A scene from last year's Homecoming parade. (photo courtesy Kevin Miller, OSU Alumni Association)

Homecoming has always been a special time of year on the Oregon State University campus, and the coming week will prove that the tradition is very much alive, with events such as a parade and bonfire, an influx of alumni visitors, a major awards celebration, a free concert by a Broadway singer and, of course, a football game. The theme this year is “Fire It Up.”

Events start on Monday, Oct. 15. A full list of Homecoming activities can be found at http://osualum.com/homecoming

Highlights of Homecoming 2012 include:

• Alumni Fellows and Young Alumni Awards: Six distinguished graduates will gather on campus Friday and Saturday, Oct. 19-20, to be honored by the OSU Alumni Association. The honorees — five alumni fellows and one notable young alumna — will meet with OSU students, staff and faculty, be feted at a reception and dinner on Oct. 19, and will appear Oct. 20 at the Beavers’ Homecoming game against Utah. The alumni fellows are Celia Austin ’76, nominated by the College of Public Health and Human Sciences; Ellen Bishop ’79 and ’83, nominated by the College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences; Roosevelt Credit ’90, nominated by the College of Liberal Arts; Gayle Fitzpatrick ’78, nominated by the College of Business; and Shelton Louie ’78, nominated by the College of Pharmacy. This year’s recipient of the OSUAA Young Alumni Award is Bridget Burns ’04 and ’11, nominated by the College of Liberal Arts.
• Homecoming Parade, Bonfire and Pep Rally: The parade, featuring former Beaver kicker Alexis Serna, begins at 6 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 18, in downtown Corvallis at 6^th Street and Jefferson, winds through campus and ends at the bonfire in the parking lots behind Callahan Hall. The bonfire and pep rallyprogram begins at 7:15 p.m., and head football coach Mike Riley and his players are scheduled to attend.
  

  Last year's Homecoming game. (photo courtesy Kevin Miller, OSU Alumni Association)

• Broadway in the Memorial Union: The OSU School of Arts and Communication and the OSU Alumni Association welcome Roosevelt Credit, 2012 Alumni Fellow and Broadway singer from “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” performing with the OSU Chamber Choir on Friday, Oct. 19 at 3:15 p.m., in the MU Lounge. This event is free and open to the public.
• “Fire It Up” tailgater cooking contest and cookbook: Before the game on Oct. 20, OSU fans tailgating in campus lots are invited to compete for fame and fortune in the OSU tailgater cooking contest. In addition to the contest, all OSU friends, fans and alumni may submit tailgater recipes for a “Fire It Up” tailgater cookbook, which will be published electronically at the end of the season.

The honorees met with OSU students, staff and faculty, were feted at a luncheon and dinner, and appeared at the Beavers’ football game against the University of California, where they joined OSU President Edward J. Ray.

This year’s OSU Alumni Association Alumni Fellows are: Stephen Bailey, Hillsboro.; Kim Brouwer, Chapel Hill, N.C.; Margaret Carter, Portland; Walter Kortschak, Palo Alto, Calif., and Richard Spinrad, Corvallis. This year’s recipient of the Young Alumni Award is Jonathan Isaacs, Portland.

Bailey grew up on a dairy farm near Tillamook and graduated from OSU in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. He worked his way up in the world of corporate accounting, in 2000 becoming – as chief financial officer – part of a new management team that was credited with saving Wilsonville-based FLIR Systems and later adding thousands of jobs. In 2003 he and his wife, Marian, went back to their rural roots and purchased a vineyard. Today they own Bailey Estate Vineyard and are partners in Grand Cru Estates, and he serves on the board of advisers for the new Oregon Wine Research Institute at OSU. The Baileys recently were inducted into OSU’s Harris Society after making a $1 million gift to The Campaign for OSU to support construction of a new home for the College of Business.

Brouwer, a 1978 graduate in pharmacy, initially wanted to be a small-town pharmacist, but her own interests and her mentors at OSU led her to focus instead on a career of groundbreaking research. She is a worldwide expert on interactions of drugs in the liver. She is chair of the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics in the Eshelman School of Pharmacy at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is also the William R. Kenan Distinguished Professor.

Carter, who earned a master’s degree in education from OSU in 1974, made history as the first African-American woman elected to the Oregon House of Representatives. She went on to hold the state senate seat in District 22, and her legislative legacy is marked by resolute efforts to protect the state’s most vulnerable citizens. Her graduate degree from OSU helped her transition from being a schoolteacher – for 27 years – to serving as a counselor at Portland Community College. She now serves as Oregon’s deputy director for human services.

