then the men’s basketball season was ranked No. 1 in the country for eight weeks, playing to sold-out crowds in a deafeningly loud Gill Coliseum.

“The energy that was coming off the people was just tremendous,” Hermon said. “I really fed off that energy, and we were always trying to come up with ‘What can we do during breaks, halftime, that would just keep that energy rolling and increase it?’”

He took to swing dancing with a cheerleader at midcourt. Occasionally he’d take an opposing cheerleader out there — and then abandon her halfway through the dance. One of his Phi Gamma Delta brothers on the Rally Squad sometimes boosted Hermon onto his shoulders and carried Benny as he dribbled from one end of the court to the other and dunked the ball.

Hermon also got into it with a few opposing mascots, including a memorable tussle with Oski. They were wrestling on the court when Hermon inadvertently discovered the wearer of the Oski suit’s gender: “I hit one of her breasts, and I went, ‘Oh, [bleep]. This isn’t good.’ So, I got up and I think to kind of end that I stole one of her shoes and she chased me around.”

Ouch. And Ouch Again.

Every so often a mascot will make national headlines. For Benny, it happened twice in a three-week span during the fall of 1995 when Marri (Hollen) Ashley, ’97, was in the suit.

Cal visited then-Parker Stadium on Oct. 21. It was Homecoming, and Benny wore a tuxedo for the occasion. Benny was at the top of the ramp leading down to the field. The assistant for the day handed Ashley a blow-up toy hammer with the suggestion that she tap one of the visiting players who was heading for the field. “Like, ‘Let’s go!’” Ashley remembered the handler saying. “Not trying to provoke anything.”

But it did. The 6-foot-5 offensive lineman Tarik Glenn felt the tap, turned, reared back and punched Benny — and thus Ashley — right in the furry snout. “He hit so hard the mask ricocheted off my face,” said Ashley, who went tumbling down the ramp. She was brought to the OSU locker room for treatment, where the Beavers saw her and vowed to take their revenge. Cal won 13-12.

Two weeks later Arizona was in town. Benny was standing in the middle of the OSU cheerleaders along the visitors’ sideline when the Wildcats scored and headed for their bench. Lineman Frank Middleton Jr. detoured into the Rally Squad and punched Benny/Ashley in the face. She left the field and didn’t return.

Later, Glenn wrote Ashley a letter of apology, and no charges were filed. Middleton was charged with assault, and Ashley recalls he was fined $500. When football season ended, she stepped out of the Benny suit for good, weary of the national publicity the incidents brought on.

With her, Ashley took good memories along with the bumps and bruises: “Just being something special for your school. Going out and representing that you cheer on your team regardless of whether you win or lose.”

Being the Beaver

Bernice makes it look easy. Trust us — it’s not. From nose blindness to limited sightlines, this is your insider’s guide to life inside the suit.

Seeing Is Optional

Whether dancing, dunking or pulling off a perfectly timed high-five, Benny and Bernice do it all while seeing the world through a roughly 5-inch-diameter nose portal. Many have stories of tumbling into bushes or getting stuck somewhere and having to call for help. “Sometimes people get offended if we don’t say hi to little kids,” a current Benny commented, “but we literally can’t see them!”

Smells Like Team Spirit

Slip on a balaclava to ensure anonymity and prevent friction, don the head — tightening the chin strap securely — and then prepare to breathe in the fragrance of all those who came before. Current Bennys and Bernices say not to worry. Eventually you get “nose blind.”

Signature Moves

It’s hard to sign your autograph when you’re wearing big beaver hands. The unifying flourish all Bennys use is a hashmark in the name’s final “y” to symbolize his paddle-like tail. Bernice also adds a heart to hers.

One Size Fits Sweltering

The fuzzy onesie that is the beaver’s body gets very, very warm. Wearers get so sweaty so fast that OSU Athletics requires suits to be dry-cleaned after every use — even if the use just involves hamming it up for the Oregon Stater cameras.

Beaver Kicks

Some older versions of Benny wore oversized spongy booties to visually balance a once-enormous head. (See if you can spot big-headed Benny on the cover.) These days Benny and Bernice’s heads aren’t quite so large, so they wear less slippery Nikes in school colors. It’s best for these to be stored in the mascot locker room — as one current Benny realized when his excited roommate stumbled upon the pair of Nikes marked “BENNY BEAVR” in his closet.

Subtlety Not Included

“Certain things follow us out of the suit,” one current Benny told the Stater. Chief among them is a tendency to make gestures big. “When I’m taking photos with my mom, she’s like, ‘Stop craning your neck!’ And if I don’t know how to answer a question, I’m like….” She gave an exaggerated shrug, hands turned upward. “Now my boyfriend and my roommate all do it, too!”

As OSU and Pacific go up and down the court on this Saturday afternoon, Benny works the crowd. The Beaver Dam student section leaders have distributed newspapers to the students with game information and reminders about cheers. Benny takes his copy, does some doodling on it and then plays tic-tac-toe with some students. There’s frequent posing for photos with fans.

And kids. Where there’s Benny Beaver, there are likely to be kids.

After a promotion that introduces several children attending their first Beaver game, Benny high-fives them as they come off the court. Another promotion involves a young boy in a miniature car trying to parallel park as Benny motions him toward the spot.

Most former Bennys and Bernices carry fond memories of interactions like this. And sometimes, they resurface years later in unexpected ways. Will Later, ’12, MAIS ’14, a Benny from 2008 to 2012 and now an instructor in the OSU School of Communication, has daughters aged 2 and 5 who love seeing Benny and Bernice when they attend Beaver events. They know Dad was Benny, but they sometimes forget; they’ll see a picture of their mom, Sarah Lowe, ’14, standing with Later in the suit and ask, “Mommy, you knew Benny?!”

On the walls of Benny and Bernice’s locker room hang a number of cards and letters sent by their youngest fans. Hermon recalled times at basketball games or gymnastics meets when it was announced Benny was in Gill and he would be swarmed by children: “I mean, I was just buried in them. And lots of hugs … their love for Benny was just amazing. That’s special.”

On this January day, a youngster asks Benny to autograph his basketball.

Where there’s Benny Beaver, there are likely to be kids.

“That was pretty awesome,” Benny says. He’s gotten used to delivering his signature with bulky gloves on: “You just get used to it. At least I still have a thumb [in the glove], which is nice, so I can hold stuff properly. But it is a little difficult. It doesn’t always come out looking perfect.”

The 1998 football rivalry game is best known for its double-overtime finish as OSU beat Oregon 44-41. Josh Huffman, ’01, remembers the evening well for another reason.

1989: Benny and Bernice were among the earliest mascot duos in NCAA history. *1998 Beaver yearbook*

Before the game, Huffman was tossing breadcrumbs at Oregon’s marching band in the southwest corner of the stadium — aka “feeding the Ducks.” “The band members were interacting with me, and it was all fun and games,” Huffman said. At least until the University of Oregon Duck mascot gave him a shove from behind, starting a back-and-forth pushfest.

Huffman wanted that action to be more visible to the home crowd. He gave one more shove — “I took a bit of a cheap shot” — and sprinted to midfield. The Duck followed. In the ensuing skirmish, Huffman ended up on top, with both mascot heads dislodged.

Both Huffman and the Duck’s inhabitant ended up in the basement of the Valley Football Center, where they shook hands and shared a laugh. They also got a stern talking-to from OSU Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart and his Oregon counterpart.

There is video of the tussle, which Huffman’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon brothers send him every year around rivalry game time. That footage is one reason Benny was ranked No. 13 on a 2010 list of the Worst-Behaved Sports Mascots of All Time. (In fairness, Benny was also named to the 2011 Capital One All-America Mascot Team after winning the Capital One Mascot of the Year Write-In Campaign.)

Dunk City

The life of Benny and Bernice isn’t lived solely at OSU athletic contests — there are other appearances as well. One annual event is the Portland Trail Blazers’ Mascot Night, which has included a dunk competition that has Benny and his counterparts bouncing off a mini-trampoline toward the hoop.

For Later and Erik Roberts, ’15, those nights provided a moment of triumph. They not only survived the Benny bounce, but also somehow managed to dunk wearing that giant head and a pair of gloves, both topping the Duck in the competition.

“I had to do the jump and I saw the rim,” said Later. “I was able to get my arms tall enough, or high enough up, to get the ball over the rim and land on the crash pad. The only way I knew it went in was because everybody cheered — that was definitely a highlight for me.”

