And now, OSU is part of a ground-breaking program that will enable students to pursue a degree at the same time that they are serving in the Peace Corps.

Andrea Durham spent two years in an Ecuadorian village while completing her master’s degree, and now works as a Benton County extension agent.

OSU has become a Peace Corps Master’s International partner, and will participate in an innovative program that allows a graduate student to get a master’s degree while also doing a full 27-month service project in the Peace Corps.

The program, the first of its type set up at a college or university in Oregon, will allow students to earn one of three graduate degrees in the OSU College of Forestry. The initial program should provide a model for other colleges at the university to develop participating degrees in the future, university officials say.

“Forestry is one of the ‘scarce skills’ that the Peace Corps has identified as an area of need,” said David Zahler, a senior instructor in the College of Forestry, director of the new program and former Peace Corps worker. “We see this as an important starting point that will facilitate other OSU colleges getting involved, and something that will open new opportunities to OSU students.”

Last fall, Oregon State also became the first university in the United States to partner with INTO University Partnerships, an organization that has worked with institutions in the United Kingdom to increase their international student enrollment. The collaboration, which includes a “pathway” program into the university, aims to double the university’s international enrollment within five years.
Under the Master’s International concept, a student first becomes accepted by both an OSU graduate program and the Peace Corps, and does the first academic year of their studies at the university. They then leave for Peace Corps training and a 27-month service period in a foreign country, often in Latin America or Africa. Finally, the student returns for at least one more term at OSU to complete their master’s degree requirements.

Initially, participating students at OSU will be able to earn a master’s degree in forest science, forest resources, or forest products. Within those degrees are several possible areas of concentration, such as agroforestry, forest ecology, silviculture, international marketing, forest economics, social forestry, and others.

Possible topics that might be available for a thesis, developed by OSU College of Forestry faculty who have already expressed an interest in serving as major professor for Master’s International students, include such things as the effects of non-native species, evaluating watershed restoration efforts, small business development in the forest products sector, and rural assessments of community needs and potential.

The Peace Corps provides support for the Master’s International student while they are on their foreign assignment, but students remain enrolled at OSU, receive some credit for their work experiences, receive deferred loan payments, and will be able to stay in contact with university faculty.

“The type of students attracted to OSU is similar to those choosing Peace Corps service,” said Sabah Randhawa, provost and executive vice president. “OSU graduates already choose post-graduate assignments with the Peace Corps in large numbers. By creating this seamless process whereby students can integrate their coursework with Peace Corps service, we hope to attract even more students who are bright, energetic and mindful of the international implications of their work.”
Although new, the program has already had many inquiries from prospective participants, Zahler said.
The program will allow students to develop some very innovative research projects while gaining more international experience, he said.

“Master’s International is the kind of program in which both the major professors and students have to be open and flexible,” Zahler said. “It calls for the type of person who is very capable and self-driven – working in a developing country is not like walking into a well-funded university laboratory with your graduate thesis already planned out.”

Andrea Durham, now a Benton County Extension agent at OSU, served from 2001-03 in a Master’s International program in an Ecuadorian village, 6,000 feet high in the Andes Mountains, while she was getting her degree from Michigan Technological University.

“I was a natural resource volunteer who was supposed to be working on the recovery of native forests,” Durham said. “We did that, but the local village also wanted me to help with health and water issues, family planning, youth development, women’s groups.

So I was in the middle of all that, with very little resources or funding, while trying to learn a mixture of Spanish and Quechua, the native dialect descended from the ancient Incas. It was quite a challenge.”

OSU officials say they believe that participation in Master’s International, which will result in more students returning to OSU with significant international exposure, will also improve the diversity of the OSU educational experience and boost other initiatives to increase international student recruiting.

More information about the program can be found on the web at www.peacecorps.gov/masters

~ Dave Stauth

Ancient tree stumps emerged at Neskowin, providing OSU researchers with an opportunity to explore the history of climate changes in Oregon. (photo: Harold Zald)

(Note: This commentary returns to the “front” page of LIFE@OSU online to give readers a chance to see a special television news report about the “Ghost Forest” at Neskowin. Click on the video link at the end of this article. — Editor)

The Oregon coastline at Neskowin is always an awesome sight. But when storms recently eroded portions of the beach, they revealed remnants of an ancient forest, its 2,000-year-old stumps rising from the sea.

