Announcing the 2009/10 Oregon Campus Compact Student Advisory Board!

Representing service-minded students from across the state, the board will bring a strong student voice to the Compact, while playing a leading role in the development of our student engagement programs.

Please take a moment to read about this year’s board members:

Robert Bell

Rogue Community College - Grants Pass, OR / Northwest Christian University - Eugene, OR

Robert, currently attending RCC and then transferring to NCU in the fall, is the 2008/09 ASRCC President, has lobbied for Oregon students on a state-level, and is also a leader within multiple on-campus student clubs, including the Inter Club Council and Christ on Campus Club. Welcome, Robert!

 

Erick Castillo

Portland Community College - Portland, OR

Erick is a student coordinator and mentor for the ROOTS program, which supports the success of first-generation college students, as well as founder of the Peace Club and an advocate within the Student Parent Network and the Multicultural Center on his campus. Welcome, Erick!

 

Emily Johnson

Willamette University - Salem, OR

Emily is an active member of the Community Action and Awareness Team on her campus, a group dedicated to enhancing the visibility of social justice issues and community service opportunities, as well as president of the Best Buddies Club and an on-going volunteer with several community groups. Welcome Emily!

 

Colin Jones

Linfield College - McMinnville, OR

Colin, who led an alternative spring break team to New Orleans this past March, is an active member in the forensics (speech and debate) team and honor society (Pi Kappa Delta), as well as a leader within student government as an ASLC Senate Chairperson and Secretary of the Linfield Activities Board. Welcome Colin!

 

Amber Lang

Portland State University - Portland, OR

Amber, an active member of PSU's Student Leaders for Service group, which fosters relationships between service-minded students and community organizations, also runs an EDG:E after school program, and coordinates service events including a 2009 MLK Day event with 150 volunteers participating. Welcome, Amber!

 

This pilot year board will consist of five amazing members, each bringing their own unique perspective as a leader within their campus and community. Keep an eye out for their endeavors and accomplishments throughout the year!

Portland State University - Sustainability Updates

Ivy in the City: Sustainability and Higher Education in the Pacific Northwest

By Becky Brun, Sustainable Industries

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Wim Wiewel is facing the same issues that most university presidents are facing today: increasing student enrollment at a time when in-kind giving is down and states are dealing with budget shortfalls; keeping up with master plans that include major renovations and construction projects; staying on top of faculty research as well as students’ needs—and that’s just skimming the surface.

Wiewel is also trying to make Portland State University (PSU) a national leader in sustainable higher education. Recipient of a $25 million grant from The James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation for sustainability education, PSU is gaining even more traction in the sustainability arena. But the current recession could force Wiewel and other university leaders to take fewer risks on things such as new courses and degrees in 2009.

A native of The Netherlands, Wiewel is known for his charismatic leadership and his ability to ignite success in those around him. While the dean of the business school at the University of Illinois, Chicago, Wiewel took the business college from 94th to 49th on the U.S. News & World Report’s national business school rankings. Sustainable Industries caught up with Wiewel on the downtown campus of the state’s largest university to talk about Portland State’s role in helping Oregon become a world leader in sustainability and how his approach to leadership has changed during the current recession.

SI: You’ve said that part of your attraction to Portland and Portland State was the opportunity to apply research to tangible projects in the city. Now that you’ve been at PSU for a year, where do you see the biggest opportunities?

Wiewel: One of the things I had not spent much time thinking about until I came here is the sustainable practices of the institution itself. We are a large corporation, so how we conduct our business obviously matters. Here 62 percent of the faculty, staff and students use transportation other than the automobile to get here. We make the place attractive to bicyclists. We are a co-investor on many projects with Tri-Met. On the facilities side, we go beyond state requirement for green building.

Our Green Building Research Lab, where we develop and test new green building technologies provides workforce training and facilitates the adoption of energy-efficient technologies throughout the building industry. We are working with Glumac, Interface Engineering, PAE Consultants, Gerding Edlen, David Evans and Associates and we will be involving others.

SI: How is PSU prepared to be a national leader in sustainable education?

