Neebinnaukzhik means “summer evening” in the Ojibway (also known as Chippewa) language of the Great Lakes region. When Neebinnaukzhik Southall was growing up, she made handcrafts — friendship bracelets, dream catchers and beaded animals — and sold them to family and friends. She called her business Summer’s Specials.
Category » Student Research
June 1, 2011
10 Places for Undergrads to Look for Research Opportunities
Support for student research can be as far away as a phone call or click of a mouse.
1. To help their peers find opportunities and OSU faculty members to mentor undergrads, a group of students worked with Susie Brubaker-Cole, associate provost for academic success and engagement, and Dan Arp, dean of the University Honors College, to produce a comprehensive guide to undergraduate research at Oregon State. 2. The OSU Research Office maintains [...]
May 31, 2011
Good Impressions
How do we size each other up?
Call it gut instinct, intuition, street smarts or sixth sense. Good poker players need it. Success in business, politics and athletics demands it. Psychologists call it emotional intelligence, but unlike the myriad tests available to assess verbal and quantitative intelligence, a well-validated test for emotional intelligence has yet to be established, according to Frank Bernieri, [...]
May 31, 2011
Building a Better Student
One research project at a time
When undergraduate students do hands-on research with eminent professors on projects that matter, everyone wins. Students become better thinkers and citizens; the professors who mentor them become better teachers and researchers. Employers get access to employees with critical thinking, problem solving and communication skills that are so important in an economy increasingly dependent on innovation [...]
May 31, 2011
How Do You Know That?
“It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known but to question it.”
— Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man
As an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University in the 1970s, I immersed myself in learning about my field of choice, oceanography. I spent plenty of time in class studying the leading texts of the day. But my real education came from first-hand research experiences.
May 28, 2011
Blood Lines
Ishan Patel found his niche in biomedical engineering
It wasn’t the most elegant way to enter a lab. Ishan Patel had just met his mentor for the summer of 2009, Dr. Owen McCarty at Oregon Health & Science University. The OSU bioengineering student wanted to make a good impression, and when McCarty told him to go across the hall and meet his research [...]
May 27, 2011
Natural Defense
Plant-based diabetes treatment shows promise
“I’m not one that is easily deterred,” Anneke Tucker says with a disarming smile. It’s a good thing. The 23-year-old Oregon State University senior from Lakeview, Oregon, has fixed her sights on nothing less than improving health care in rural communities. And along the way, she might throw in a new treatment for one of the nation’s most serious health threats, Type 2 diabetes.
May 27, 2011
Growth Factors
High alcohol consumption inhibits bone healing
Feeding the rats was just the beginning. To get to the bottom of questions about the effects of alcohol consumption on bones, Cyndi Trevisiol learned how to remove the living cells from a femur and a tibia (purchased frozen from a biological supply house). She then removed the minerals — calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc, silicon [...]
May 24, 2011
Pathfinders
Have you ever shot an electron beam through a molecule? Undergrads in Ken Hedberg's lab take aim and discover how matter is arranged.
Robert Johnson gets a lot of strange looks when he tells his friends what he does in Ken Hedberg’s lab. The senior from Salem and another student, Luke Costello from Corvallis, shoot beams of electrons through clouds of gasses and use the results to analyze molecular structure. “People ask ‘why?’” says Johnson. “I just say, [...]
February 1, 2011
Lines in the Water
Communities and scientists explore proposed marine reserves
As fishermen, scientists and coastal communities spar over Oregon’s system of marine reserves, OSU researchers and their partners are developing the science. One of their first testing grounds is Port Orford’s Redfish Rocks.
January 5, 2011
After the Spill
Sarah Allan is tracking toxins in the Gulf of Mexico
The 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico brought up bad memories for Sarah Allan. The Oregon State University Ph.D. student, who grew up in southeast Alaska, was a child in 1988, when the Exxon Valdez struck a reef and dumped millions of gallons of crude into another rich marine ecosystem, Prince William Sound. [...]
December 1, 2010
A Name for Home: King Island
If identity is linked to places on the landscape, names for those places become part of shared culture. An OSU research project has helped to document the culture of King Island, Alaska.
July 23, 2010
A World Apart
Jennifer Kue was just a little girl when she began assisting Portland’s Hmong community.
April 24, 2010
Partners in Rural Vitality
OSU students and faculty team with Wallowa Resources to address rural development
Beautiful landscapes may inspire us, but it takes more than scenery to create community vitality. Wallowa County and rural communities across the country struggle with economic development, a future for their youth and the cultural tensions that arise from changing land ownership. For more than a decade, such issues in Wallowa have been addressed by Wallowa [...]
April 24, 2010
Reserve for Rockfish
Policy and science in Port Orford
Redfish Rocks is home to a diverse collection of marine species — and to a unique collaboration among fishermen, university scientists and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. The jagged reef off the shores of Port Orford, one of two pilot sites in Oregon’s developing marine reserve network, was established by coastal residents who [...]