Kortschak has served as a director of more than 40 companies and has consistently appeared on Forbes Magazine’s list of the nation’s top 100 venture capitalists. He is a managing member of WMAS Management LLC, and is managing director in the Palo Alto office of Summit Partners. He received a bachelor’s in civil engineering from OSU in 1981, and has a master’s in civil engineering from the California Institute of Technology and an MBA from UCLA. He and his wife, Marcia, founded the Kortschak Family Foundation, and they recently gave the University of Southern California $10 million to create the USC Kortschak Center for Learning and Creativity in Student Affairs. It will serve USC students with dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other identified learning differences.

Spinrad had already established himself as an ocean researcher and federal science administrator when he agreed this year to return to OSU to serve as vice president for research. He left a Washington, D.C., post as assistant administrator for research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to return to Oregon State, where he earned master’s and doctoral degrees in oceanography in 1978 and 1982. Prior to his work at NOAA, he served as a research director with the U.S. Navy, taught oceanography at two universities, directed a major national non-profit organization, presided over a private company and worked as a research scientist. Spinrad oversees a growing research enterprise at OSU, with annual research funding of about $275 million.

The Young Alumni Award winner, Isaacs, enrolled at OSU at the urging of friends from Rex Putnam High School in Milwaukie, Ore., and at first had no idea what to study. Once he joined the student government’s effort to lobby the legislature against tuition hikes, he was hooked on politics. He won election as student body president in his junior year and graduated from the College of Liberal Arts in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He worked for several political organizations and candidates in Oregon and Washington, D.C., serving Oregon House Democrats as executive director of FuturePAC from 2004-06. He managed Jeff Merkley’s successful 2008 senate campaign, the first in 40 years to unseat an incumbent U.S. senator from Oregon. He served as state director in Merkley’s senate office for several months before resigning to become executive director of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters.

The OSU Alumni Association created the Alumni Fellows program in 1988 to bring distinguished alumni back to campus to be honored and to share their experiences. The Young Alumni Award was added in 2006.

~Mark Floyd

President Ray lends a helping hand at Community Outreach, Inc. as part of the OSU Day of Service. (photo: Dennis Wolverton)

“Woo-hoo! Thank you Beavers,” came the shout of a Eugene runner wearing the green and yellow of the University of Oregon Ducks, passing a group of about 35 orange and black Oregon Staters who worked Saturday morning to clear hazardous brush along one of the city’s busiest riverfront paths.

The group in Eugene joined volunteers at sites in 13 cities in five states and in Qatar for the second annual OSU Community Day of Service, sponsored by the OSU Alumni Association. The event drew about 350 volunteers, more than doubling the first year’s turnout.

The largest Day of Service group – about 100 – turned out in a cold Portland drizzle to clean and repaint more than 100 benches in the South Park Blocks, a downtown centerpiece. Representatives for the Portland Parks and Recreation Department were pleasantly surprised that the Beavers worked every bench in the 10-block area, while other Oregon Staters picked up trash.

Two groups of about 35 finished two projects in Corvallis, one at the Community Outreach, Inc. homeless services center and another in MLK Park on the city’s northwest side. Helping with efforts at the homeless center was OSU President Ed Ray, who cheerfully took to his hands and knees to weed flowerbeds. At the parks project, the OSU women’s soccer players and gymnasts teamed with other volunteers to remove unwanted vegetation and to build and clear trails.

Other teams of volunteers tackled projects in the Oregon cities of Bend, Medford, Ontario and Prineville, and additional teams rolled up their sleeves in Boise, Idaho; Honolulu, Hawaii; Seattle; and the California cities of Newport Beach, San Francisco and San Jose.

A much smaller but no less enthusiastic group helped at a fundraiser for an animal welfare society in Qatar, the small Arab emirate in the Persian Gulf.
The Hawaii volunteers had what was widely considered the best fringe benefit, a five-minute outrigger canoe ride to an island where they removed invasive species and restored habitat around an authentic native fishing village.

“What a great opportunity for Beavers to get together and make a positive impact on their communities,” said Lezli Goheen of Portland, a 1993 OSU graduate and the lead volunteer and chair of the program for the OSUAA board of directors. “We more than doubled the number of cities and volunteers this year and we’re already making plans to make it bigger and better next year.”