Roberts and his brothers grew up with a backyard trampoline so he had a little experience in that aspect. “But just trying to find yourself in the air and make it work was something that was super tricky,” Roberts said, pointing out that the field of vision through Benny’s nose is about 20% of what you’d normally see. When it went through, one reaction was relief: “Because you’re going up against the Duck, and both my parents were Beavs and I’ve been a Beav my entire life, so the hatred runs deep.”

Todd and Holly McKinney joined their children, Max McKinney, ’21, and Madison McKinney, ’20, on the Benny bench after its grand unveiling. Photo by Kai Casey

Benny’s New Bench

During Homecoming weekend, the OSU Alumni Association revealed a new campus landmark: a life-size bronze sculpture of Benny Beaver seated on a bench outside the OSU Alumni Center. The installation, made possible through a philanthropic gift from alumni Holly and Todd McKinney (both 1991 graduates), now greets fans and visitors just steps from Reser Stadium and invites them to sit down beside OSU’s beloved mascot.

“The crowd’s reaction and the nonstop line of photo-seeking Benny fans told the full story,” said John Valva, executive director of the OSU Alumni Association. “We love Benny Beaver as the spirit and soul of fandom.”

Anticipation had been building in the days leading up to Homecoming. The Alumni Association teased “Benny’s Birthday Surprise” ahead of the Oct. 11, 2025, football game, drawing hundreds of fans for the reveal. With help from the OSU Marching Band, Benny and Bernice, the celebration quickly became one of the weekend’s most photographed moments.

The idea began during an Alumni Association board meeting, when Valva described a bench he’d seen at the University of Utah, depicting their red-tailed hawk mascot, Swoop. He recalled Holly McKinney rushing up to him during a break with an emphatic response: “We need that bench!”

The sculpture was created by artist Virgil Oertle of Mascot Benches, known for similar installations at universities nationwide.

Now installed outside the Alumni Center on Southwest 26th Street, Benny’s bench offers fans a place to pause, celebrate and capture a bit of Beaver pride.

—Molly Rosbach

Benny Beaver Live!

It was the week of the 2021 Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl, and Anders Rosenquist, ’22, and another Benny were driving to Los Angeles with the Benny suit. On the way, they found that the next night the Beavers would attend the Jimmy Kimmel Live! television show.

The idea hit: “We said, ‘What if we put on the suit and just waltzed into the Jimmy Kimmel set — do you think anyone would stop us? Or would they think, “Oh, you’re part of the team, you should just get in,”?’” Rosenquist recalled.

The answer? The first three or four layers of security figured they belonged. At the last checkpoint, though, Benny’s name wasn’t on the list. They gave it the “Oh, I think we should be on there” try, but security started calling OSU officials to check whether Benny was part of the OSU contingent. “We kind of realized we bit off way more than we could chew,” Rosenquist said.

They tried to leave but someone on the show’s staff said the writers had heard Benny was there and wanted to write him into the show. The premise, Rosenquist said, was that Kimmel would mention Benny was in the audience, but that Bernice had gone missing several years earlier during a spate of unsolved missing persons cases in Oregon. Then the camera would zoom in on Benny and ask him if he had anything to do with Bernice’s disappearance.

OSU officials nixed that plan.

“So maybe Scott Barnes got a good call on that one,” Rosenquist said.

Later, Rosenquist parlayed his Benny background into a gig as Slyly, the mascot of the Hiroshima Toyo Carp of the Japanese baseball major leagues.

Bernice Is Back

Benny may be the original OSU mascot, but he isn’t the university’s only mascot. Bernice joined Benny in representing Beaver Nation during Homecoming 1981, riding that era’s rising tide of visibility and support for women’s athletics. Eventually she donned women’s volleyball and basketball uniforms to wear when performing at those events. But then, in 1998, Bernice “went into hiatus or went out for a jug of milk and never came back, whatever it was,” as Later put it.

She remained unceremoniously off campus until one fateful Saturday afternoon in 2023, when the top-secret Project B brought her back.

Making Bernice’s surprise reappearance at that fall’s Homecoming game as dazzling as possible required two people: Audrey Brandis, ’24, and Hailey Francisco, ’25. Brandis, a member of the cheer team, was chosen for her experience doing stunts.

It was no more than two weeks before the reveal that the participants found out, Brandis said. “And immediately we were so excited … . It was one of the highlights of my career, easily.” While Brandis was in the Bernice suit, Francisco was in the Benny suit to welcome Bernice home. The cheer team practiced their routine but didn’t find out until just before the game that it involved bringing back Bernice. Francisco told only the two Bennys working with her that day about it on the morning of the game.

For the 5-foot-2 Brandis, one of the Benny costumes had to be altered to fit, and an old Bernice head was dug out of storage, limited field of vision and all. “So I’m totally trusting my teammates and my body awareness,” she said. “I could barely see . … [The pyramid] felt way harder than normal.”

After the reveal, Benny and Bernice left Reser Stadium. Brandis changed into her cheer uniform, Francisco became Bernice for the rest of the day and one of the other Bennys donned the Benny costume. This gave Brandis and Francisco a chance to initially define Bernice and her relationship to Benny: Platonic? Romantic? Somewhere in between?

“I did a fun little dance routine, and at the end he dipped me, so it added those possibilities for either way,” Brandis said. As for Francisco, she decided, “She’s going to be sassy, she’s going to be messing with Benny. It was fun to create the personality.”

Francisco said she’s enjoyed following Bernice’s evolution and makeover from that first improvised suit: “It’s pretty awesome to see that it’s become a thing that’s a little more invested in the Oregon State community.”

As the final horn sounds in Gill Coliseum, the scoreboard shows Oregon State has fallen to Pacific. Back in the mascot locker room, Benny peels off the suit and takes in a big breath of air not filtered through the shell of an oversized head.

The men’s basketball team may have had a rough go, but win or loss aside, did Benny have a good game?

“Oh, yeah,” Benny says. “It was a lot of fun. It was a great game.”

There was a steady drizzle drumming against the fall foliage when I arrived at Oak Creek with the rest of Associate Professor Jessie Uehling’s mycology class. The sky was gray, but the forest floor was an explosion of fall colors. Baskets in hand, we dispersed, all of us rooting through the wet leaf litter, our eyes close to the ground — or walking slowly through it, scanning for colors or shapes that stood out against the busy backdrop.

I was tagging along as an observer, not a student, but every flash of color on the forest floor still sent my heart racing. My eyes played tricks on me: at one point, I mistook a nail in a log for a mushroom, reaching out hopefully to touch it. Other times, I brushed aside leaves to reveal a wet, slightly sticky brown cap, or found greenish shelf mushrooms on a rotting stump Uehling moved between groups, guiding their hands-on identification processes. “What do you smell?” she asked one student, who was holding a small white mushroom with a feathery underside. The group passed the mushroom around, bringing it carefully to their noses. “Some people say this one smells like green corn.”

We think that we understand maybe 5% of the fungal species that are out there.

Several years ago, in my early 20s, I bought a mushroom field guide and became obsessed with fungi overnight. Before, the word “mushroom” had conjured up a mental image of gray button mushrooms from the grocery store. In my field guide, it was an entirely different story: Coral mushrooms reached up from the forest floor just like their namesake, with delicate branching limbs. Enormous puffballs ballooned from the earth, larger than a human head. Witch’s butter was smeared, jellylike, on tree trunks.

My relationship with the outdoors was forever changed. I began to notice the fungi that had always been there — in forests, yes, but also on lawns, on the side of the road, or on piles of mulch. Every time I saw one, I had to drop everything and consult my field guide.

Top Left: Associate Professor Uehling lays out specimens found during the foray. Top Right: Getting up close with a mushroom. Bottom: Botany 461/561 students carefully scan the forest floor.

That feeling followed me when I moved from the Midwest to Oregon. As a writing MFA student working with the Oregon Stater, I’m always looking for stories that connect people to place — and the wet forests of the Northwest seemed to be a fungal paradise. I found myself wondering what mushroom hunting looked like in this ecoregion, and what community might exist around it at Oregon State. My curiosity brought me to Uehling’s class field trip.

“What we have here is very rare,” Uehling explained. “Most universities have maybe one mycologist in one department, but we have this kind of constellation of mycologists — probably a dozen mycologically oriented professors across different departments in the university.”

