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Scholarships for tomorrow’s best minds

No contribution has a greater impact for students than scholarship support. Gifts for scholarships provide for the people who will teach our children, dispense our health care, create new industries, protect our environment, and bring beauty and meaning to our lives. This support allows Portland State to open its doors to all who have the desire to learn and draws students of exceptional promise who enrich our learning community.

Building a first-rate learning environment

New buildings, high-tech research laboratories, and improved student study and gathering areas help students get the most from their university experience and offer valuable resources to others in the community. Private gifts to Portland State are funding the construction of first-class teaching, research, athletics, and student facilities that attract exceptional students and faculty, and benefit local companies as well.

Creating vital and relevant programs

Working in close partnership with the community, Portland State offers programs that sustain our region’s high quality of life. Current and deferred campaign gifts are funding innovative new programs in such areas as astrobiology, urban planning, sustainable business, and “small tech” nanotechnology. These and other programs are contributing unique research and study that benefits the region and beyond..

Supporting an outstanding faculty

Portland State attracts an exceptional kind of individual to its faculty: entrepreneurial, proactive, and fired by a mission to teach and conduct innovative research. These scholars inspire students and generate ideas that change the way we think and live. Endowments for professorships and chairs recruit and retain the faculty who lead PSU’s teaching and research agendas in areas vital to our region’s economic and social well-being.

Expanding research horizons

Portland State researchers develop new knowledge and find groundbreaking ways to advance industry, improve the quality of our lives, and sustain our planet’s resources. Research growth during the Building Our Future campaign—including projects involving cyber security, smart transportation, and biotechnology—is bringing new research to market and strengthening the University’s role as a powerful economic driver.

Pumping up athletics

Leadership, team building, physical prowess—athletics programs provide all of this for students. That’s why donors earmarked more than $6.8 million to PSU Athletics for scholarships and facility renovations. Athletics sponsors 14 intercollegiate varsity programs, six for men and eight for women. The new Bob and Jane Morrow Team Room has become a hub for coaching and team strategizing. The team room is an appreciated addition to the Morrow Academic Center, where student athletes study, receive tutoring, and work from the center’s 16 computers.

Help for startup companies

Melissa Appleyard, an Ames Professor in the Management of Innovation and Technology, spearheaded a proposal to guide 12 startup technology companies through Oregon’s Lab-to-Market Initiative housed at PSU. By networking private-sector business expertise and research at Oregon’s universities, the initiative is facilitating the commercialization of novel technologies. Appleyard represented the business side of the proposal, which also included faculty in chemistry and physics. She and Prof. Pam Tierney hold the first Ames endowed professorships, which were created through a generous campaign donation from Gary and Barbara Ames. The renewable, three-year appointments encourage research on strategic issues relevant to the management of innovation and technology, while attracting and retaining outstanding faculty like Appleyard and Tierney.

Opera program draws elites

Conductor Steven Crawford of the Metropolitan Opera was on campus this spring working with the student orchestra and coaching singers for the three-act opera Tartuffe. He was just the latest in a series of renowned operatic artists who have accepted the Jeannine B. Cowles Distinguished Professorship in Residence created through the campaign. Marilyn Horne, Sherrill Milnes, Tito Capobianco, and Martina Arroyo have all tutored rising stars in PSU’s award-winning Opera Theater Program.

Knowledge central

The use of technology in libraries has emerged at an astonishing speed. Data ports and wireless access within the library and Web access from remote sites link patrons to an unbelievable amount of information—much of it delivered through agreements with other libraries. This describes Portland State’s Branford P. Millar Library, which houses 1.3 million volumes and serves more than 800,000 patrons annually. The Library’s major $2.8 million renovation included a state-of-the-art research center and reorganization of its entire collection, thanks in part to the Building Our Future campaign.