Anyone could appreciate their ragged beauty, and they’ve been called “a tribe of dignitaries . . . from the ancient past.” But they are more than that. They also carry a story about their time, one that may reveal important scientific information about ancient climate as well as what caused their death, perhaps a major earthquake and subsidence (in this case, a major decrease in land elevation). At OSU, researchers and graduate students in the College of Forestry began a program to sample a few of 200 stumps — but it was criticized in both news and editorial articles, and temporarily halted.

Many scientists at OSU and the Pacific Northwest Research Station of the USDA Forest Service highly support this sampling project. They constitute some of the nation’s leading forestry, climate and ecological researchers. They wisely recognize – as did the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department when it originally approved the study – that tree rings from these ancient stumps could provide invaluable data to help understand not only past climate, but also verify our future climate models, and learn more about geologic events in Oregon coastal areas.

One researcher – a participant on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – has pointed out that these old trees lived in a climatic period before the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. The climate then may have been quite similar to ours now, but without the effects of the Industrial Revolution or elevated greenhouse gases. Such data may help answer important remaining questions about the veracity of human-induced global warming – the natural, year-to-year, and decade-to-decade climate variability, and the effects of ancient El Niños and Pacific Decadal Oscillations (a pattern of climate variability).

People and nations around the world are debating climate change, what is causing it, what the future may hold and what to do about it. These are absolutely not trivial issues. At stake is everything from our transportation system to our food supply, the survival of species, jobs and our economy. As scientists we must help answer the remaining questions about climate change, sooner rather than later, and we need to get the answers right.

Ancient -- 2,000 years old! -- tree stumps could provide valuable information for the debate on climate change. (photo: Harold Zald)

The researchers who used a chain saw to cut wedges from 3 out of 200 stumps – a total sample would have used 20-30 of the stumps — were using a standard approach that had been carefully considered. Conventional coring was not working because the stumps were too old and decomposing. Other approaches to obtain samples might be possible. But ultimately, this research is important and our understanding of complex climate issues can be no better than the data upon which it is based.

This is a rare opportunity to get important data. It may not last much longer. The same erosion that exposed these stumps to a level rarely if ever observed is now causing rapid decomposition. This will eventually destroy the stumps completely. For good reasons, this project and others like it should continue. The ancient stumps at Neskowin carry a message from the past, one that science can help us interpret to improve our understanding of climate change and our policies.

by Hal Salwasser, dean of the College of Forestry at Oregon State University

Jeff Hino showcases his old National steel guitar. (photo: Bob Crum)

It was a cathartic moment in 1991 when Jeff Hino walked into a Seattle music store and saw it hanging there on the wall.  Possibly from Blind Boy Fuller, an original great blues-man from the 1930s and 40s, the 1934 National steel guitar with two bullet holes through it was “like an old friend,” recalls Hino.  “It spoke to me with its gutsy, soulful sound that carries the blues right to your heart.”

And if you listen to the music of Jeff Hino, learning technology leader with Extension Experiment Station Communications, and his musical partner Dave Plaehn, who graduated from OSU with a Ph.D. in math, you’ll find that the old slide guitar blends right in with their unique style of blues.

“We bring our own identity to old blues songs,” said Hino.  “We create our own experiences based on the greats like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Bukka White before us.”

“Jeff is good at improvising,” said Plaehn. “He’s one of the best slide players in the state.”

In their first homespun CD “On Your Bond,” Hino reflects that it felt right to be their flagship.  “It’s about trust and helping each other.  It is spiritual,” he said.  The CD earned critical acclaim with its mix of rural and urban blues and simple acoustic approach.

In their latest release, “Can’t Get My Rest,” they featured more original songs, more musicians and added color from additional instruments such as drums that they didn’t have on their first CD.  The sound ranges from country blues to pop blues to R&B.

Like most kids, Hino recalls, he was attracted to music in middle school.  He started with an electric guitar and played in the equivalent of a “garage band” in high school.  By his senior year, “we were the best rock band in Taiwan,” said Hino.

When he moved to Arizona to attend college, Hino experienced a big shift from rock to Americana, country and bluegrass.  He sold is guitar for a banjo, and when he played, “It resonated with the sense of being American,” recalled Hino.