Wiewel: It already is. I think that we clearly have a lot of people that are doing research in this area. It’s diffused through a lot of the curriculum, so we draw both faculty and researchers who want to teach here, which then makes us more attractive to people who want to get degrees related to this area. Then the students become the workforce and entrepreneurs and the civic leaders who will continue to promote sustainability and enhance Portland’s ability to make sustainability an economic, cultural and social niche for this region.

Read the entire Sustainable Industries interview with Wiewel, as well as interviews with the University of Washington's Dan Poston, and San Francisco State University's Nancy Hayes at http://www.sustainableindustries.com/sijprofile/42019422.html?page=1.

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PSU Studies Effects of Green Roofs, Solar Arrays

Daily Journal of Commerce

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Three faculty members at Portland State University have won a grant to help them pay for their research into the effects of combining green roofs with solar arrays. Carl Wamser, a member of the university’s chemistry faculty; David Sailor, a mechanical and materials engineering faculty member; and Todd Rosenstiel, of the school’s biology faculty, received the $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The trio’s project also is being supported by Portland General Electric, the city of Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services and the Oregon Built Environmental and Sustainable Technologies Center.

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Turning off the Lights: Hiring an Energy Manager Could be Key to Saving Money, Environment

By Wolf Donat, The Daily Vanguard

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Noelle Studer-Spevak believes that Portland State University needs an energy manager. One has merely to walk by the Millar Library or ASPSU office at 3 a.m. and see that all of the lights are on in order to agree with her. Studer-Spevak, the sustainability manager in the Finance and Administration Office, has been working to figure out how to add a Certified Energy Manager to the staff at PSU.

Certified Energy Managers are becoming more popular worldwide, serving industry, business and government. CEMs are professionally certified by the Association of Energy Engineers. Their job duties normally entail analyzing and mitigating energy usage. They track usage an implement new technologies and design changes in order to increase the efficiency of energy system operations.

One of the CEM’s duties would be to help Portland State honor its signing of the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment. The commitment, involving more than 600 universities and signed by former Portland State President Daniel Bernstine, promises that the participating universities will make efforts to become climate-neutral as soon as possible.

Intermediate steps toward the climate-neutrality goal would include overhauling the energy plan currently in place and coming up with a series of long-range steps toward the goal of climate neutrality. One of the issues that Studer-Spevak is facing is that in the face of a budget shortfall, the university has instituted a hiring freeze, meaning that an energy manager could not be hired.  However, the university has also cut the utility budget, “and I’m not sure how we can cut the utility budget without someone to manage those cuts,” Studer-Spevak said. She knows that there are a multitude of things that can be done to save money and energy.

“In the past year, there have been several large projects we’ve done to save energy,” she said. “One of them is to replace all of the broken steam traps on campus.” The steam loops, like those surrounding Cramer Hall, transport steam from different boilers around campus in order to heat the buildings. “It’s been years since they were maintained,” Studer-Spevak said. Another maintenance project currently underway is cleaning the coils used to transmit heat. Dirt and dust tend to build up around the coils, significantly decreasing their efficiency.

While she wasn’t sure of the precise amount of money saved by the maintenance work, she said it was substantial. Though she would like to see that money go toward other energy-saving projects, “the money will be swept into other areas that need money.” “Our hope is that someday we can get to what Harvard does, and have a revolving fund. If we have energy savings one year, a portion of those savings will be funneled back into other energy-saving projects,” she said.

Student Senator Pro-Tempore Heather Spalding - recipient of a 2009 Oregon Campus Compact Faith Gabelnick Student Leadership Award - works with Studer-Spevak. “It’s like getting an oil change in your car,” Spalding said. “Spending the money for maintenance … it’s like a royalty. Once you put these things in place, the benefits just last and last.”

Studer-Spevak estimated that the salary for a CEM would run from $80,000-$100,000 per year. But she stressed that “that person would pay back their salary at least three times over. It’s an investment.” Studer-Spevak and Spalding are in the midst of holding meetings with the Student Fee Committee, looking at the possibility of having student fees cover the cost of an energy manager’s salary, or at least help fund smaller projects often overlooked by funding committees.

“Students are interested in creating a fund that could fund energy retrofits, for example,” Studer-Spevak said. “It’s really cool, because students are saying, ‘What do we have the power to do?'"

