About The UHC

As a small degree-granting college within Oregon State University, the UHC offers OSU's most prestigious degree, the Honors Baccalaureate Degree in any undergraduate major. The UHC Features:

• Challenging and creative curricula for students of all majors
• Unique honors classes of 12 to 20 students
• Courses that complement, not complicate, other course work
• OSU's finest professors, often hand-picked by UHC students
• One-on-one mentoring by faculty members while preparing the Honors Thesis
  
  

Against the Odds:Former high school dropout Ngan Nguyen is graduating with her eye on a career in alternative energy.

Ngan Nguyen was 15 when she climbed out of her bedroom window after a family argument and caught a ride with some friends to Portland. Unsurprisingly, graduating college was not on her mind. In fact, the idea of college would have seemed ridiculous. Nguyen had dropped out of high school earlier that year, and was heading toward a life of cheap apartments, couch surfing and working long hours for low pay in Portland.

It wasn’t promising.

But that wasn’t the life for Nguyen, at least not in the long run. After six months in Portland, she decided to go back to night school. “I don’t remember what drove that decision. I was tired of going out and partying all the time. I actually really enjoyed school. So I went back,” she says. More

Claire Rogan is learning what sustainable harvesting means

When Claire Rogan tells people she is a logger, she gets a range of reactions — anything from a sense of camaraderie from those who live the same lifestyle, to anger from people who think logging is utterly destructive. But for the Oregon State sophomore and University Honors College student, education has been the key to her understanding of the practice, its focus on sustainability, as well as the way to improvements.

“It’s like mountaintop coal removal in West Virginia,” she says. “People usually don’t say ’this is bad and we should do this instead.’ If you’re going to have a strong opinion about something, you need to go in scientifically and say ’this is why, and this is how.’” More

UHC Student Selected as Udall Scholar

Shayna Rogers, an Oregon State University environmental sciences major from Corvallis, has been selected as a 2009 Udall Scholar.

Rogers was one of 80 students selected from among 515 candidates nominated by 233 colleges and universities nationwide. Of those selected, 70 scholars intend to pursue careers related to the environment. Six Native American/Alaska Native scholars intend to pursue careers in tribal public policy; four Native American/Alaska Native scholars will study healthcare. More

Wonder Woman Piro makes time stand still

UHC Senior D'Anna Piro competes for OSU on bars, will attend Stanford Business School

One member of the Oregon State gymnastics team described her teammate as "our Wonder Woman."

The Wonder Woman on the OSU roster does not have a "Lasso of Truth," and she does not come from a Land of Amazons. Instead, senior D'Anna Piro hails from Lake Oswego and is a member of the gymnastics team. Being a student athlete is only part of what makes Piro the Beavers' Wonder Woman. More

An Intertidal Future
Aquatic ecologist Christina Murphy is heading to Chile on a Fulbright grant.

It was a frigid winter night on Chile’s central coast, and Christina Murphy was standing in the surf in her wet suit with a night vision monocular, getting pummeled by waves. She was counting her research subjects — nocturnal, carnivorous crabs of the species Acanthocyclus gayi that hide in algae or rock crevices — unaware that she would later regard the experience as one that cemented her love for her work.

It was, however, an unsurprising revelation — Murphy has wanted to be a scientist since the age of six, and has never question that career path. More