Beaver Brags & Briefs Winter 2025

Beaver Brags

consecutive year OSU is the largest university in the state.

ranked Online Bachelor’s Program in the nation is what U.S. News & World Report ranked OSU’s Ecampus program — its 11th year in the top 10.

of OSU-Cascade’s Doctor of Physical Therapy program graduates passed their license exam on the first try in 2024, outstripping most of the nation’s top 10 programs, including USC and Duke.

is the new land speed record set by a student engineering team with their modifi ed Aprilia 50cc motorcycle (running on methanol) during Bonneville Speed Week at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats. The previous record stood for 21 years.

More Brags

Oregon State University Professor Jonathan Hurst and spin-off company Agility Robotics were featured on the cover of Time magazine’s “Best Inventions of 2024” issue this November. Hurst co-founded the company and serves as its chief robot officer. This was the second Time cover in three months related to Oregon State, highlighting the university’s excellence in robotics and artificial intelligence. In September, OSU alumnus Jensen Huang, ’84, ’09 (Hon. Ph.D.), founder and CEO of NVIDIA, was featured on the cover of the “Most Influential People in AI” issue. Time also included Huang and alumna Suzanne Simard, M.S. ’89, Ph.D. ’96, a forest ecology professor and author of Finding the Mother Tree, in its 2024 “Most Influential People” issue last spring.

Briefs

Enrollment Goes Up, Up, Up

Among the 108 Public Research 1 universities in the U.S. — universities  with the most research activity  — only Oregon State has produced 28 consecutive years of fall-over-fall enrollment growth, according to analysis by Jon Boeckenstedt, the university’s vice provost of enrollment management. This school year, enrollment has reached 37,900 students, an increase of 3.5%. “Oregon State is not only the largest university in the state,” Boeckenstedt said, “but it also serves the most undergraduate, graduate, resident, nonresident, international and online students, as well as the most students on a single campus.”

West Coast Wind Energy Alliance

Oregon State, Cal Poly Humboldt and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo have teamed up to research the promise and potential pitfalls of offshore wind energy sites. The Pacific Offshore Wind Consortium will combine the resources and expertise of the three universities to bring in more funding and to undertake collaborative information sharing and research with state and federal agencies, tribes and towns on the West Coast.

New Student Housing in the Mix

Upper-division and graduate students have a new on-campus living option. The five-story building, dubbed the 1045 SW Madison Avenue Apartments, offers 221 residents an easy walk to most campus buildings and features study rooms, communal lounge spaces and a large community kitchen. An increasingly tight Corvallis rental market has fueled growing demand for more student housing.