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World Environmental Awards Recognize Portland Nonprofit, Efforts Staffed by PSU Students and Faculty

By Abby Haight, OregonLive

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Green Empowerment is a Portland-based nonprofit which has been recognized at the Energy Globe Awards in Prague for installing solar-powered water systems in remote communities in Nicaragua. The projects were staffed by specially trained students and faculty members from Portland State University.

The environmental awards, founded in 1999, reward projects that create economic use of resources and employ alternative energy sources. More than 800 projects from 111 nations vie for awards in five categories -- Earth, Fire, Water, Air and Youth. The awards opened a meeting of European Union environment ministers in Prague. Border Green Energy Team, a Thai partner of Green Empowerment, won first prize in the Fire category and the audience-elected overall Grand Prize for solar powered clinics in Eastern Myanmar.

Green Empowerment helped design and put in place the 35 remote clinics and two large hospitals, which serve 175,000 people and are designed to be disassembled if the Myanmar junta's military approaches. The clinics are scattered over 600 miles of jungle. Green Empowerment also was a finalist in the Water category for its work with partner Asofenix in Nicaraguan villages, installing solar-based water delivery systems. With access to clean water, communities improved their overall health, while adding latrines, showers, biogas digesters and home gardens. The Portland nonprofit also is involved in a project that brought electricity to remote Peruvian villages through wind turbines, micro-hydro and solar installations, providing power to four rural clinics, nine schools, four community centers and 40 family homes.

Green Empowerment was founded in 1997 with a focus on social justice, environmentalism and internationalism. One of its first projects was continuing the micro-hydro efforts in Nicaragua started by Ben Linder, a young Portland engineer who was killed by Contras. The organization has also projects in Borneo, Philippines, Ecuador, Guatemala and on the border of Myanmar/Thailand.

Volunteer, Oregon State University Graduate Goes Where Scientists Typically Fear to Tread

By Joanne Scharer, WillametteLive

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Melissa Austin, Salem born and bred, is passionate about, dedicated to, and busy creating community. Between working as an AmeriCorps volunteer with Marion County Public Works-Environmental Services and volunteering endless hours with various community organizations dedicated to sustainability, Austin has her hands full.

With a degree in forensic chemistry from Western Oregon University and a master’s in microbiology from Oregon State University, Austin’s curiosity about science goes back to 8th grade.

“Science is cool,” she says emphatically, “It’s fascinating to me.”

In high school and college, Austin joined all the clubs that students focusing on science typically joined, Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund and others. However, being a member of organizations with commendable missions wasn't enough, she wanted to be doing something about it in her community.

After graduating from OSU, Austin worked as a microbiologist for a private engineering firm in Grants Pass until Salem called her back home. Since then she has been altering her career path, finding ways to merge her interest in community building and sustainability with her skills and knowledge as a scientist.

One of Austin’s first involvements upon her to return was with Marion-Polk Food Share community gardens. Before long she was so active in the community with volunteer work, it made sense to take an AmeriCorps position.

Before she began her 11-month position with Marion County, Austin worked with Oregon PeaceWorks to help develop its 5% Solution to the Climate Crisis project and at LifeSource Natural Foods.

Despite having an advanced degree and greater earning potential than an AmeriCorps position provides, Austin has enthusiastically embraced her work as a Multi-Family Waste Reduction Educator with Marion County, focusing on recycling for apartment complexes and other multi-family communities. The opportunity has taught her more about the diversity of people and neighborhoods in Salem and opened her heart in a way that science doesn’t necessarily allow for.

“Being a scientist,” Austin says, “emotions aren’t in that.”

Ultimately, her experiences volunteering have been guiding her to a career path focused on community service with a desire to, as she says, “make more of a difference.”

At this stage, Austin is intrigued with community outreach as it relates to community building and sustainable behaviors.

“I enjoy working with people to create a more connected self-sufficient community,” she explained.

It’s evident in her community action project, a requirement of the AmeriCorps program. Austin organized a course in Salem created by Northwest Earth Institute called “Menu for the Future.”

The course, held from January through March, was open to any one in Salem and provided an opportunity to learn about eating in modern industrial society, emerging food alternatives, and sustainable food systems.