A passion for teaching

As students rush through the halls of Portland’s Madison High School, it’s easy to mistake math teacher Ricardo Alonso M.Ed. ‘05 for one of them. But once at the chalkboard, his knowledge and self-assurance set him apart. Math education is a passion for the Cuban native and offering instruction in two languages, English and Spanish, is a bonus for students. Alonso completed the Bilingual Teacher Pathway Program at PSU and earned multiple scholarships. He was particularly grateful for the Marta and Ken Thrasher Scholarship, which is available for students who plan to teach in areas of teacher shortages: math, science, special, and bilingual education.

Mentoring at-risk youth

Learning from the most successful mentors of children and teaching those skills to university students is the goal of Thomas Keller, the first Duncan and Cindy Campbell Professor for Children, Youth, and Families. For at-risk children, a nurturing adult mentor can make a huge difference in school and in life. The best mentors, says Keller, have a purpose but are also flexible—often following a child’s lead in projects or activities for learning. Keller expects to build a unique program in the Graduate School of Social Work—one that provides Portland State students with the mentoring and other skills necessary to improve the lives of children, youth, and families.

Creating leaders

Industry partnerships are the heart of PSU’s Food Industry Leadership Center. Through collaborations with companies like Fred Meyer, Franz Family Bakeries, and PepsiCo, the center has developed educational and research programs for the food and consumer packaged goods industry. Housed in the School of Business Administration, the center is one of only six programs of its kind in the nation. The campaign raised $1.5 million to fund center courses, programs, conferences, seminars, and internships for industry employees as well as talented students interested in the food industry—the largest employer in the state of Oregon.

The impact of philanthropy

Contributions to Building Our Future provide growing numbers of Portland State students with the resources they need for success, inside and outside of the classroom. Annual gifts to the Fund for PSU—$2.5 million since the campaign began—assist promising students, advance faculty excellence, and kick-start innovative and exciting new programs. This crucial support comes from thousands of alumni and friends who belong to the President’s Circle and make gifts to Portland State’s annual fund. Proceeds from the Simon Benson Awards Dinner also benefit the Fund for PSU. The annual event honors Oregon’s contemporary pioneers of philanthropy and features distinguished keynote speakers such as Colin Powell, Mario Cuomo, Bob Dole, Rudolph Giuliani, Madeline Albright, Walter Cronkite, and Queen Noor of Jordan.

Microscopic frontiers

The Center for Electron Microscopy and Nanofabrication is emerging as one of the Pacific Northwest’s most advanced facilities for nanoscale science and engineering research. The center’s high-resolution electron microscopes—made possible by the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, FEI, and others—allow scientists from Portland State, other universities, and high-tech companies to study material properties at the atomic level and create novel materials and nano-devices. This translates into more efficient miniaturized electronic products that can benefit the fields of medicine, manufacturing, and information technology. Private support through the campaign is advancing Portland State’s—and our region’s—leadership in nanotechnology, which is expected to be a $2 trillion industry by 2015.

Planning for social equity

Urban planning should provide more choices for those who have the fewest. This sentiment was written by the late Ernie Bonner, a longtime activist and former director of the Portland Bureau of Planning. His family has established an endowed scholarship in his name in the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning. It will provide funds for students pursuing master’s or doctorate degrees in urban and regional planning—particularly students who plan to advance conditions of social equity. As Portland’s city planner in the 1970s, Bonner is credited for creating the historic downtown revitalization plan. A collection of his urban planning papers is available in the PSU Millar Library.

In touch with Jewish culture

Judaism is an ethnic religion that became a world civilization as a result of its diaspora. The Harold A. Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies, founded with the help of campaign dollars, looks at this civilization's encounter with the modern world. It includes faculty and courses from education, foreign languages, history, politics, Middle East studies, sociology, and urban studies. Students, who may earn a certificate in the program, pursue Judaic learning for different purposes: religious identity, intellectual curiosity, teacher certification, and preparation for advanced study. The program also serves hundreds in the community who attend lectures, workshops and noncredit courses.