Interdisciplinary interest in fungi extends well beyond the classroom and academia. Not only do mushrooms have a growing presence in the cultural imagination right now — one of the students on this trip sported a crocheted mushroom hat — but the science of mycology is also a growing field with surprising practical applications.

“There are a lot of companies popping up now that use fungi to make interesting materials,” said Uehling. “Dairy-free cheeses, styrofoam alternatives, alternative leathers, nontoxic dyes. … The list goes on.”

New uses raise new questions about safety, oversight and environmental impact. One of the problems is a lack of information. “Compared to other fields, [mycologists] have very little baseline data on fungal populations and their distributions,” said Uehling.

Luckily, mycology is a field with a history of welcoming amateur enthusiasts like me — or like the students in Uehling’s class, whether or not they go on to pursue mycology as a career. “We’ve been partnering with regional mycology clubs and harnessing the power of citizen science to make a running list of every fungal species in the state,” Uehling said.

Among the apps that make this kind of data collection easy is iNaturalist. It is user-friendly and AI-powered. Anyone can snap a picture of an interesting-looking fungus and upload it to its database. The result is a crowd-sourced library of geotagged specimens — perfect for research. (Check out the Oregon iNaturalist page.)

In her role as the Oregon State University Herbarium curator, Uehling harmonizes the iNaturalist datasets with OSU’s library of over 400,000 dried fungal specimens. Her mycology students’ finds will be preserved there, too — more data gathered from Oregon forests.

At the end of our class foray, we gathered by a low stone wall and looked over our bounty. Mushrooms passed carefully from hand to hand, each one an example of fungal diversity. “We think that we understand maybe 5% of the fungal species that are out there,” said Uehling. “In our databases, a small subset of species have been observed thousands of times, but there are over 4,000 species that have been observed less than 10 times. To establish a baseline understanding of fungi, and how their populations might change over time, it’s important to pay attention to the whole wealth of species around us.”

Ever since the class foray, I’ve found myself stopping to take a closer look when I notice fungi — wandering just off-trail on a hike or squatting down in lawns to examine a mushroom closely. When I inevitably notice some strange and unique detail — shaggy hairs on the cap, a tattered ring around the stalk, the intricate maze of the gills — it’s been impossible not to think of the phrase I heard Uehling say many times that day in the field: “What a beauty.”

The next chapter of Beaver Football starts now. With the rebuilt Pac-12 ahead and Houston on the schedule for Sept. 5, Head Coach JaMarcus Shephard is ready to lead Oregon State forward. Here’s what you need to know about the mindset behind the man.

Coach JaMarcus Shephard

Played at DePauw University (2001–04) as a wide receiver

Bachelor’s Degree Sports Medicine from DePauw University (2005)

Master’s Degree Recreation and Sport Administration from Western
Kentucky University (2013)

On the Record

Here are key points Shephard has shared publicly and with the Oregonian.

On His Philosophy:

“We want to achieve excellence in everything that we do. ’Cause I believe this: How you do anything is how you do everything.”

“You’ve got a fighter on your hands. I’ve fought for everything that I have. I will continue to fight for Oregon State University.”

On Adapting to Today’s Game:

“No matter the situation that we’re in right now as a program, we’re not about to sit back here and talk about all the problems. Let’s worry about solutions, OK? Let’s go win some games. Let’s fill the stands up.”

“I’m ready to open up the doors, open up the floodgates, and allow our program to be — not the guinea pig — but to be the first program to really utilize this technology in AI to really push the envelope and help us with our processes.”

On Building the Program:

“It’s never been transactional for me. This whole experience as a collegiate coach has been about transformation. Transforming young men’s lives into the life that they see for themselves for the long haul.”

“We are all a part of creating the culture at Oregon State.”

On Alumni:

“All the alumni, get your butt back here. I want you back here.”

Coaching Journey

15 seasons, Division I Assistant coach
Four seasons as an
Assistant Head Coach

Western Kentucky

Defensive Analyst; Quality Control; Wide Receivers (WR)

Washington State
WR

Purdue

Pass Game Coordinator/WR; Co-Offensive Coordinator/WR

Washington

Assistant Head Coach/Pass Game Coordinator/WR

Alabama

Assistant Head Coach/
Co-Offensive Coordinator/WR

Minimalist text graphic reading “2026 -” on light background.

Oregon State

Head Coach

Schedule

Shephard’s path to leading a Division I program began at DePauw University in Indiana, where he earned two All-America honors and set a school record with 1,430 career kickoff return yards.

It is 6:25 p.m. at the Moda Center, and Lamar Hurd, ’06, is due on camera. He wears a chic plaid suit with a coordinating tie. A producer threads a headset through his jacket, and Hurd takes his seat on a courtside stool. In the seconds before he lights up for the camera, his expression turns blank, as though he’s retreated to some interior world. Then a producer counts down three, two, one, and the Portland Trail Blazers pre-game show is live.

Hurd has been the Blazers’ television analyst for a decade now. He is the “how and why” guy to play-by-play announcer Kevin Calabro’s “what you’re seeing” guy, which means that while Calabro calls each pass and point, Hurd explains their significance.

A former point guard for the Oregon State Beavers and a longtime youth coach and mentor, he has a knack for translating complex plays into words, as well as a profound interest in sharing his love for the game. These qualities, along with a propensity to go on oddball tangents — opining about The Grinch or The Lion King — have earned him legions of fans.

As a sampling of Reddit commenters puts it: “I feel like I become a more knowledgeable basketball fan the more I listen to him.” “Lamar should be on ESPN. He’s really that good.” “Lamar Hurd is a legend, don’t tell me otherwise.”

When Calabro was hired, the Blazers executives asked him what he thought about teaming with Hurd. “I’m ashamed that I didn’t think of it, to be honest with you,” he said. They made a screen test together. About 10 minutes in, Calabro recalled, “they said, ‘Stop, that’s all we need.’”

Lamar Hurd during his OSU playing days. Photos courtesy of OSU Athletics

As the clock ticks toward tip-off, Hurd and Calabro chatter animatedly about small forward Deni Avdija, the Blazers’ breakout player this season. “Gotta get that man to the all-star game,” Hurd says.

Hurd grew up in Houston, the second son of a single mother who was herself an ardent basketball fan. On Sundays, the family returned home from church in time to watch his hometown team, the Rockets, on TV. In elementary school, he began playing — first on his Jordan Jammer, a plastic training basket, and then with a youth team — and in sixth grade, he and his older brother left home to live, for most of the week, with their coach/youth pastor. Later, when Hurd became a coach himself, it was with this role model in mind. “I wanted to be for them what my coach was for me,” he said.

By the time he finished high school, he was the third-ranked point guard in Texas on a team ranked among the top 25 high school programs in the country. Recruits came calling. He committed to Baylor University in Waco, but he couldn’t shake an uneasy feeling. A few weeks later, he pulled out. On the phone, Baylor’s coach screamed, first at him, then at his coach. Hurd felt he’d made the right choice.

A year later, the Baylor basketball program was wracked by scandal. There was a drug bust. One player murdered another, disposing of his body in the desert. The coach was fired. By then, Lamar Hurd was in Corvallis — safely ensconced as the starting point guard for the Oregon State Beavers.

Commentary is at times a high-wire exercise in intellectual multitasking.

At 6:50 p.m. a buzzer sounds. As the players warm up — tonight, the Blazers face the Houston Rockets — Hurd and Calabro fill in context for the game. In a sweet intersection with Hurd’s own Houston roots, the Rockets coach, Ime Udoka, grew up in Portland. The game begins.

Commentary is at times a high-wire exercise in intellectual multitasking. Hurd begins to talk through fans’ high hopes for these home games before interrupting himself midstream to call a point. He and Calabro set up ideas and swap anecdotes — the analyst’s mind not so different from the player’s.

After his first season, Hurd landed on several lists of NBA prospects. Then things started going sideways. He clashed with his coach. “I played the worst years of basketball in my entire life,” he said. It wasn’t all bad; even though he was injured partway through senior year, he still won the Beavers’ most valuable player award — a testament to his standing within the team — and was a first-team Pac-10 All-
Academic selection. He ranked fifth in games started and tied for eighth in assists in the OSU record books.

But he started to see that his sense of his own value couldn’t depend on authority figures. “It taught me to take real accountability for things I can control and to question certain things,” he said, “like, ‘How much do you really believe in yourself?’”

