On May 7, Portland State announced that the Center for Online Learning and the Center for Academic Excellence would merge to create one collaborative center that combines the offerings of each.
First Stop Portland, a project of Portland State’s Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies and College of Urban and Public Affairs, recently hosted leaders from South Korea’s new city, Sejong. The high-level delegation from Sejong, an area of farmland south of Seoul, aims for the city to be one of the greenest in the world.
The fate of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 might be decided this week as the bill makes its rounds through the Senate. The bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, April 26, is meant “to provide for the sharing of certain cyber intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cyber security entities, and for other purposes,” according to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence website.
Whether it be practicing with the Portland State Chamber Choir or learning how to encode for websites, marketing sophomore Andrew Grossman is finding ways to incorporate his passions with his life goals.
Each Wednesday, Portland State students and Centennial Learning Center students meet in the Art Building to do projects, eat lunch and hang out. PSU’s Design for Social Change class and CLC’s Art and Social Change come together to create the program titled Friendtorship, a play on words combining friend and mentor.
Imagine working an eight-hour shift and having various short periods of down time. People might think to get a coffee or check Facebook, but according to research conducted by Portland State psychology Professor Charlotte Fritz, these “microbreaks” are actually unproductive.
Starting in the 2012–13 academic year, Portland State’s Center for Academic Excellence and Center for Online Learning will become a single entity. The merger brings together what the two departments do while leaving out many overlapping aspects.
Local startup Pacific Light Technology recently got $3 million to start research on LED light technology. Currently partnered with Portland State’s Business Accelerator, the lab and office space provided will help Pacific Light to develop technology that will lead to more efficient and less expensive LED lights.
The debate over student loan interest rates continues as Congress Democrats and Republicans flounder trying to find common ground. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the Interest Rate Reduction Act on Friday, April 27 with a 215-195 vote and the Democrat-controlled Senate vows to shut it down. With both sides of the aisle struggling to find a solution and President Barack Obama issuing veto notification for the reduction act, the impending July 1 doubling of student loans approaches with no resolution in sight.
Returning to Portland State after nearly five years at the University of California, Irvine, Pamela Miller will step back into a role she already knows. As the new assistant dean for development and external relations at the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, Miller will once again focus on securing funding for the college.
At the beginning of this term, the Portland State Office of Information Technology installed new print release workstations in the Neuberger Hall basement computer lab. The new system holds all print jobs from the computers in a “virtual queue,” said Michael Jantzen, a member in user support services on the labs and classrooms team. The job is held in the virtual queue until the student types in their username and the job is released.