Set against a dramatic Antarctic background, the Russian vessel M/V Lyubov Orlova waits as passengers set out in Zodiaks to explore the area. Among the passengers were OSU professor Michael Harte and 15 students who were studying climate change in the region.

Forget Cancun or Miami. Last winter break, a group of Oregon State University students didn’t seek out the sun and sand. Instead, they enthusiastically set off for the coldest place on earth.
Professor Michael Harte, director of the OSU Marine Resource Management Program, led a group of 15 students, 10 of them from OSU, on an exploratory trip to Antarctica in December to examine how human actions around the world can alter the fragile ecosystems in the frigid south.
Harte and his students viewed the trip as an opportunity to turn a vacation into a learning lab, as they reflected on their own carbon footprint while at the same time witnessing the dramatic effects of climate change on the landscape and the flora and fauna of the Antarctic.
“What we do here in Oregon does make a difference (in other parts of the world,)” Harte said.
Students who enrolled for the trip first took an intensive on-line series of lectures to prepare themselves for the journey. Then, in mid December, the group flew to Argentina, where Ushuaia, at the tip of South America, became their home base.
The town serves as a launching point for countless ships taking passengers to Antarctica. Among those ships was a Russian vessel, the M/V Lyubov Orlova, whose passengers included Harte’s class as well as a variety of tourists.
The ship took passengers across Drake Passage, a two day trip that was remarkably calm, despite the waters being known for their turbulence. Sea sickness wasn’t a problem for Harte’s students, he said, but the medication they were taking to stave off sickness did alter some students for the worse, making clear thinking sometimes a little difficult.

Michael Harte often encountered friendly penguins.

For Harte, providing a balance between learning and having fun proved the biggest challenge. Although he’s traveled with graduate students before, he’s never led a study abroad group, so the social dynamics provided the biggest learning opportunity for him as professor.
“It was like ‘Animal Planet’ meets ‘Big Brother,’” he said. “The unique wildlife experience and the dynamics of other young people made it a lot of fun.”
While there was plenty of opportunity to observe the wildlife and scenery aboard ship, the most rewarding explorations came during trips ashore in Zodiaks, small boats that transported passengers to remote locations along the way.
There, the students and Harte were able to interact with Antarctica’s wildlife in a profound way. Although humans are told not to approach the animals, no such restrictions were placed on the animals themselves. That means bold penguins felt free to march right up to their visitors.
“I had a chummy penguin step up and sit on my stomach,” Harte said.
Students were able to witness thriving Gentoo penguin groups who had started taking over territory of Adelie penguins who were being driven further south by warming temperatures and melting ice. They also witnessed the influence of invasive species, and were aware that even though they were careful to clean off their boots, there was a chance that they were contributing to the spread of new and potentially unwelcome species.
“One of the scariest things to me about the human impacts to Antarctica, and really worldwide, is how many vectors there are for invasive species,” wrote Brandon Trelstad, a graduate student and OSU’s Sustainability Coordinator, in a piece he composed after returning from the trip.
One of the things students were asked to consider is whether or not what they learned outweighs the damage they did to the environment simply by visiting, including the carbon emissions by the planes and ships that transported them.
“Does it change people’s world view? Yes, but there is a cost,” Harte said.
Harte is planning another trip for the coming winter break. He needs students to enroll early in order to book passage aboard ship.
More information is available at: http://oregonstate.edu/international/ by typing “Antarctica” in the search engine. Or call Kristy Spikes at 541-737-3006.
~ Theresa Hogue

Rebecca Johnson assumed leadership duties for the OSU Cascades Campus Tuesday.

Rebecca “Becky” Johnson started her new role Tuesday as interim leader of the OSU-Cascades Campus in Bend.

Johnson, who will remain vice provost for academic affairs and international programs on the Corvallis campus, will begin implementation of the campus’ new strategic and business plans in preparation for the upcoming legislative session in January.

She replaces Diana Sloane, who is stepping down to assume a faculty position and will work closely with Johnson to ensure a smooth transition.

During her interim appointment, Johnson also will focus on building student enrollment, expanding academic programs, aligning programs and student support services with Central Oregon Community College and strengthening community relationships.

Sabah Randhawa, OSU’s executive vice president and provost, said the university will immediately launch an expedited search for a new permanent leader.

“Like the other campuses of the Oregon University System, OSU-Cascades faces challenging circumstances in the immediate future, and we felt that those challenges could best be met by new leadership,” said Randhawa.

“Because this is the first branch campus of the university system and is still quite young, those challenges are compounded by ongoing growing pains,” Randhawa said. “This is an appropriate time for a change as we approach the new session and prepare to implement the strategic and business plans that Diana and the campus leadership team have been developing this year.”

Sloane has been the campus executive officer since July 1, 2007.

“I’m personally appreciative of the commitment that Diana has shown to the students of OSU-Cascades and to higher education in Central Oregon and look forward to her continuing role at OSU.”