For many college players, turning pro is the dream, and for a while after he graduated, it was Hurd’s, too. He played for a season in Germany. But back in Oregon, while awaiting a call from an NBA developmental team, he started coaching a youth program. “I loved every bit of it,” he said. “I wasn’t making any money … and I could not have been happier.”

From 2009 to 2012, he ran All in One Basketball, a youth coaching and leadership organization, and then created The Other Side of Basketball, a nonprofit through which he coached and ran training camps. He visited his mentees’ schools and attended their games, encouraging self-confidence and community service as well as sharp playing skills.

“I think it would be great, honestly, if every kid that played youth sports had a mentor, a coach, someone like a Lamar,” said Christian Thurley, who participated in All in One. “I don’t mean this lightly: Everyone loved playing for him.” (Thurley is now a Blazers production assistant, which he credits in part to Hurd’s recommendation.)

Around the same time, Hurd started working on screen, first for Fox Sports Northwest and then for the Pac-12 network. His civic-mindedness permeated this work, too; he and his wife, Bethany, hosted a TV show called Hurd Mentality, spotlighting acts of kindness.

This point of view helped lure him from the Pac-12 to the Trail Blazers. “There’s no bigger basketball entity in the state,” he said. “I knew, when joining the Trail Blazers, that if their views aligned with mine in terms of how the Trail Blazers can be an asset to the community, then things would work out really well.”

Surrendering an ambition to play professionally was not the obvious choice. “Everybody thought I was crazy,” Hurd said. But trusting his instincts had paid off already. “I feel like I was able to test that muscle of whatever you call it: whether it’s faith, or hearing your inner voice.”

The game zooms forward — time divided into 12-minute episodes. By 10 p.m., the Blazers’ lead over the Rockets has narrowed. In the last moment of the game, they’re up 103-102 and the Rockets’ Kevin Durant just misses a shot. Tari Eason snatches the rebound and tips the ball into the net at precisely the moment the buzzer sounds.

“Does it count?” Calabro asks. Hurd intuits that the point isn’t clean. “They’re gonna look at it — they’re gonna look at it,” he says. There is confused quiet as a referee reviews the tape, but Hurd is right. The point doesn’t count, and the Blazers win by the skin of their teeth. The arena erupts with cheers.

Readers couldn’t get enough of our exploration of the many ways Oregon State shapes what ends up on our plates. The feature was the Winter issue’s most-viewed story online. If you’re itching to try the recipes mentioned in the magazine — from MU Sticky Rolls to Wheyward’s Spirited Beaver to David L. G. Noakes’ Spice Cookies — you can find them all online.

Oregon Stater magazine cover featuring an orange background and a playful food-science experiment setup, including a dripping honey bear bottle, an ice cream cone with caramel and a cherry, a martini glass filled with olives, a red liquid in a lab beaker, and a magnifying glass focusing on a strawberry. The cover reads “The Food Issue – YUM!” and highlights stories on engineering the perfect pint and one professor’s recipe for connection. Winter 2026.

I was a student at OSU from 1967 to 1971 in the School of Education, and my mother was a cook at the MU and later at the “O” Club. While cooking at the MU, she introduced one of our favorite desserts from home, sticky rolls. It was cool to me that a best memory of OSU [shared in the feature “On the Tip of Your Tongue”] was my mother’s sticky rolls.

—Lyle Beard, ’71

The Winter edition of the Oregon Stater is exceptionally well done!! Thanks for doing such a good job. It’s colorful, informative and creative, with an excellent layout. And best wishes in the days ahead.

—S. Roger Frichette, Ph.D. ’76

Great articles on the food options, but you forgot one major option: Sunday morning breakfast at the Peacock — $.99 for ham and eggs or $1.65 for steak and eggs. Beer was extra.

—Jeff Kolberg, ’73

The Winter 2026 issue of the Stater brings back memories of my first two years (’64 and ’65) at Poling Hall, where we would go over to Food Tech and buy several gallon jugs of fresh apple cider and bring them back to our rooms. Using our Chem Cards, we would get stoppers and tubing and then buy yeast at a grocery store. Putting it all together made hard cider. Party on after two weeks.

—Bob Wild, ’69

Three items in the Winter Oregon Stater [the Emily Darchuk profile, OSU Research Brewery story and Dave Cho online video] promote the use or production of alcoholic beverages. In fact, it’s becoming well known that alcohol is harmful to the human body. Although products containing alcohol are not yet labeled the way tobacco products are, I object to state support of alcohol production and use.

—Michael Powers

Checking the Facts

I appreciate Taylor Pedersen’s article “Keeping the Fire” [about the origins of OSU’s yearly salmon bake] in the Winter 2026 edition. However, stating that “Oregon tribes were not federally recognized” in 1971 is inaccurate. The statement also begs the question, what’s an “Oregon tribe?” Some embrace a colonial notion that only tribal reservations inside state lines are Oregon tribes. My Tribe, Nez Perce, granted the U.S. rights, and they committed to protect ours such as fishing at usual and accustomed places, hunting and gathering in what became Oregon and beyond. Our rights embed us in the landscape, so an Oregon boundary is irrelevant to our existence, as witnessed in tribal jurisdiction supporting our citizens using these rights at places familiar to Oregon including the Columbia River’s banks and waters, and at Willamette Falls. Our rights require healthy habitat, and we own roughly 15,000 acres across northeast Oregon, co-manage alongside state agencies, and help oversee an estuary program in Astoria. Ms. Pedersen’s story is a start. Finishing the story is within reach through OSU graduates from the treaty tribes working across an enduring tribal landscape shared with Oregon to safeguard places we all call home.

—Jaime A. Pinkham, ’81

Editor’s Note: We also received a letter from Mary Baumgardner, ’89, pointing out that this article incorrectly stated that all — rather than some — of Oregon’s tribes lacked federal recognition in the early 1970s when the salmon bake began. We apologize for the error and appreciate the additional context.

Travels & Meetups

John Paeth, ’76, sent us this photo from a Dixon Lodge Co-op reunion hosted by Mike McCarthy, ’72, M.S. ’75, at McCarthy Research Farms in Forest Grove. “Some bonds are timeless, and old friendships prove it,” Paeth wrote. Most participants graduated in the late 1960s to mid-1970s, but “a unique multi-generational tie continued, as many of the offspring from this group attended OSU Co-ops as well.”

Kayla Al-Khaledy, ’16, and Emme Punches, ’16, spent two weeks in October racing across Sri Lanka in a three-wheeled tuk-tuk adorned with a “Go Beavs!” sticker as part of the TukTuk Tournament — a scavenger hunt and adventure race that drew 197 participants from 24 countries in 2025. See more photos on Instagram at @twogirlsandatuktuk.

Memories and Gratitude

I wish to thank the Oregon Stater and USAF Lt. Colonel Ronald L. Akers for highlighting my father, Professor Arthur D. Hughes [as an unforgettable mentor in the Winter issue’s Letters]. It was a nice surprise to open the latest edition and see his picture and description. I am 77 years old, and the last living child of Arthur and Edith. We helped collate his classroom supplies around the kitchen table. He used to say that when the war came and the government wanted him, he told them let him teach instead and he would give them a classroom full of engineers for their purposes. I remember the jet engine that was mentioned in the letter. It made quite a large sight across a field when fired up. Thank you for the honor you gave him.

—Cynthia Hughes Hanhi

I graduated in 1977 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. That commencement ceremony was held in Gill Coliseum, and it occurred concurrently with game six of the NBA Finals in which the Portland Trail Blazers won the NBA Championship. The commencement was briefly postponed by OSU President Robert McVicar to allow the final minute or two of the game to conclude. Graduates and attendees gave the Trail Blazers a standing ovation and then President McVicar proceeded with the ceremony.

Following graduation, I accepted employment with Boldt Carlisle + Smith CPAs in Salem. In 1991, I became a partner, later becoming a partner at SingerLewak, LLP, after the businesses merged. SingerLewak, LLP, is in the top 75 CPA firms in the United States. I served as the Pacific Northwest Regional Tax Partner and led the Oregon tax department. My 48 years of employment in public accounting have been very rewarding, and I have enjoyed working with clients and employees. Thanks to OSU for getting me started with a solid education and being a resource throughout my career.

—Doug Parham, ’77

Submit your letters to the Stater. We edit for clarity, brevity and factual accuracy. Please limit letters to 225 words or less.

In this conversation, Oregon State alum Nikki Neuburger shares her journey from growing up in Portland as a student-athlete to building a career with some of the world’s most iconic brands. It wasn’t a straight path — and that’s part of the story.

