How to Keep Hope AliveAdvice from Oregon State faculty and alumni tackling some of the thorniest problems of our times.

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

TRUST THAT YOU’RE GETTING CLOSER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You’ve got to stay at it.

STAY CURIOUS 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

REMEMBER THAT THINGS CAN CHANGE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FIND STRENGTH IN CONNECTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PURSUE A BETTER FUTURE 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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