Austin isn’t abandoning her scientific nature, but she’s learning how to use it differently. Austin brings her own perspective to sustainability issues that aren’t always clear cut or easy to understand for the layperson.

“I know science and I know what people are afraid of. I understand where both sides are coming from," she said.

Austin sees diversity and sharing as a key ingredient in real change and community.

“Interaction opens doors,” she said.

Even with a sincere concern for the environment, Austin’s goals go beyond the “greening” of Salem by including community networking.

“That’s what Salem needs,” Austin said. “What’s this network going to look like? I don’t know what it’s going to look like for us in Salem, but I want to be a part of it.”

Clackamas Community College Student Builds Houses During Spring Break

Local student Elsa Moore, 17, spent spring break building a Habitat for Humanity home in Jacksonville, Fla., as part of Salem Habitat's Youth United group. Moore was one of nine participants selected from across the U.S. for the March 15-21 service trip.

"It was so much fun and I can't wait to sign up for next year's build," she said. "It's a great opportunity to help those in need (and) make awesome new friends all over the country."

This was Moore's first building project. "We painted a bunch and did some siding on a house," she said. "My favorite part was definitely siding. I was extremely good with the hammer."

Moore had been a South Salem High School student for three years and now will attend the Chemeketa Community College Early College High School program.

Through Youth United, students partner with their local Habitat affiliate and are responsible for raising 70 percent of the house sponsorship costs, and those older than 16 help with construction. Since its founding in 1976, Habitat has built more than 300,000 houses worldwide, providing simple, affordable shelter for more than 1.5 million people. For information, visit www.habitat.org.

'Civic Generation' Rolls up Sleeves in Record Numbers

By Andrea Stone, USA Today Online

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Jobs are scarce. Money is tight. A speedy economic recovery seems unlikely. Yet none of that has stopped the Millennial Generation from helping others.

Young adults who grew up in the shadow of the 9/11 attacks and saw the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina are volunteering at home and abroad in record numbers. The generation that learned in school to serve as well as to read and write, the Millennials were the first global Internet explorers even as they pioneered social networking for favorite causes at home.

"Community service is part of their DNA. It's part of this generation to care about something larger than themselves," says Michael Brown, co-founder and CEO of City Year, which places young mentors in urban schools. "It's no longer keeping up with the Joneses. It's helping the Joneses."

Surveys show people born between 1982 and 2000 are the most civic-minded since the generation of the 1930s and 1940s, say Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, co-authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics.

Unlike culturally polarized Baby Boomers or cynical Gen-Xers, this is "a generation of activist doers," they write.

"Other generations were reared to be more individualistic," Hais says. "This civic generation has a willingness to put aside some of their own personal advancement to improve society."

Michelle Trahey, a Penn State marketing major, has turned down three job offers so she can work for two years in a New York City elementary school as a Teach for America corps member. Trahey, 22, says friends thought she was "crazy" since many college graduates can't find jobs. Her parents weren't pleased, either.

"My passion is helping people and making a difference," she says. "This is the perfect time for me not to focus on business. … If I don't do this now, I may never have this opportunity again."

Trahey is among 3,700 college graduates who will join Teach for America next fall. Nearly 25,000 applied, a 37% increase over 2007 and the most since the program began in 1990, says spokeswoman Amy Rabinowitz. Nearly every government-funded service program has seen applications spike.

City Year, where monthly stipends are about $1,000, saw applications triple last year. Applications to the Peace Corps, which sends volunteers to work in other countries, are up 16%. AmeriCorps, which sends young adults into schools, health clinics, parks and other local organizations, has three applicants for every slot.

The Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency that oversees Ameri Corps and other programs, says volunteer rates for ages 16-24 nearly doubled from 1989 through 2005, from 12.3% to 23%.

Winograd says those are the peak formative years for Gen-Xers and Millennials. He says it was rare for those now in their 30s and 40s to perform community service in high school. More than 80% of Millennials did it, often because it was required.

Although the volunteer rate for young adults declined to 21.9% in 2008, nearly three in five 18- to 24-year-olds surveyed by the Harvard University Institute of Politics said they were interested in public service. Statistics compiled by the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversee AmeriCorps and other programs, show that college towns such as Provo, Utah; Iowa City and Madison, Wis., have among the country's highest volunteer rates.