After being rejected multiple times from Nike, Neuburger found ways to grow, gain experience and try again. She reflects on resilience, using feedback to improve and staying focused on long-term goals.

She also shares how her definition of success has evolved — from achievement and winning to fulfillment, purpose and connection. Along the way, she talks about the impact of mentors, lessons from Oregon State and how she approaches leadership by leaning into authenticity rather than trying to fit a mold.

For anyone questioning their path, her advice is simple: pay attention to what gives you energy, stay open to opportunities and trust the process.

Each strike sounds like the footfall of soldiers marching in formation and leaves a golf ball-sized print behind in the sand. A four-legged, dog-like robot — aptly named LASSIE — is walking on the wind-sculpted dunes of White Sands National Park in New Mexico. Its every step is a data point that a team of robotics researchers, including scientists from Oregon State University, will use to put a bold plan into action: sending LASSIE to Mars.

The varying textures of the park’s white, gypsum sand — hard, crusty, squishy, loose — make it an ideal place to prepare for the Martian surface. Data gleaned from the motors in the robot’s legs will inform future decisions, such as where to potentially land LASSIE on Mars and what areas of the planet to explore.

The research is part of the next evolution of NASA’s off-Earth exploration. Manned rovers on the moon and unmanned rovers on Mars have driven decades of discovery. But rovers have limits. Their wheels get stuck in loose terrain, they can struggle to navigate uneven ground and they typically operate with pre-programmed agendas, which limits their ability to adapt as new opportunities arise.

Enter quadrupeds. These robots move like animals. Their ability to “feel” the terrain with their feet allows them to adjust their stride in real time, opening new possibilities for science. That autonomy, driven by the latest advances in artificial intelligence and robotics, is critical for future Mars missions. A quadruped could work independently alongside astronauts and rovers, while coordinating with scientists on Earth, multiplying the amount of research that gets done. In other words, the robot would be more than just a tool; it would be a collaborator.

That’s the framework Cristina Wilson, assistant professor and senior researcher in the College of Engineering at OSU, is working with a team of researchers to optimize.

“When you put humans on the surface of Mars, you have an entirely different environment,” Wilson said. “There’s all of these interesting ways that we can reimagine human-robot teaming for science.”

The research builds on decades of innovation that have already led to rovers and a drone-like helicopter exploring Mars. Ryan Ewing, science mobility lead for NASA’s Artemis Internal Science Team and a collaborator on the LASSIE project, believes the dog robot is an important component of future NASA work.

“I envision a legged robot as a companion or a scout for humans,” he said. “Legged robots may enable exploring different terrains — more challenging terrains — than a rover can.”

Ewing and Wilson were among the team of nearly 40 scientists who traveled to White Sands National Park in August 2025. Conditions were challenging. The landscape is exposed, with little shade or shelter. The reflective white sand made sunglasses and frequent sunscreen applications a must.

Wake-up calls came as early as 4 a.m. To avoid the worst of the heat — daytime temperatures reached triple digits, unsafe for both humans and robots — the researchers set up their field equipment before sunrise and started experiments as the sun rose over the mountains to the east, revealing skies of muted orange, yellow and pink.

More than a Tool

The LASSIE project builds on a decades of robotics research at Oregon State. Scientists have deployed robots everywhere from forests and farms to healthcare settings and deep underwater. Dozens of faculty members and hundreds of students study robots, considering their impacts on people as well as their potential to shape the future.

Wilson co-leads LASSIE, which stands for Legged Autonomous Surface Science In Analogue Environments. The project integrates legged robot mobility, new sensing technology and human-robot collaborative reasoning to create robots that can turn every step into a scientific experiment.

Started in 2018, LASSIE also includes scientists from the University of Southern California, the University of Pennsylvania, the Georgia Institute of Technology, NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Texas A&M University and Temple University.

It’s like you’re actually living your science. For that week, the research is home.

This multidisciplinary team is made up of engineers, geologists, planetary scientists and, perhaps surprisingly, cognitive scientists, who study how humans perceive, learn and make decisions. Together, they are tackling different pieces of a complex challenge: designing a legged robot capable of doing meaningful science in unfamiliar terrain.

Wilson is a cognitive scientist with multiple degrees in psychology. Her focus within the project is helping the robot and humans actively share information, anticipate one another’s decisions and adjust their actions as a team. The goal is a robot that isn’t just taking orders but is built to understand what scientists are trying to accomplish and help them reason through their next move.

She points out that robotics engineers and geologists each have their own tools to answer questions like where a robot should go, but those tools aren’t merged. “That’s a big focus now: taking how scientists think about exploration and representing it in a way the robot can understand — and vice versa,” Wilson said.

Early on in the project, Ewing, the NASA scientist and geologist, recognized the value of someone with Wilson’s background. “I had not thought about working with cognitive scientists in the context of robotic applications,” he said. “But once I talked to Cristina, it was obvious why that was needed. It expanded the scope of the project and my thinking about this problem.”

Left: On the first day, the multi-university and NASA team began tests on the legged robot LASSIE. Right: Cristina Wilson, assistant professor and senior researcher in OSU’s College of Engineering, is one of the project leaders.

Steps Toward Mars

In recent years, the team has made trips to Oregon’s Mount Hood to simulate the lunar environment, and New Mexico’s White Sands National Park to approximate the Martian landscape. During the August trip to White Sands, Wilson was joined by six others from her lab, including Mason Allen.

Allen met Wilson as a first-year undergraduate in 2022 and started working in her lab shortly after that. Now a senior, he is focused on designing, assembling and refining the robot leg that gathers much of the critical data for the research. Most recently, he has designed experiments to test the leg in the lab.

He joined the team on a trip to Mount Hood in 2023 and spent much of the time shadowing graduate students and assisting with the operation of field equipment. This past summer in New Mexico, he collected data, ran experiments and had a fellow undergraduate student shadowing him.

“One of the best decisions I made in college was joining the lab,” Allen said. “It really gave me a leg up in a lot of ways, particularly getting early hands-on experience with engineering and being exposed to multi-disciplinary work. All that has made me a lot better as an engineer.”

Living the Science

White Sands sits about 100 miles north of the Mexican border in the Tularosa Basin, with mountain peaks between 8,000 and 10,000 feet to the east and west. It’s home to the Trinity Site, where the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945.

It’s also host to the world’s largest gypsum dunefield. Covering about 275 square miles of desert, the gypsum in these sands originated roughly 280 million years ago when the Permian Sea covered the area and the mineral settled on the sea floor. Later, when the ancient sea dried up, the gypsum crystals broke down into sand and blew into dunes. The shaping and reshaping of the dunefield continues today in an endless cycle of erosion and renewal, mirroring processes suspected to have occurred on Mars.

Wilson and the LASSIE team scout routes (top left) and review the robot’s self-generated walking plans at sunrise (top right). OSU senior Mason Allen and undergraduate researcher Iris Li delve into the data and human-robot exchanges shaping every step (bottom left and right).

During the August trip to White Sands, early morning field work was followed by afternoon debriefings and late-night equipment repair sessions. Workdays stretched up to 16 hours.

“It’s taxing, physically and psychologically,” Wilson said. “You’re always on. You’re sharing a room, usually with a member of the research team. It’s like you’re actually living your science. For that week, the research is home.”

During the week, important advances were made. For the first time, the robot walked in different ways — trading off between prioritizing gait efficiency and sensing precision. It also began making some decisions on its own without human input. The data gathered will be used by the team to refine models that will allow LASSIE to better navigate the varied terrain and help scientists.

Ewing, the NASA scientist, said the technology for LASSIE has progressed enough to start thinking about how to get it flight ready.

Field tests like these help prepare LASSIE for future Mars missions and could one day guide robots navigating hazardous terrain on Earth, from wildfire zones to remote construction sites.

“We want to push this forward from an academic project and exploration to ‘Let’s go do this,’” he said.

Still, there’s work ahead and years until LASSIE will reach the Moon or Mars. Wilson feels fortunate to work on the edge of a developing field.

“One of my postdoc advisors had a nameplate that said, ‘Science Fiction Writer,’” she said. “It’s true. In robotics, we write proposals for research funding, but we’re also writing science fiction. Everyone does to some extent, but with robots, it feels even more novelesque, maybe? That’s an incredible intellectual space to live in.”