April 17, 2010
The Mythbuster
OSU graduate student Jesse Abrams interviewed ranchers, homeowners, business people and local officials to understand changes unfolding in Wallowa County.
February 22, 2010
Depths of Discovery
A young oceanographer carries on a legacy of epic seafloor science.
The colossal clamshells caught the young scientist’s eye soon after he arrived at Oregon State University in the late 1970s. Giant bivalves the size of footballs were piled in the corners of offices and cradled in the arms of researchers walking the halls of the School of Oceanography. “I realized pretty quickly that they weren’t [...]
October 22, 2009
A Bracero’s Story
Farm labor is a family affair
It started with Salvador, the patriarch. In 1959, he left his wife and children near Guadalajara, Mexico, to work the fields of California.
June 23, 2009
Summer of Opportunity
Students plug into research
experiences at home and abroad
Ah, summer vacation. Time to kick back, right? Not so much for OSU students who are discovering opportunities to expand their horizons. They’re modeling blood flow, studying wildlife conservation in Africa, surveying Oregon’s old-growth forests and teaching entrepreneurship.
April 24, 2009
Eat Locally, Market Globally
Dann Cutter has maintained a reactor on a nuclear submarine and, for the past 12 years, kept the computer networks running at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center. He serves on the Waldport, Oregon city council and two state advisory boards (rural health care and transportation). Why, then, would he return to college for [...]
January 24, 2009
Committed to a Fault
Ajeet Johnson is digging into Central Oregon's violent past
Growing up in Central Oregon’s spectacular landscape, Ajeet Johnson challenged the backcountry of the Cascades. She pulled herself hand-over-hand up Smith Rock and carved down slopes at Mt. Bachelor, but over time, she became curious about the forces that shaped the terrain and will influence its future.
September 11, 2008
Movie maker
Zebrafish star in amazing tale
Kate Saili’s films won’t show in theaters any time soon, but they do feature zebrafish, a rising star in molecular biology, in a dramatic role — regenerating tissues that have been injured. Saili, who grew up in Kalispell, Montana, studies the effect of nanomaterials on inflammation. She uses transgenic zebrafish whose white blood cells fluoresce [...]
September 11, 2008
Student goes for gold
How do gold-based nanoparticles behave in the body?
Nanomaterials are on the health-care horizon. Gold-based materials have long been used to reduce inflammation associated with rheumatoid arthritis and to improve biomedical imaging. They have intrigued Lisa Truong since she first heard about their potential to help solve intractable problems from cancer to heart disease. Truong, who grew up in the Seattle area, wants [...]
June 1, 2008
Devoted to Nano
The submicroscopic search for a better battery
Undergrad Anna Putnam is squirming. The interviewer has touched a raw nerve in the chemical engineering major. “You’re digging deeply into my life,” she says, shifting in her chair. Her confession comes with reluctance: “My first term at OSU, I struggled in math.” Pressed, she admits the worst: “I got a C in vector calculus.” [...]
April 4, 2008
Coastlines and Cultures
Robbie Lamb’s international work with sustainable fisheries has earned him a Fulbright grant.
Robbie Lamb’s love of marine biology started with his mother’s pre-dawn knocks on his door when he was a child. She woke him so the two could drive from their Portland home to see the Oregon coast’s well-known tide pools. He hated getting up early, but once there, Robbie managed to shake off his drowsiness. [...]
January 23, 2008
Invaders in the Dunes
Unnoticed by most beach–goers, a showdown is under way in Oregon’s coastal dunes, and the winner could pack increased risks for coastal property, especially during winter storms. OSU scientists have documented a slow but steady takeover by American beach grass (Ammophila breviligulata), an invasive species from the East Coast and Great Lakes. They have found [...]
July 23, 2007
Cyberforest Unplugged
OSU undergrad team designs wireless sensor system
The science of mountain airsheds requires a strong back as well as a sharp mind — especially when you’re lugging a 65-pound golf-cart battery in your pack. An interdisciplinary team of OSU students spent 10 weeks this summer scaling the steep slopes of H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest to enable researchers to unplug their high-tech gear [...]
July 23, 2007
Found in Translation
Words and language have always fascinated Michael Goodman. Growing up in Florence, Oregon, he liked tracing the roots of words that most of us take for granted, and at Oregon State University, he has minored in Japanese. But it is his affinity for computers that is propelling the senior in the School of Electrical Engineering [...]
July 23, 2007
Dreaming of Hurricanes
When Kim Johnson was 8 years old, she would race through her school work so she could watch the Weather Channel. Her favorite show was “Weather in the Classroom,” and Johnson was in love with the subject. Seeing weather in action gave her a thrill. Now, the OSU senior and Honors College student from Beaverton, [...]