~ Kevin Miller

Tami Ellingson

A certified public accountant with a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Eastern Oregon University, Ellingson has worked in financial management for the Georgia Pacific and Boise Cascade corporations. Most recently she was a controller for Allied Waste Services of Corvallis.
She is married to Craig Ellingson, athletic director and girls’ basketball coach at Crescent Valley High School in Corvallis. They have four children, including twin daughters and two sons. Three of the four either have graduated from OSU or are working toward OSU degrees.

The association is overseen by a volunteer board of directors, and is led by Executive Director Jeff Todd.

“Tami is a wonderful addition to our team,” Todd said. “She will make a positive contribution across the organization and university.”

Bill Perry

The association maintains alumni relations for the university, providing a wide variety of services to OSU and its more than 150,000 alumni.
Perry earned a bachelor’s degree from the OSU College of Liberal Arts in 1989. He is director of government relations for the Oregon Restaurant Association. He graduated from The Dalles High School.

“The more I am involved with Oregon State, the more I realize the positive impact it has on all our lives,” Perry said. “I have long been an advocate that a strong higher education system is a vital part of a strong business community. Connections to Oregon State continue to be an asset to me in both my personal life and my professional career.”

As board president, he will work closely with OSUAA Executive Director Jeff Todd.

“Bill Perry will be an extremely committed chief volunteer and provide strong leadership for the association that represents Oregon State University alumni worldwide,” Todd said. “His connections throughout Oregon and his positive standing among his fellow alumni will benefit the university and the association enormously during the next 12 months. I know all of us on the staff and board look forward to serving under his leadership.”

Members of University Advancement, including from left, Nick Houtman, David Barner, Teresa Hall, Vice President for Advancement Luanne Lawrence, and alumnus Tim Yost helped spruce up the Trillium Children’s Farm Home in Corvallis on May 16, as part of OSU day of service. Oregon State University alumni, faculty and friends worked together in six cities – Portland, Seattle, Bend, Corvallis, San Jose and San Francisco – during what will become an annual OSU Alumni Association day of service. The long-term goal is to grow the event each year.

The $250,000 commitment will establish the Shero & Miyako Yano OSUAA Scholarship Endowment Fund and provide scholarships for high achieving students from the Treasure Valley area of eastern Oregon and southwestern Idaho. The fund is named in honor of Atkins’ parents. She earned her accounting degree from OSU in 1979 and is now owner of Alta Consulting, LLC, in Eagle, Idaho.

Also part of the gift is an additional $25,000 for the Mary Ellen Phillips Scholarship Endowment Fund, which supports undergraduate accounting students enrolled in the OSU College of Business. Phillips was Atkins’ accounting professor.

Atkins grew up in the Treasure Valley, where her dad still grows onions and other row crops with her brother, Craig, also an OSU graduate.

“My parents placed a high priority on college for myself and my siblings. They funded my education which allowed me to focus on my studies and start my professional career without any debt,” Atkins said. “We feel very fortunate to be able to provide the same opportunity to others.”

OSU President Ed Ray noted the need for scholarship funds has never been more urgent. “We couldn’t be more delighted that a scholarship gift put us over the $500 million mark – especially from one of our younger alumni,” he said. “By helping students from her home area, Penny is modeling how one generation of OSU alumni and friends can help those to come.”

A member of the OSU Alumni Association board since 2003, Penny Atkins has long been a strong advocate for improving students’ access to an OSU education. As the association’s treasurer and second vice president, she has tirelessly worked to support and guide the OSUAA scholarship program.

“This is a wonderful gift, but for those us who’ve had the pleasure of working with Penny, it’s hardly a surprise she would do something like this,” said Jeff Todd, executive director of the OSU Alumni Association. “Penny is an ideal alumni volunteer. She is relentlessly positive about everything Oregon State, but she is also a wise and pragmatic voice when it comes to keeping us on a firm financial footing so we can continue to succeed.”

Last year the alumni association distributed scholarships valued at more than $200,000 to 125 OSU students.

The Atkins’ gift helps to advance the “$100 Million for Students” Scholarship Initiative, which is part of The Campaign for OSU. To date some 350 new scholarship funds have been created and more than $78 million has been raised for scholarships and fellowships.

~ Molly Brown

Stepping onto the fifth floor of the Bank of California Building makes a visitor feel that they’ve been teleported directly from the streets of downtown Portland to the campus of Oregon State University, and that’s exactly what Carol Van Natta, OSU Foundation Vice President of the Portland Center, hopes to achieve.

Carol Van Natta of the OSU Foundation, left, and Cathy Marshall of OSU Alumni Association, agree that the Portland Center can help OSU achieve a stronger Portland presence.