Johnson, who has been at OSU for 20 years, is a professor of forestry economics who has been vice provost for academic affairs and international programs since 2004. She provides leadership to the university in academic programs, assessment and personnel policy, as well as developing its international dimension.

As vice provost, Johnson is involved in all aspects of OSU’s academic affairs, including budgeting and strategic planning. She chaired the OSU 2007 steering committee, which led the development of the university’s strategic plan.

An expert in the economic values and impacts of non-market resources, she has studied the value to Oregonians of recreation, tourism, fish and wildlife and biodiversity, and she has worked with federal, state and local agencies on issues of concern to rural, natural resource-based communities.

From 1990 to 2003, Johnson served on the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors.

The OSU-Cascades Campus, which has more than 500 students, features small class sizes and one-on-one mentoring. It offers 20 degree options with programs including natural resources, business administration, tourism and outdoor leadership, and liberal studies. In addition to OSU faculty, the campus partners with the University of Oregon and COCC on academic offerings.

Among the new programs OSU-Cascades is exploring are undergraduate majors in sustainability, engineering and hospitality management and a master’s degree in education.

Hendricks, who now serves as interim associate provost for International Programs, will receive the 2008 Kleemeier Award Nov. 23 for the impact of his research in the field of aging.

Joe Hendricks, OSU associate provost, earns top gerontological award.

Hendricks introduced the idea of “chaos theory” to social gerontology in the mid-1990s by proposing that aging is not a linear function but an increasingly dynamic one that results in unpredictable change.

“Joe’s work is one of the very few most creative and original contributions in the field,” said Toni Calasani of Virginia Tech in nominating Hendricks for the award.

His work on that and other elements of gerontological research, including reaching out to other sections of the field for more interdisciplinary collaboration, also earned him the 2004 Tibbitts Award from the Association of Gerontology in Higher Education, the highest honor in that field, Calasani said.

Challenges facing the modern study of aging are both socially created and inaccurately biased toward the medical field, Hendricks said.

Medical genetics accounts for only 25 per cent of the factors that determine what happens as people age, he said. Empirical evidence shows that 75 percent of predictions for aging involve social factors, he said.

“Unfortunately, we’ve medicalized everything: a pill for every ill,” he said.

Public policy and social norms affect individuals’ self-concepts, which affect how they age, the OSU sociology professor said. Even the definition of 65 as the threshold of “old age” is a social construct determines the time orientation toward the future for many people.

“Our lifestyles and health status nationwide is near the bottom of the top quartile when it could be at the top,” Hendricks said. “We need to attend to these patterns, to unravel them, to identify the challenges so we can better intervene and improve the lives of people.”

Hendricks will receive his honor in Washington, D.C., where the 7,000-member society is headquartered. Presenting the award lecture this year will be the 2007 winner, Rita B. Effros of UCLA, whose mentor won the Nobel Prize in physiology in 1996.  The Kleemeier Award presentation is regarded as the highpoint of the annual meetings.

“So I’m in pretty good company,” Hendricks quipped. “This is quite something for me.”

Hendricks came to OSU 20 years ago from the University of Kentucky, where he had a joint appointment in the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Medicine.

His textbook, “Aging and Mass Society,” was the first in gerontology geared at upper division classes.

He is especially proud of his work in establishing the Honors College at OSU in 1995. It is one of only 12 degree-granting colleges of its kind in the U.S., and the credentials of its students rank seventh in the U.S. News and World Report listing.

The college has become a “destination for the best and the brightest” in Oregon, including the 20 percent of the enrollment that comes from minority groups in Portland, Hendricks said.

“There’s a real responsibility on us to live up to their expectations because they are investing their futures on us,” he said.

~ by Ed Curtin

Valerie Rosenberg and Paul Primak after they completed their almost-three-hour commute from Eugene to Snell Hall. (photo: Jackie Bangs)

Some people read “Bike Commute Challenge” and merely dust off their three-speed Schwinns to pedal into work.  Valerie Rosenberg and Paul Primak take the challenge to the max, riding 43 miles from Eugene to their offices in Snell Hall.

“It was kind of a lark,” said Primak, director of OUS International Programs and a long-time resident of Eugene. “I saw the announcement, Val had just moved to Eugene, the thought came to me, and she said ‘yes’.”

Averaging about 16 miles an hour on bikes that are “nothing fancy,” Rosenberg and Primak made the journey in 2 hours, 41 minutes.

“Not much time for conversation,” Primak said. “Val rides at a fast pace. I was trying to keep up.”

For Rosenberg, director of International Student and Faculty Services, the commute was her first since moving from Corvallis to Eugene in July. The pair often rides together with their spouses, this summer to Paulina Lake southeast of Bend.

Long (to most of us) commutes are not foreign to Primak, who periodically will ride to Corvallis on a Saturday, shower at Dixon Recreation Center, work a half-day, and then bike home. “But not when the rains come,” he said.

For more information about the Bike Commute Challenge, pedal your browser to Bike Commute Challenge!