The United Way, which was founded in 1887 to raise money for charities, opened campus chapters in 2008. It hopes to have 50 by next year, many of them offshoots of spring break programs in which students give up the beach for projects helping others.

Kathryn Yaros, a student at University of Michigan-Dearborn who is a United Way team leader, spent freshman spring break helping build a wheelchair ramp so a paralyzed man could leave his Detroit home. This spring she worked at a residential treatment center for troubled girls.

"Volunteering is not such a casual thing anymore. It's part of our lifestyle," says Yaros, 19. "Giving back is our own way of being empowered to create a positive change within the community."

Analysts cite several reasons Millennials are stepping up:

•The times. Just as the Great Depression and World War II shaped their grandparents' generation, Millennials view the world through the lens of 9/11, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the economic meltdown.

"The events you grow up with have a lot to do with what a generation focuses on," says Alan Solomont, chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service. "This generation grew up at a time when there was a need to pull together."

Hard times, says City Year's Michael Brown, produce "values clarification."

• Global connections. Because of the Internet, social networking sites such as Facebook, the growth of study-abroad programs and ethnic diversity, the Millennials are closely attached to the world and want to make it a better place.

Whether it's teaching English in China or building a well in Africa, Millennials are "in tune" with global needs, says Philip Gardner of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University. He says many who study abroad — 70% of students at four-year colleges have traveled outside the United States — "get the bug to go back internationally, and one of the fastest ways … is to do volunteer projects."

Amanda MacGurn studied in Belgium, taught English in Chile and interned with Doctors Without Borders. Now 26, the Southern Oregon University graduate leaves next month for Romania to work for the Peace Corps.

"I want to devote my life to international service work," says MacGurn, who lives in Eugene, Ore. "This is a great opportunity to serve both my country as an ambassador and also the international community."

•Practicality. Required to volunteer in high school and encouraged by colleges to keep it up, Millennials responded to Hurricane Katrina with outcomes they could see.

Thousands spent their college spring breaks on the Gulf Coast where they helped clear debris, patch roofs and rebuild homes after the 2005 storm.

Millennials don't want to send money and forget it, Solomont says. "They want to get things done, to fix things," he says. Unlike Baby Boomers, "They're not into chasing their own ideologies as much as rolling up their sleeves and improving things."

Emory University student Maria Town, 21, who has cerebral palsy, started Alternative Life Cycles, an organization to provide retrofitted bicycles for disabled people, because she knew how expensive her own adapted recumbent tricycle was. "I've learned it's a full life commitment that can be more than just a hobby," says the Hammond, La., native. "It can be a career."

•The Obama effect. Millennial voters last year preferred Barack Obama 2 to 1. Many embraced the former community organizer's call to service.

Online applications to the Peace Corps spiked 175% in the days surrounding his inauguration, says spokeswoman Laura Lartigue.

"We are seeing a rebirth of the kind of idealism that we saw during the Kennedy era" of the 1960s, when the Peace Corps was founded, she says, noting that the average age of Peace Corps volunteers is 27.

Obama's election was "a signal that young people really do matter," says Roger Gu, 21, who will work for Teach for America in Los Angeles after graduating from Princeton University this spring. "I don't want to sound corny or lame, but I believe individuals can make a difference," he says.

• Economic woes. A miserable job market is an added reason to volunteer.

"When the economy is downsizing full-pay job opportunities, many are looking at these stipend and volunteer opportunities as a good alternative," says Patrick Rooney of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. He says recent graduates are more likely than older adults to work for little or no pay because they have yet to start families or take on mortgages.

Rabinowitz of Teach for America has sees a change at student job fairs. "We were going head-to-head" with Wall Street firms, she says. Lately, "There's been much less competition."

At 20, Colorado College sophomore Eleanor Mulshine hasn't chosen a career, but she has traveled to the Gulf Coast twice to help with hurricane recovery, trekked to a village in India to build compost pits and worked on a New Mexico farm that promotes sustainable agriculture. Between classes in Colorado Springs, she helps refugees adapt to their new home.

Mulshine says she learned the value of helping others from her parents, who are "heavily involved" in their Washington, D.C., neighborhood.

"I'm trying to give back," she says. "What else would I do with my spare time?"