The OSU Portland Center is a bridge between the Corvallis campus and the many alumni, donors, faculty and staff who live in the Portland Metropolitan region. OSU Foundation is the primary tenant, and shares the space with the Alumni Association, E campus, Beaver Sports Properties and the Open Source Lab. In addition to providing offices for 25 Portland-based staff members, the center also serves as a “home away from home” for OSU Corvallis staff and faculty, offering conference rooms, office space, and even cubicles for staff who are visiting Portland and need a temporary work spot or gathering place. There are also two kitchens and state of the art teleconferencing capabilities.

The space has great views of historic downtown Portland buildings, and is located in the heart of the city, close to restaurants, shopping and entertainment venues. The center has hosted gatherings of up to 100 people in its elegant fifth floor setting, including a Benny Beaver holiday event at which the children of alumni decided that Benny was even cooler than Santa Claus.

But from the outside, no one would realize that the OSU Portland Center even exists. Van Natta is waiting on street-level signage that will help draw visitors up to the fifth floor, but right now, they’re depending on word of mouth to draw those connected to OSU to their door.

“We’re working on a campaign to help people realize that we do have a presence in Portland,” Van Natta said.
And there are a lot of Portland-OSU connections. There are approximately 40,000 OSU alumni living in the Portland area, which is about 26 percent of the living alumni in the country.

This conference room is available for use by OSU faculty and staff.

“This is clearly the largest concentration,” of alumni in one location, with Seattle and San Francisco the next two urban areas with large concentrations of OSU graduates.  With so many OSU connections in Portland, it’s important to have a presence in the city, both for the purposes of money raising and keeping alumni connected to their alma mater. OSU already has niche programs in the Metro area, including the Institute for Natural Resources, the Center for Food Innovation, and OSU Extensions.

Portlanders already make up 35 percent of donors to the OSU Foundation’s current capital campaign. And with most major industries and a majority of alumni located in the state’s only major metropolitan area, “We neglect Portland at our peril,” Van Natta said.

Cathy Marshall, director for regional programs with the OSU Alumni Association, couldn’t agree more.

“It’s a really valuable city in terms of reaching alumni,” she said. And while academic programming is not a focus of the Portland Center, creating events where alumni can connect with OSU faculty and students is a major emphasis.

“Alums benefit from being exposed to students (of) today,” Marshall said. She focuses on creating programs that are both affordable, and offer alumni something they might likely do anyway, but with an OSU twist. For instance, they’ve created an OMSI after-hours event for alumni and their guests that allows them to view the current exhibit and listen to a special talk related to the exhibit by OSU history professor Lisa Sarasohn.

Other events include making special seating available at PGE Park for Beaver baseball games, and the Alumni Association’s premiere event, the annual Orange and Black Evening at the Governor Hotel, which raises money for scholarships. Last year the Alumni Association offered $219,000 in scholarships to OSU students.

Smaller events, such as the Benny Beaver holiday visit, are equally successful.

“Benny will hopefully be spending more time here,” Marshall said.

Jennifer Garcia can help OSU faculty and staff arrange to use the Portland Center facilities by calling 503-241-9333.

And, hopefully more OSU staff and faculty will be spending time at the Portland Center as well. Use of conference and office space is free from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, but after hours use of facilities is possible for a small fee.

“There are lots of OSU people in Portland all the time,” Van Natta said. “This is their OSU home away from home. We’re here to serve them.”

To find out more about the OSU Portland Center, see http://osufoundation.org/portland. The Center is located at 707 S.W. Washington St., Ste. 500, in Portland.

To find out more about Alumni Association events going on in Portland, see http:// www.osualum.com

~Theresa Hogue

“Beaver Boulevard,” open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., will feature information booths and activities from OSU colleges and departments. Benny Beaver will be on hand to have his photo taken with fans. The women’s volleyball team will sign autographs from noon to 2 p.m. and the OSU Bookstore will be on site selling Beaver merchandise.

Other activities at OSU Day at the Oregon State Fair include:

OSU’s solar vehicle team will be on site to share its experiences of competing in a 2,400-mile race from Dallas, Texas to Calgary, Alberta, using solar power. Its car, Rain Dancer, will be on display for guests and visitors can chat with the team’s student members. Rain Dancer is powered by more than 400 solar cells and weighs 600 pounds.