By the mid-70s, Hino was attracted to Corvallis because of the folk music scene.  He moved to play banjo and dobro (a resonator slide guitar) for the Highwater String Band.  By the late ‘80s, he became interested in acoustic blues.

“The release of the Robert Johnson CD was really a milestone for me,” said Hino.  “It was inspiring to hear original artists from the ‘30s like that.”

Jeff Hino and Dave Plaehn have been performing acoustic blues since 1990. Their next local performance is on Nov. 22, 8:30 p.m., at Big River Restaurant, Corvallis. (photo: Bob Crum)

Then, in 1990, he joined Plaehn, a singer/songwriter and harmonica player.  “People enjoy the interplay of Dave’s harmonica and my steel guitar.  The energy and fusion of blues, country, etc., is the heart of what we do.”

With a master’s degree in educational media and experience as a library media specialist, Hino went from substitute teaching when he moved to Corvallis to working for the College of Forestry as a hands-on media specialist.  From his start at OSU in 1984, he eventually rose to COF media center director in 2002. Recently, he joined the EESC to help them use technology to better communicate Extension information across Oregon.

“My job, and my music, feed my creative side each in different ways,” said Hino. “In my job, I bring new ideas on how to deliver information using new methods.

“Music is a social outlet for me. It is incredibly rewarding being with other people in a variety of musical spaces.”

On a recent trip, he carried a ukulele on his back as he visited the Karen tribe in the hills of Thailand.  “I played an elephant folk song and some blues in the jungles of Thailand and they started playing (Eric) Clapton!”

“Music is just this incredible shared experience for everyone,” said Hino.  “It is a voice through which you can speak with anyone, and they can appreciate it. It is a wonderful feeling.”

(Not playing? Right-click here to download the MP4)

College of Forestry student Jesse Narog and Advisor Jim Kiser thrive on challenges. (photo: University Marketing)

Jesse Narog does not back down from a challenge. It just makes him more determined.

As proof, he earned an associate’s degree before graduating from high school. He’s been deployed overseas as a Marine Corps reservist, heading out again in 2009. And he’s had to go back and forth between OSU and a community college in Washington while pursuing a degree in forest engineering. He has three years completed, a year and half to go, and plans to resume classes next fall.

“I like a challenge; that’s why I’m in the Marine Corps,” Narog says. “If it looks hard, then I have to do it.”

His adviser in the College of Forestry, Jim Kiser, is equally persistent — and defiant — in the face of long odds.

“If you throw me a challenge and say it can’t be done, I’ll be out to prove you wrong,” he says. “If a student’s going to put the effort forward, I’m going to put that effort forward too.”

And he has. Kiser keeps going back to advising over the phone whenever Narog has to leave Corvallis. He’s also researched classes online and in Washington to help Narog continue making progress until he returns to OSU.

“He’s been very tenacious in wanting this, Kiser says. “A lot of people would have given up a long time ago.”

Narog didn’t give up, in part because Kiser never gave up on him, opening doors that might have otherwise been closed.

“Having Jim’s help has made the difference in going for this degree,” Narog says. “Some of my family and friends have suggested doing something else, but I’ve gotten the help I’ve needed. I couldn’t have done it without him.”

Kiser has made that kind of difference with many forestry students, judging from the line outside his office — something Narog noticed immediately.

“He’s always available. He needs one of those ‘Now Serving’ numbers by his door,” Narog says. “He’s willing to help. He won’t shoot you down. He’ll try to figure out a solution to the problem.”

Kiser says he’s motivated as an adviser because he went through many of the same situations as his students during his own college career.

“I know what it would be like without the help,” he says. “I’m always slipping back to ‘I wish somebody had done this for me,’ so that’s why I do it for them.”

Kiser says he gets “pretty fired up” over helping students successfully complete their degrees, something he believes is less of a priority at some universities.

“Every student that walks through our doors deserves our respect and the chance to make it. It’s our job — our duty — to do what we can to help them.”

That philosophy — and the effort that goes with it — helps fuel Narog’s determination.

“If nobody had wanted to help, OSU wouldn’t be what it is,” he says.

~by Gary Dulude