Author: Erick Bengel

You know that shrill conservative guy in every lower-division political science class?

Earlier this month, Portland State selected local firm SERA Architects to design the Life Sciences Collaborative Complex, the multi-institutional $160 million research facility that will house a gamut of science departments from Portland State, Oregon Health & Science University and Oregon State University.

Although Portland State formally announced its plans on March 30 for College Station, the university’s latest student housing project at Southwest Jackson Street and Fifth Avenue, the building’s construction is already well underway.

Portland State’s new Innovation Program, developed by the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, is finally off and running.

Spring term at Portland State kicks off this year with the anticipated launching of Desire2Learn (D2L), the university’s latest online learning management system.

A team of researchers from Portland State, Oregon State and the University of Oregon have embarked on a five-year study of how human activity and climate change may conspire to create conditions of water scarcity in the Willamette River Basin (WRB).

Portland State will play host to a two-day debate tournament this weekend, organized by the university’s debate team as a warm-up for April’s United States Universities Debating Championship.

Governor John Kitzhaber, making good on his gubernatorial proposal to radically reform Oregon’s schools, held a press conference at Portland State on Feb. 11 at which he called for the creation of an Oregon Education Investment Board, a high-level policy group over which Kitzhaber would preside that would coordinate the state’s education system from preschool through post-secondary education.

The Oregon Senate passed the “40-40-20” bill (Senate Bill 253) on Feb. 10 by a vote of 28-2, thereby enshrining in state law an ambitious education goal for 2025, one that has been part of Oregon’s policy talk for several years.

It assumes many names: “the withdrawal method,” “the pull-out method,” “the exit strategy,” “the backup plan,” “the better-than-nothing plan,” and, less colloquially, “coitus interruptus.”

A recent Portland State survey reveals that three out of four students and faculty members commute to campus by using some mode of alternative transportation, putting PSU front-and-center in the movement to phase out the automobile.