Peter Banuelos of Omega Delta Phi Fraternity, Inc. presents Dwaine Plaza, associate professor of sociology, the Frances Dance Hooks Award during the Peace Breakfast Monday. (photo: Theresa Hogue)

During the 27th annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Breakfast held Monday, Jan. 19, in the Memorial Union ballroom, a number of outstanding campus community members were honored for their achievements in advancing equality and social justice issues on campus.
Joseph Krause, professor and chair of the foreign languages department, was presented with the Phyllis S. Lee award. Krause has organized international conferences on the plights of minority peoples in Oregon and around the globe, as well as organizing the Ava Helen Pauling Lectureship for World Peace.
Dwaine Plaza, associate professor in sociology and Vananh Nguyen, a student in
bioresource research, received the Frances Dancy Hooks award. For the last decade, Plaza has been offering a spring break course encouraging students to interact outside their comfort zones. He is also an active mentor with the McNair Scholars Program and the BEST program. Nguyen was co-chair for the MANRRS Regional Workshop in 2008, linking students with resources and building bridges to academic and career success.
The breakfast featured music by Jan Michael Looking Wolf Reibach as well as a student panel on the relationships between King and the new presidency, and a presentation of King’s “I Have a Dream,” speech by emeritus faculty member LaVerne Woods.

The honor comes at a great time because there has been declining funding from the state to plant new trees on campus, said Joe Majeski, OSU’s landscape manager. He hopes that the Tree Campus USA designation would provide the recognition that could lead to even more grants.

OSU has about 5,000 trees on campus, and typically plants 20 to 50 new trees per year, Majeski said. “The university is committed to planting as many trees as we can in appropriate spots.”

OSU received 100 new trees from the Arbor Day Foundation last week in conjunction with the Tree Campus designation.
“This is actually a brand-new program. We just put it together earlier this year,” said Jennifer Boettcher, program manager for the Arbor Day Foundation.

About 35 new trees became part of the campus Thursday, and the rest will be planted over the next several weeks.

City Councilor Jeanne Raymond helped shovel dirt on lilac trees planted along Orchard Avenue. She said trees are critically important to OSU, and not just for the environmental benefits.

“This adds to the community and the beauty,” she said, adding that one of her friends decided to attend OSU partly because of the ambiance that the trees bring to the campus.

“This is about the only place you can get monster trees; here and in the parks,” said Charlotte Pritchard, a full-time groundskeeper for OSU. She mentioned a red oak in the Memorial Union Quad that spreads out over nearly a full acre.

“You aren’t going to see that in someone’s yard,” she said.

OSU met five required core standards of tree care and community engagement in order to receive the Tree Campus USA status: a campus tree advisory committee, a campus tree-care plan, verification of dedicated annual expenditures on the campus tree-care plan, celebrating Arbor Day and instituting a service learning project aimed at engaging students.