The Austin Family Business Program at OSU is hosting a Family Business Photo Contest. Family businesses are encouraged to e-mail a photo ahead of time. The 10 finalists will be selected for display and judging at the Oregon State Fair. The photos will be judged at 3 p.m. by a panel at the fair which will include OSU President Ed Ray, College of Business Dean Ilene Kleinsorge, Geoff Horning, executive director of Agri-Business Council of Oregon, Doug Hart, owner of Hart’s Nursery and Holly Peterson, owner of Corvallis-based Ball Studio. To submit a photo, email the photo, photo title, and contact information before Aug. 15 to Melissa Elmore at melissa.elmore@bus.oregonstate.edu.

The Lego Robotics Challenges are open to youth ages nine and older and will be in the 4-H Exhibit Building Aug. 24-26. They are one of nine projects in the Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) program of Oregon State’s 4-H Youth Development. “Sumo Bot” contestants build robots they hope will last longest in the ring; the “Fastest Bot” moves most quickly down a 20-foot track; and the “Art Bot” winner will create the most artistic project. There also will be a catapult and trebuchet competition, and students in grades 7-9 and 10-12 can bring their own technology project to demonstrate its abilities to a judge. Registration for the Lego challenges can be made by contacting county OSU Extension offices or by contacting Mona Easley at 541-737-1327 or mona.easley@oregonstate.edu. Registration also can be made the day of the fair at the 4-H information desk in the 4-H Exhibit Building, but there is a limit to the number who may participate. Registration fee is $10. Robots can be created from Legos kits or miscellaneous parts. More information is at: oregon.4h.oregonstate.edu

The SMILE Program will offer hands-on explorations (the design and construction) of musical instruments using simple materials.

“Foods of the Pacific Northwest” is a foods/nutrition contest using the skills of 4-H members to prepare one food in an hour. Participants bring all the ingredients, the cooking equipment, and a menu from which the food would be served and also figure food costs and the table setting for the food. They then prepare the food and serve it to a judge. The judge interviews the cooks about the cooking skills and nutrition of the food.

The OSU Alumni Association will host a barbecue for Oregon Staters and their families at 5 p.m. For information, go to www.osualum.com
The Oregon State Fair runs Aug. 22 to Sept. 1 in Salem at 2330 17th St. NE. Admission at the gate is $10, $5 for ages 65 and older, $5 for children ages 6-12 and free for ages 5 and younger. Adults with an OSU I.D. receive $1 off at the gate on Aug. 24. Alumni Association members also get a discount on advance tickets. For information, go to www.oregonstatefair.org

President Ed Ray shakes hands with OSU alumnus Hosung Chang, president of Dankook University.

On Wednesday, June 25, Oregon State University President Ed Ray met with a delegation of three people from Dankook University in South Korea. The delegation was led by Hosung Chang, who is president of Dankook, an OSU alumnus, and president of an OSU-Korea alumni group.

Chang visited OSU to meet Ray, signed a memorandum of understanding, and met OSU faculty and staff to discuss Korean alumni relations, possible English language opportunities for Dankook students, and possible summer Engineering internships for OSU and Dankook students.

“We are pleased to sign the MOU with Dankook University to strengthen the relationship between our universities,” Ray said. “This visit takes on special meaning as…the delegation led by Dr. Chang marks the beginning of a new partnership to connect with Korean OSU alumni.”

Chang spoke with emotion about the gratitude that he and other alumnus feel for the support and guidance they received from their OSU faculty during their graduate studies. He spoke about the positive difference made by financial support in the form of assistantships and about the overall value of a U.S. education.

Dankook University is a private university in South Korea. There are two main campus locations:  Jukjeon and Cheonan. The Jukjeon campus boasts technologically advanced classrooms, high-end facilities, ample dorm space and one of Korea’s most aesthetically beautiful university campuses. There is an extension campus in Cheonan, a city in South Chungcheong province, which sits on the face of beautiful hills and a lake and includes the largest hospital in the region, as well as the only four-year Mongolian Language and Literature Department in Korea. According to Wikipedia, the university hosts a student body of about 20,000, and employs about 630 instructors.

Chang received a MS (1985) and PhD (1993) in Electrical Engineering from OSU. He has facilitated more than $10,000 in gifts from the Korean Alumni Association. Ten Korean students have been identified who are either outstanding academically or have financial need. They will each receive $1,000 for Fall 2008.

The Korean Students Association of Oregon State University was founded in 1971 and has been active ever since.

OSU had 91 students from South Korea enrolled for fall 2007, approximately two-thirds are graduate students. Oregon State has 211 Korean alumni, 100 of whom are located in Seoul proper.