Student Leadership Opportunity: Hesselbein Global Academy for Student Leadership and Civic Engagement

The University of Pittsburgh has launched a new initiative called the Hesselbein Global Academy for Student Leadership and Civic Engagement. While the academy is housed at the University of Pittsburgh, it is open to students throughout the world.

The academy aims to inspire, develop, and reward accomplished student leaders to meet the challenges of tomorrow. A core program of the academy is the Hesselbein Student Leadership Summit. Fifty students are selected to receive advanced leadership training from professional mentors who have expertise in various fields. Another noteworthy feature of this program is that there is little expense to the student and/or the university. The academy covers the cost of room, board, registration, and provides $200 in travel assistance.

Students are encouraged to apply online now at hesselbein.pitt.edu for the 2009 student leadership summit: July 11-14th. Contact Angela Miller McGraw at angelamm@pitt.edu or 412-624-5203 if you have any other questions.

Scholarship Opportunity: Platinum Torch National Service Honorary

Platinum Torch National Service Honorary, a national non-profit organization that recognizes high school and college students' community service involvement, announces the availability of at least three $500 scholarships for the 2009-2010 academic year.

Platinum Torch is the only national non-profit organization that honors students solely based on outstanding community service involvement. Platinum Torch awards scholarships to students who perform the most verified community service hours each academic year. High school seniors and college students applying for the scholarships must first register as a member with Platinum Torch by logging on to the Web site at www.platinumtorch.org.  New high school chapters require a minimum of five members and college chapters must have at least 10 members. All chapters require a designated faculty or staff advisor.

For more information about Platinum Torch please visit platinumtorch.org or call our Executive Director, Susan Puder, at (866) 841-9134, ext. 1016. 

Q & A with Briana Orr, 2009 Civic Engagement Award Recipient

By Emily Smith, Daily Emerald Online

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Oregon Campus Compact, composed of presidents from universities and colleges around the state, will recognize Briana Orr, an environmental studies and planning, public policy and management major with the 2009 Faith Gabelnick Student Leadership Award at the Oregon Civic Engagement Awards next week in Portland. Nominated by University sustainability director Steve Mital, Orr coordinates the Outdoor Program's Bike Loan Program that began in the fall.

ODE: How did the program get started, and how has it evolved?

Orr: We just launched the program in fall, and all of last summer was preparing for the program and putting down the structure for the entire program. Since summer, it's been kind of a constant learning from mistakes that we've made and improving what we're doing to serve students better. The basics of the Bike Loan Program is that we are providing students with bicycles for loan and also educational resources and information on bicycling in the area as kind of a holistic picture. 

Right now, we have about 65 to 70 bikes out to students and by next December, we're hoping for about 100. Our goal was to put out 20 bikes and we've put out 70. It's more than I envisioned, for sure.

ODE: Where do the bikes come from?

The bikes come from the Department of Public Safety. They impound bikes that are abandoned on campus or they also get bikes that have been reported stolen and no one comes to claim them. Literally for the past couple of years, they have just been keeping them in storage. When we contacted them last summer, we heard numbers of 300 or 400 bikes. We were able to look through them and find the ones that were easy to work on, and we took those ones out of the piles and started getting them out to students. We'll probably get 15 or 20 more over the summer, but the real limiting factor is that we don't have the space for the bikes. We have a couple of storage facilities that DPS has given us, but we really need a better site to crank out more bikes. If the campus wanted to see a full-scale program, then they would need to put resources into that to support it. 

ODE: How does the program work?

Orr: A student can check out a bike for a term, but students can keep it for the entire year if they want. They just pay a $65 deposit and with that they get a lock, a light, front and rear lights, fenders, basket and everything a student needs to ride around comfortably in Eugene's weather. The idea with that is that by making this a communal resource, we can just reuse it instead of having students needing to find some way to sell it or eventually throw it away when they don't need to use it. When they bring the bike back at the end of the term, they get their $65 deposit back, so essentially it's free.

ODE: What environmental impact has the program had?

