Abigail Brown has always loved water in any form – snow, rivers, thunderstorms, oceans. As an undergraduate at The Evergreen State College, she went to Central America to study sustainable agriculture and forest restoration techniques. "I started to think more globally after that trip," she says. Now a master's student in water resources policy and management at OSU, Brown is taking that international perspective to a new internship in India. She will be working with Arghyam, a Bangalore-based organization dedicated to financing, evaluating and supporting water projects throughout the country. Brown will be heading to two villages in the southernmost Indian state of Tamil Nadu to qualitatively evaluate water and sanitation projects for gender equity.

Twenty university presidents and engineering professors from Iraq visited OSU in August to learn about sustainable building and design and green energy. The Iraqi delegates came to Oregon through the efforts of OSU engineering faculty and the Michael Scott Mater Foundation. They signed a memorandum of understanding with OSU that could lead to more cooperation in the future.

Geosciences student Julia Rosen is spending three weeks this summer conducting research at the North Greenland Eemian Ice Core Drilling Project (NEEM) camp. As a member of professor Ed Brook's lab, Rosen is using ice core samples to analyze levels of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere and help complete a picture of long-term, global climate change.

Finance major Paul Heim is taking his studies beyond the OSU campus, and even beyond the United States. He is currently working as a finance intern at a wealth management firm in the heart of London’s historic financial district, and blogging about the experience. This fall he will study international finance at Lund University, in Sweden, through the College of Business Arthur Stonehill Study Abroad Program.

Some of the world’s leading climate change researchers will gather at Oregon State University July 8-11 for a conference that examines past changes in the Earth's systems in order to better predict what may happen in the future. The conference is part of an international effort called PAGES (Past Global Changes), a core project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and NOAA in the United States and Switzerland. Some 330 climate change scientists from around the world will discuss their research, representing institutions in the United States, China, France, Sweden, Argentina, Switzerland, Mexico, Chile, United Kingdom, Finland, Morocco, Germany, Japan and elsewhere.

A molecular toxicology student at Oregon State University will attend a meeting in Germany this month that aims to forge bonds between Nobel Prize winners and the world's most promising young researchers. Ed O'Donnell, who was born and raised in Coos Bay, Oregon, is one of 580 young scientists from 67 countries who will attend the 59th annual Nobel Laureate meeting in Lindau from June 28 to July 3. O'Donnell works in the lab of OSU cancer biologist Siva Kolluri, who nominated him for the meeting.

A documentary directed by Oregon State University professor Andrea Marks is showing at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City as part of an exhibit on Polish poster art. The 40-minute documentary, Freedom on the Fence, is a 10-year labor of love for Marks, an associate professor in the Department of Art at OSU.

When Mario Magaña was 15, he made a tough decision: quit middle school and return to his family's farm in Michoacán, Mexico, so his younger siblings had a chance for an education. Today, Magaña is a 4-H Regional Extension Educator at OSU, creating educational programs for Latino youth in Oregon. He is working to develop a program that allows Extension educators to visit the Mexican states of Jalisco and Michoacán to learn the language and better understand students from Mexico.

The Corvallis Gazette-Times takes a closer look at the class of 2009. Nikhil Prem is a chemical engineering graduate in the International Degree program who studied in Santander, Spain. Biochemistry and biophysics graduate Travis Edmiston, among his many achievements, volunteered in the English Language Institute (INTO OSU) Conversant Program.

Susana Rivera-Mills, associate professor of Spanish linguistics and diversity advancement at Oregon State University, has been appointed to chair the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures.

Rivera-Mills has been at OSU since 2007. Her passion for her teaching and research goes beyond an academic interest – she emigrated with her family from El Salvador at the age of 12.

"Susana's leadership skills make her an ideal advocate for the importance of language study both in the university and in Oregon communities," said Lawrence Rodgers, dean of the College of Liberal Arts.