Wheyward’s Spirited Beaver

Servings

drink

Total time

minutes

Ingredients

1 oz Wheyward Spirit
1 oz Blood orange juice (fresh or bottled)
3/4 oz Fresh lime juice
1/2 oz Orange liqueur (Cointreau, Triple Sec or Grand Marnier)
1/4 oz Simple syrup
1 maraschino cherry

Directions

Combine all ingredients and shake on ice. Serve in a rocks glass on a large ice cube with a maraschino cherry garnish. Cheers—and go, Beavs!

Find Wheyward Spirits products online, as well as in retail locations in Oregon, California, Wisconsin and Nebraska.

Smákökur (Spice Cookies) and Pumpkin Dip

Servings

Chilling Time (Overnight)

hours

Cooking Time

minutes

Ingredients

Cookies
3/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup molasses
2 cups flour
2 tsps baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp salt
Dip
1/2 pkg (4oz) cream cheese at room temp
1 cup pumpkin pie filling
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 to 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 to 1/4 tsp ground ginger

Directions

To make cookies, cream the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl until fluffy. Mix in the egg and molasses and beat well.
Combine the dry ingredients; then add them to the butter mixture, mixing well.
Refrigerate the dough overnight.
Preheat the oven to 375 F.
Form dough into 1-inch or smaller balls and roll them in sugar. Bake for 6 -7 minutes. Careful: cookies burn easily. Cool for at least 2 minutes on the pan.
To make dip, beat the cream cheese until smooth. Add pumpkin pie filling, powdered sugar, ginger and cinnamon, mixing well. Store leftover dip in the refrigerator.

Dough must chill overnight.
If you do not want to bake the full recipe, freeze the sugar-covered dough balls for easy baking on a later date.

Legendary among OSU treats of the 1950s and 1960s were the fresh baked sticky rolls — close kin to cinnamon rolls — once served in the MU. Here’s a recipe that approximates the original (with vetting from Nellie Oehler, ’64). If you tasted the original, let us know any adjustments you’d make!

Memorial Union Sticky Rolls

Servings

rolls

Total time

hours

minutes

Ingredients

Dough
6½ tablespoon granulated sugar
5½ tablespoons unsalted butter (room temperature)
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3½ cups flour
2 teaspoons instant yeast
1 cup + 2 tablespoons whole milk (room temperature)
Filling
6½ tablespoons sugar
1½ tablespoons ground cinnamon
Gooey Glaze
1 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)
½ cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ cup chopped hazelnuts, walnuts or pecans

Directions

Cream together the sugar, butter and salt in an electric mixer on medium-high using your mixer’s paddle attachment. Whip in egg and vanilla until smooth. Add flour, yeast and milk. Mix on low until dough forms a ball. Switch to the dough hook and increase the speed to medium for about 10 minutes or knead by hand for about 12 minutes. Dough should be supple and tacky, but not sticky. Add a little flour or water while mixing if necessary. Oil a large bowl and transfer dough to it, rolling the dough to coat. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let rise for about 2 hours, or until the dough doubles.
When the rise is almost done, combine the butter, sugar, brown sugar and salt for the glaze in the bowl of an electric mixer. Cream together for 2 minutes on high with your mixer’s paddle attachment. Add corn syrup and vanilla, and continue for about 5 minutes until fluffy.
Transfer the dough to the counter. Use a rolling pin to roll into an 18×9-inch rectangle, dusting the top of the dough with flour to keep it from sticking. Spread all ingredients for the filling over the surface, and use your hands to roll the dough up with the long side facing you. With the seam side down, cut this long log of dough into 12 even pieces.
Coat the bottom of a 9×13-inch baking dish with the gooey glaze, then sprinkle nuts across it. Lay dough circles cut-side-up on the glaze, spacing evenly. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature for 80 to 90 minutes, or until circles touch and nearly double in size.

*Make Ahead Trick: Instead of leaving for the second rise, you can refrigerate prepped and covered rolls at this point for up to two days. When you’re ready to bake, proof at room temperature for 3 to 4 hours before putting in the oven.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and adjust the rack to the lowest shelf.
Bake the sticky rolls for 30 to 40 minutes, or until golden. Cool the rolls in the pan for 5 to 10 minutes, and then flip the pan over onto another pan or platter. Scoop extra glaze over the rolls. Wait at least 20 minutes before serving. Sticky rolls are best eaten fresh, but can be stored (covered) at room temperature for two days.

Mary O’Connor Carskadon, ’59, wrote in about her favorite Tuesday evening treat at Sackett Hall. This recipe for the coffee cake-like bread combines her recollections with modifications from the Stater test kitchen.

Sackett Hall Bishop’s Bread

Servings

squares

Total time

hour

Ingredients

2 ½ cups flour
2 cups brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 teaspoons salt
1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ cup butter at room temperature
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 egg, beaten
1 cup buttermilk

Directions

Grease and flour an 8-inch square baking pan.
Mix together flour, brown sugar and salt.
With a fork, cut in butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Save ¾ cup of mixture for the topping.
Add baking powder and cinnamon to remaining dry ingredients.
Add beaten egg and buttermilk to dry ingredients and mix well.
Pour batter into the pan and spread evenly. Cover evenly with the reserved crumbs.
Bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes (or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean).
Cool for 10 minutes.
Cut into nine even squares and serve warm.

Nothing draws a crowd quite like free ice cream. That’s what the new Beaver Classic Creamery discovered last April when the celebration of its grand opening attracted a line of students that stretched down the block from Withycombe Hall. By the time the band had played and the scoops had all been scooped, 1,500 cups of Vanilla with Sprinkles, Beaver Bark and Chai-athi Murthy had been handed out to hungry Beavers. The new storefront — open from noon to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday and noon to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday at 2921 Southwest Campus Way — offers the public a taste of student-made ice cream, cheese and honey. It’s part of a $71 million renovation of the 81,000-square-foot Withycombe Hall that also includes the new Tillamook Dairy Innovators Lab, the Erath Family Foundation Winery Laboratory, and new labs and offices for the Department of Animal and Rangeland Sciences. “This state-of-the-art facility enhances our ability to integrate teaching, research and hands-on learning,” said Staci Simonich, dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences. “It strengthens our role as a model for industry and education working together to prepare the next generation of leaders in Oregon agriculture.”

My first visit to Cho Wines on the western side of the Chehalem Mountains took my breath away. Like so many Willamette Valley vineyard settings, the views alone make this little part of the world magical. But what I’m still thinking about is the new generation of Beaver innovators redefining Oregon’s food and wine scene.

That afternoon, the award-winning wine we sipped was compliments of our hosts, Dave Cho, ’18, and his wife, Lois. (Meet Dave in this issue’s Stater Spotlight video.) Their fresh take on traditional Willamette pinot noir — with notes of red currant and cherry with just a hint of savory tea — completely wowed me.

And on the menu? Aaron Truong, ’09, and Natalie Truong’s Hapa Pizza. Any reader from the Beaverton area likely already knows about Hapa’s popularity, with customers lined around the block and a recent appearance on The New York Times list of America’s best pizzerias. With inspired combinations like phở-style braised brisket pizza topped with hoisin and bean sprouts, the Truongs have perfected a cultural mix of Italian-style wood-fired pizza and Asian flavors. Yum!

I’m describing the deliciousness of the OSU Alumni Association’s new Community, Culture and Cuisine series. (See what’s up next.) Its events celebrate alumni entrepreneurs through shared food, drink and conversation. They also highlight a new generation of Beaver innovators leaning into their heritage while also following in the footsteps of food and beverage trailblazers like the McMenamins, Widmers, the founders of Panda Express and so many more.

As a land-grant institution, Oregon State has long pioneered food science, fermentation and hospitality programs, producing alumni whose expertise ripples across family farms, global food companies, craft breweries and celebrated restaurants. But thriving in a dynamic and competitive industry requires more than classroom knowledge; it takes relationships, resilience and a willingness to learn from others’ journeys. The creativity and tenacity of business owners like the Chos and Truongs cannot be underestimated.

Each bite and sip from these alumni ventures tells a story of Oregon State’s enduring innovation. I can’t wait to see what’s served next.

I’ve been test-baking for this food-centric issue of the Stater all week. There’s a batch of MU Sticky Rolls rising on the kitchen counter, and my clothes smell like cinnamon and sugar.

I find myself thinking about the process in a new way, thanks to OSU Extension Service master teacher Nellie Oehler, ’64, who explained how she taught budding kitchen scientists bread-baking skills by having them pretend that yeast was a baby they needed to keep alive. (The lesson for me: Don’t skip the salt!)