Orr: Essentially, having 70 students that don't need to rely on a car or even rely on LTD to get to campus or wherever they need to get in the community, that's a fairly substantial impact when you're accruing it over the year. I'd also say that even if these students were buying their own bikes and riding them, simply because we are reusing these bikes and reusing resources and keeping the bikes out of the landfill, that also helps create the sustainability loop of reusing things instead of buying things and consuming more. Being able to provide options to students and staff and faculty really opens minds, opens doors to where we can go next, and instead of planning for building more parking lots when we feel like there aren't any alternatives, this is really providing an alternative and saying, 'Hey, we don't need more parking lots ... because look at what we can do, we can give them something else.' Even though it's small right now, it's going to have a really big impact in the future.

ODE: What does this award recognition mean to you?

Orr: It is recognizing the accomplishment, but I see it as - the simple fact that I was nominated and awarded - as more substantial to the shifting values in our culture, and I don't think that 10 years ago even that a bicycling advocate would be on the list. The fact that the Oregon Campus Compact is focusing on sustainability for this civic engagement award is really telling of what we are starting to value and for what we want to see in our generation and in the following generations. Maybe it's not so important that I, specifically, received it, but that they are starting to recognize it.

Oregon Health & Sciences University & NE Oregon Area Health Education Center Partner to create Rural Rotation for Dental Students

By Mike Ferguson, Baker City Herald Online - - - - - Just weeks away from his graduation from the dental school at Oregon Health & Sciences University, Ryan LeMert is getting a close-up look at a real rural dental practice, the kind Baker City dentist Sean Benson practices. Beyond just observing, LeMert, 27, has seen between eight and 10 patients every day during his rural rotation, where he’s done everything from fillings to root canals. In a way, Baker County patients have opened their mouths, but it’s been LeMert who has said, “awe.” “Sean has taken good care of me. He’s a fun guy and we’ve got a lot of the same ideas about playing and working,” LeMert said in between seeing patients during his last day at the Baker City practice Thursday. “He should be given a lot of credit for making this happen. He’s been a good guy to work with, and the people are really friendly here.” It’s good to get out of the classroom for a time and into a thriving, busy dental office, LeMert said. “Portland just doesn’t suit me,” he said. LeMert grew up in Roseburg, and his first rural rotation at dental school was at a health clinic there. He said he’s open to operating a private practice in rural Oregon, but in the down economy more and more older dentists are holding on to their practices, and he’s had a hard time purchasing one. He said he might fall back on working for the National Health Service for a while. “I’m still,” he said, just weeks from completing four hard years of study, “trying to figure out what I’m going to do.” LeMert’s two-week stay is an effort by OHSU and the Northeast Oregon Area Health Education Center to convince health science students that practicing medicine in a rural setting is an option that can be both fun and rewarding, said Michael Plunkett, the OHSU School of Dentistry’s director of community outreach and a faculty member in the university’s Department of Community Dentistry. Plunkett was in Baker City Thursday both to visit LeMert and Benson and to enjoy a brief vacation in Northeastern Oregon. LeMert is one of three of the school’s current crop of 75 dentists in training to undertake a rural rotation, Plunkett said. Most students opt instead for an urban health-care center setting. Eventually, Plunkett said, he’d like up to two-thirds of his students to try their practi-cum in a place Baker City- sized or smaller. “This is a more realistic representation of how dentistry is practiced,” Plunkett said, gesturing to a small cluster of exam rooms where Baker City’s Mike Long is having a checkup while Benson is filling a cavity in a nearby room. “Our goal is to make the educational process mirror what’s really going on.” The La Grande-based Northeast Oregon Area Health Education Center plays a role in the rural rotations, not only for dentists but for physicians and nurses as well, Plunkett said. It’s provided LeMert free housing in Baker City for two weeks, and enough gas money to power him to and from Portland and around Baker County while he was here. According to the La Grande AHEC office, many communities in Eastern Oregon, including Halfway, Richland, North Powder, Union and John Day, are short of enough health professionals to care for their residents. The organization is working to help meet that need, with the idea that the more young health care providers are exposed to rural settings, the more likely they are to establish their practices in one. And for the record, Plunkett wants to dispel the myth that rural dentists have to take a pay cut compared with their brothers and sisters in urban settings. “It’s a misnomer that it’s not financially rewarding to practice in rural areas,” he said. NEOAHEC, together with Eastern Oregon University, also tries to help ease the rural health-care provider shortage by getting children interested in science, health and literacy through curriculum called Great Discoveries and a Girls in Science project. It also puts on a career choice camp called MedQuest. The nonprofit group coordinates 80 educational rotations every year for OHSU and Pacific University students. Once he’d seen his last patient Thursday, LeMert was already waxing a little nostalgic for his stay. “This has been an intermediate step” between dental school and his new life outside school, he said. “I’ve treated it like an apprenticeship, and it’s been a rewarding one.”

