News
FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, personally congratulated professor Barry Messer in June as he accepted their foundation's first-ever national award for campus community collaboration.
The accolades went to the Community Watershed Stewardship program, a partnership between Portland State and the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services. Messer serves as adviser to the 14-year-old program, which is run by PSU graduate students and is responsible for more than 27,000 local volunteers planting 80,000 native plants and restoring 50 acres along local stream banks.
Projects of the program often serve as learning experiences for elementary students as they volunteer at Johnson Creek or for garden projects at their own schools. Through the years, Portland State students have organized assistance on more than 130 community projects.
The Carter award is the second major award received by the program in the past year. The watershed program also earned the C. Peter Magrath/W.K. Kellogg Foundation Engagement West Region Award, making Portland State the only university west of the Mississippi to receive the prize.