Food nourishes, sustains and delights us, but for all the importance it has in our lives, it’s easy to overlook the thought that goes into bringing it to our tables. Part of what makes working on the Oregon Stater fun is getting to meet so many experts who live in the world of science and have the skills to show us how to apply it.

I interviewed Oehler while learning about the OSU Extension Master Food Preserver program. She co-founded it in 1980 with the late Professor Carolyn Raab. Oehler led the Lane County branch for more than 20 years and launched the food safety and preservation helpline. We spoke on the first day of her retirement.

“Before the internet was really popular, the place to call was your Extension office,” she told me. Never was that more apparent than in 1999. “The year of Y2K, we had 12,000 phone calls.” Why? “Well, the Earth was going to die — we had to get ready! We just got flooded with these phone calls.” (They’re still getting calls, she said, about how to use the 50-pound bags of beans people put away back then.)

What makes the Extension helpline and website different from the endless flow of advice available on YouTube and the greater internet is that their guidance is based on research. “It’s a place where people know that they can come and get reliable information,” she said. “There’s so much misinformation.”

As Oregon’s original agricultural college, OSU has been bringing science to the field since day one — and to the kitchen since 1889. That’s when the Department of Household Economy and Hygiene, later known as the School of Home Economics, became the first program of its kind west of the Rockies, just as the germ theory of disease began gaining ground. We often forget how important its food mission was, especially in an era before refrigeration, pasteurization and food safety regulations. Public health really did begin in the home.

Though the name has changed — it’s now known as the College of Health — that spirit lives on not only in its many living alumni and the nutrition students it continues to train, but also in every Extension volunteer teaching canning safety or food storage basics.

That’s what OSU food researchers and teachers have always been about: science that makes a practical difference in daily lives. The results are all around us — which reminds me, it’s time to get those sticky rolls in the oven.

Roy Haggerty, environmental geologist and longtime Oregon State University leader, returned this fall as the university’s next provost and executive vice president. He spent 26 years at OSU as a faculty member and administrator before taking on the role of provost at Louisiana State University in 2022. Haggerty will now guide the academic direction of the university.

Why did you want to return to Oregon State? My wife, Amanda, and my children and grandchildren are here; I spent most of my career here; and OSU is a world-class university that I love. Most important professionally: I am inspired by President Murthy’s ambitious strategic plan, “Prosperity Widely Shared.”

What makes you passionate about higher education? Colleges and universities, and particularly research universities, are some of the best institutions humanity has ever created for increasing human prosperity and well-being, and they merit our investment of time and treasure. Why? Because every problem we face exists from the lack of knowledge on how to solve it. Universities exist to generate and propagate that knowledge.

What is one of the first things you’re focusing on this year? Our strategic plan commits us to the bold goal of every student graduating. We know that many students who leave do so between the fall and winter terms of their first year, which makes those first weeks on campus absolutely crucial. That’s why we’re focusing on a strong start — through advising, mentoring and helping students feel a sense of belonging right away. If we get that right, we set students up not just to stay for their first year, but also to walk across the stage at graduation. That’s what every Beaver deserves.

What was your favorite course in college? Applied linear algebra. I took linear algebra and found it rather dull. (Sorry, math colleagues!) When I took applied linear algebra — combining coding, differential equations and linear algebra — and discovered all that I could do with it, I fell in love.

How would you convince today’s parents that college is worth the money? You will never regret an investment in knowledge. It’s the best investment in the future you could possibly make.

Why is the food and beverage industry important to Oregon State?

As a land-grant university, Oregon State was explicitly set up to build connections to the agricultural sector — and forestry and fisheries — and to transfer knowledge from research into practice. Of course, the original conception was to help with mechanical machinery, with fertilizers, new kinds of crop strains and things like that, but food today is more than that.

Now there are connections to communities, ties to sustainability and climate change, ties to nutrition and health, economics, business, and so much else that rides on the food ecosystem. Oregon State is a part of all of those things. And then of course there is the emerging tie to technology, data and data science and computation, plus new research on plant genomics, technologies like CRISPR and so much more. So much is tied to basic scientific research and the translation of this work into the food world.

Land-grant universities have always linked practical needs like food with innovation. How do you see that connection today?

For us, the use of AI and robotics in food, agriculture, forestry and fisheries is a natural connection. There’s lots of work being done on the use of AI in precision farming, controlling precisely how much water and fertilizer you need, so that you’re not polluting the environment while doing very important agricultural work.

And I should also mention the use of AI in predicting an evolving climate and addressing that evolution in the kinds of crops you plant and the ways in which you’re going to irrigate them. All of those things are now tied to the use of AI in making long-term predictions about the evolution of our farms and our forests and in helping our farmers adapt.

How does experiential learning like the Beaver Classic Creamery help prepare OSU students for success?

The thing that I’m realizing about agriculture, and this is also true of other things that we teach — for example, engineering or forestry — is that these are intensely practical fields, right?

You’re absolutely teaching students science. You’re teaching them biochemistry, biology, soil science — all of the basics. But at the end of the day, these young people are going to go work in the food industry, and, therefore, taking the science that they’ve learned in the classroom and applying it is going to be very much a part of what they do as employees.

Creating that pathway early as a part of their curriculum is a big part of the OSU ethos. That’s just the philosophy with which we teach.

Did I hear there’s an ice cream flavor in your honor?

Oh, that was such fun. A student, Sindhura Karuturi, came up with a number of flavors — all of which were wonderful. I was only allowed to choose one, but the others were all close seconds! She knew I drank a lot of tea, so she built flavors around kinds of teas — Earl Grey and, of course, chai, and so on. We had a tasting right here in this office. The one we chose is complex, with all kinds of spices, cloves and cardamom. It’s called Chai-athi Murthy. I don’t know if they still have any of it left, but if they do, you’ve got to go get some!

Sindhura herself is so interesting. Ice cream is not her biggest interest — it’s actually cheese. So now she’s off to do a master’s program in France, sponsored by a French company. She’ll work at their production plant there and then return to their California cheese operations. She told me she doesn’t speak any French, but she is going to live with a French family. She’s throwing herself into the culture, into a new place, into learning new things. In so many ways, that’s exactly what you want for your students.

The creamery was just one part of the Withycombe Hall renovation, which also created the Tillamook Dairy Innovators Lab and the Erath Family Foundation Winery Laboratory. How do partnerships like these with industry fit into the university’s mission?

They play right into our mission. We want to do research that is relevant. Our strategic plan talks about big ideas leading to big solutions, and this is the solutions part. There are lots of ideas cooked up by our researchers, but translating those into real use does require industry telling us what is workable and what their needs actually are.

What’s something coming up this new academic year that you’re really excited about?

I am so glad to have the students back — their energy and sheer excitement — I really, really love that. This year, the big focus for me is the Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex. You can actually see the walls now. It’s coming up really fast. I want to see that complex take off and come to life. That’s what we’re working hard on. All the AI that we’ve been talking about in ag, in forestry, in oceanography and robotics and health — all of that will come to pass because this will be the locus of AI at OSU and certainly the locus of AI in Oregon.

What role does food play in your idea of a good life?

Food is sustenance, food is health, food is pleasure. It’s all of those things to all of us. But it’s so much more. You remember Marcel Proust and his madeleines — food offers a connection to one’s past. One bite of a cookie can make you remember your childhood. Food is memory, food is culture, food is history. As a person who immigrated from India, I can see how potent the connection to food is. There’s so much in your life that is transformed through the act of immigration, but the connection to the food of your childhood, to the food of your culture, remains.

Follow President Murthy on LinkedIn.

Aaron Truong, ’09

Co-owner, Portland’s Hapa Pizza

To me, a good life is rooted in loving relationships and meaningful service. Food is the thread that weaves these together. Around the table, we celebrate milestones, share stories and deepen friendships. As a restaurant owner, food also becomes a way to serve — through meals that bring joy and by creating a positive workplace for our team. In this way, food is not just sustenance; it’s the center of a rich and meaningful life.

Courtesy of Aaron Troung

Nicole Hindes

Director, OSU Basic Needs Center

Over and over again, I’ve seen our community make sure everyone has something to eat. Whether it’s donated extra meal swipes, squash harvests from research fields, or the annual food drive competition against our rivals to the south, I have seen the generosity of Beaver Nation. We show up and share with those who don’t have as much. This inspires me, daily.