Celebration Held for Salem Area Learning Center

By Thelma Guerrero-Hudson, The Statesman Journal

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When Aileen John moved to Salem last September from the Micronesian Island of Chuuk, she couldn't speak a word of English. "I learn a lot of things at the center," the 11-year-old girl said. "It's helped me learn to speak English, do my homework and tell stories."

John, a fifth-grader at Washington Elementary, made the comments during the grand opening of the Northgate Community Learning Center on April 22. The celebration was attended by more than 60 people, who were treated to a free lunch. It was sponsored by the North Salem Business Association.

The Northgate Community Learning Center is an after-school facility that helps children develop the skills and self-discipline needed to succeed in school. It serves youngsters between the ages of 11 and 14 who attend Washington Elementary, Waldo Middle School, or Hallman Elementary. Students must be in grades fifth through eighth to qualify.

Children are referred to the center by their teachers. Ten volunteers — primarily students from Willamette University, Corban College and Chemeketa Community College — mentor and tutor about 30 youngsters in the after-school program.

One of those helpers is Brendan Morin, who works with students in the center's computer lab.

"It's fun," said Morin, who has a degree in applied science. "I do it because I like helping kids."

Parents also are involved through "Family Nights," a monthly meeting that includes topics such as parent-youth communication; community gardening; nutrition; and, affordable housing.

Through "Homework Power Hour," parents learn how to create a positive homework environment for their children.

Last week's grand opening also featured guest speakers. Linda St. Pierre, principal of Washington Elementary School, told attendees the center was making a "measurable difference" in students' lives. "This program is phenomenal," the principal said. "I've interviewed students to get their impressions of the center. They all said it's helped them get their homework done in time and improved their skills in reading, writing and math."

The center is a collaborative effort of 15 community organizations championed by the Family Systems Investment Consortium, or FSIC, of the Marion County Children and Families Commission. It opened its doors in October.

Jim Seymour, executive director of Catholic Community Services, said the center is "an important component in strengthening families and building healthy communities."

The FSIC said it hopes to open other similar centers in as many as 10 Salem neighborhoods.

Student-led Environmental Club Hosts Water Awareness Week at Portland State University

By Shelby Wood, The Oregonian

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Portland State University's Environmental Club wants a big turnout for its first Water Awareness Week, Monday through Friday, April 6-11, 2009.

Here's the lineup, from the PSU students organizing the event:

• Discounted stainless steel Kleen Kanteen water bottles on sale all week, 10 am-2 pm in the Park Blocks, while supplies last. Proceeds will go toward installation of water re-fill stations on campus.

• Tuesday, April 7: Blind Water Taste Test
(11:30 am, Park Blocks)
Watch PSU president Wim Wiewel and student body president Hannah Fisher try to tell the difference between bottled and tap.

• Wednesday, April 8: Portland Water Bureau speaker Briggy Thomas
(7 pm, Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 238)
Take a Google Earth fly-over through the water cycle from the perspective of a drop of water. Find out about where water comes from in the Pacific Northwest and the Bull Run in particular; climate issues, water quality issues and conservation methods; and the city of Portland's status on ending bottled water.

• Thursday, April 9: Student Art Competition: What does water sustainability mean to you?
(6:30 pm, Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 298)
Check out the artistic expressions of PSU students who care about water sustainability.

• Friday, Saturday, April 10-11: FLOW/For the Love of Water, the movie
(7 pm, 5th Avenue Cinema, 510 SW Hall St., Portland)

PSU's Water Awareness Week is part of a "Take Back the Tap" project to reduce bottled water use on campus. The project was among several student-led proposals that recently won funding from the Miller Grant, a pot of sustainability money granted to PSU by the private Miller Foundation.