Photo by Travis Gilmour

Molly Carney

Assistant professor, School of Language, Culture and Society

Food connects us to both places and people. As an archaeologist working with Indigenous communities, I’ve learned that food is a way of practicing care through relationships across generations, species and landscapes. Thinking through food allows us to imagine futures that sustain community and ecological well-being, from restoring the lands where foods are grown and raised to renewing cultural connections through shared meals and traditions.

Photo by Blake Brown

Pat Egan, ’92

President and CEO, See’s Candies

People need connection. Food gives us that opportunity. Whether in the making, the serving or the eating, good food makes and delivers happiness. I hear regularly from See’s fans who place our candies at the center of their gathering table or give them as a gift to someone they love (including themselves!). They are a testament to the fact that food is as important as it has ever been for bringing people together.

Photo by Karl Maasdam, ’93

Oregon State University’s endowment topped $1.01 billion on June 30, 2025, the end of the 2024-25 fiscal year. Passing the billion-dollar milestone for the first time is good news both for the university now and for future generations — and it puts OSU in rare company.

According to the most recent data available from NACUBO (the National Association of College and University Business Officers), the U.S. had a total of 143 universities with endowments of $1 billion or more in fiscal year 2023-24. Only 60 of those were public universities. Of the ones most comparable to OSU — land-grant universities without an associated medical center — the number shrinks to seven.

“Passing the billion-dollar milestone is an extraordinary achievement. We’re endlessly grateful to our donors and our volunteer leaders on the OSU Foundation Board of Trustees — now and who came before us — who made this growth possible,” said Shawn L. Scoville, the Foundation’s president and CEO. “This is a point of pride for our community. It represents the power of a university community that believes in its mission and chooses to invest in its long-term impact. It also demonstrates the community’s commitment to excellence for generations to come.”

Where the Money Goes

More than 2,900 funds stewarded by the OSU Foundation make up OSU’s endowment. Here’s what they support.

Rare Company

Oregon State is now one of 8 public land-grant universities without an associated medical center that have $1 billion or more in endowment funds.

Oregon State University
UC Berkeley
Iowa State University
Purdue University
University of Delaware
North Carolina State University
Clemson University
University of Georgia

So, what is an endowment and why is it important? A bigger endowment means more resources for the people, programs and facilities of the university, both current and future. The core of the funds remains invested for long-term growth, but every year, a portion (currently 4%) is transferred to support programs chosen by the donors. Annual endowment distributions to OSU programs have jumped from $20.9 million five years ago to $31.2 million last year. (New federal taxes on endowments do not apply to public colleges and universities.)

More than 2,900 distinct funds stewarded by the OSU Foundation make up the endowment. Each was established by a donor or group of donors for a purpose, such as supporting a particular faculty position or providing scholarships — for instance, for OSU’s new Finish in Four program, which benefits Oregon residents with the highest financial need.

When you create or add to an endowed fund, you’re building a permanent part of the university.

“Stock markets go up and down, but endowed funds provide a stable, reliable flow of income to university programs, year after year,” said Kevin Harvey, the OSU Foundation chief financial officer. “When you create or add to an endowed fund, you’re building a permanent part of the university that will generate income for programs you care about. Our policies are designed to help the endowment grow over time, so its value keeps up with inflation.”

OSU’s endowment managed by OSU Foundation was established in 1958 with $20,000. Over the past five years, the total has increased by 65%. Richard B. Evans, ’69, who chaired the OSU Foundation’s Investment Committee the past four years, made the announcement at the Board of Trustees’ Executive Committee meeting in July. Staff and trustees with investment expertise developed the policies that have helped drive endowment growth. Endowed assets are managed by an outsourced chief investment officer, Cerity Partners.

Every Friday morning, the smell of coffee and baked treats wafts from a first-floor office in Nash Hall. Inside, there’s the murmur of voices and the unmistakable sound of laughter. Members of the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences gather around a large conference table, with taxidermied animal heads looking on. They nibble on cookies or muffins, pour coffee from insulated pitchers into ceramic mugs and chat about research, weekend plans or sports. What might not occur to a new visitor, soaking in the atmosphere of comfortable camaraderie, is that the founder of this cozy tradition is missing from the frame: David L.G. Noakes, late professor at Oregon State University.

As a researcher, Noakes received the American Fisheries Society Award of Excellence — one of the top prizes in fisheries — for his work at the Oregon Hatchery Research Center, where he led groundbreaking studies into many local Oregon species including lamprey and Chinook salmon. But his legacy has another, very human component: When people talk about him, their faces light up.

“David was a major connector,” said Michelle Scanlan, ’05, ’12, M.S. ’15. Noakes was her master’s thesis advisor, and she’s still working in the department as a faculty research assistant today. “He would make it a point to introduce people and connect them if he thought they had some sort of common ground. And he would use Coffee Club especially to do that.”

Noakes started his first Coffee Club at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada — his own spin on Canada’s teatime tradition. When he came to work at Oregon State in 2005, Coffee Club came with him. The club met once a week, a casual in-and-out department meetup with coffee and conversation, and always with fresh goodies baked by Noakes himself.

“Other people would bake sometimes, but it was usually him,” said Rachel Crowhurst, M.S. ’12, another Oregon State fisheries and wildlife grad who works as a senior faculty research assistant in the department. “He knew it would bring people together — anybody will go anywhere if there’s treats.”

Illustration of cookies on a plate with a dip in the middle

His recipes ranged from traditional Canadian fare like butter tarts and date squares to seasonal bakes like blueberry grunt and strawberry shortcake — and even to experimental recipes like chile verde and mincemeat muffins. Whatever he was whipping up, the department wanted a taste. And the treats weren’t limited to Coffee Club: Scanlan recalls Noakes arriving early on trips to the Oregon Hatchery Research Center to have fresh scones ready for the team of researchers.

Baked goods were just one of Noakes’ many ways of reaching out to those around him, Scanlan said. Whether he was leaving piles of guide books on a colleague’s desk after learning where they were taking their next vacation, trying to covertly pass a singing birthday card around the office, or handwriting friendly letters to David Attenborough and the Queen of England, he was always strengthening connections. Even after his death in December 2020, he continued to bring people together.

“During lockdown, we couldn’t have a departmental get-together to honor David,” said Crowhurst. “But if there was ever a time we needed community, it was 2020.” She, Scanlan and Professor Emeritus Stanley Gregory were reminiscing in a video tribute breakout room when they had the idea to put together a memorial cookbook of Noakes’ Coffee Club treats.

The small team dived right into the project: they compiled Noakes’ handwritten recipes, working closely with his wife, Pat, and began trying to re-create his bakes so they could take photos. “It was a lot of work,” said Crowhurst. “We had a lot of volunteer bakers who were out there in the trenches.”

He knew it would bring people together — anybody will go anywhere if there’s treats.

Some of the recipes were trickier to reproduce than others. Scanlan described the team’s attempts at Noakes’ butter tarts as “carnage — delicious carnage, but carnage.” In Canada, spirited debates rage about whether you should use raisins or walnuts in a butter tart recipe: Noakes always lined the bottoms of his pastry shells with raisins.

“My favorite is actually the butter tarts, because I’m Canadian and you can’t get them down here,” said Crowhurst. “Once, when Coffee Club was done, he caught me sneaking down the hallway grabbing another one because they were so good.”

As the cookbook came together, news of it reached international circles — Noakes’ former colleagues in Iceland and New Zealand sent email requests for hard copies, and some offered to translate it into their own language. A digital version is available on the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences webpage. Like Noakes himself, his recipes are now part of a worldwide community.

Goodies this far-reaching are more than just delicious — they’re also a call to gather, to kick back and to form genuine connections. Each muffin or biscuit is an invitation to strike up a conversation. “David would go around the department on Friday mornings, saying, ‘Coffee Club?’” said Scanlan. “He had this very distinctive knock, so you’d know it was him. It was never just faculty and grad students that he visited — he’d go to the undergrad lounge, too, and to the business office.” Now, though the torch has been passed, the tradition of Coffee Club continues, with recipes from the memorial cookbook still making appearances.

“It’s something we look forward to every week,” said Crowhurst. “We know not to book meetings at that time.” Grad students, administrators, faculty and undergraduates alike mingle in the small room. Some of them have never met Noakes, but they’ve still been welcomed by him — and tasted his delicious recipes.

Try out Noakes’ spice cookies recipe.