Celebrating Student Success, Winter Term 2022

In support of the first goal of Portland State’s five-year strategic plan — elevating student success — Currently now features student success each term, acknowledging achievements such as publications, scholarships, grants, presentations and more. Here are some of the inspiring students who made us proud during winter term. Want your students to appear in our next roundup? Send information to currently@pdx.edu.

AWARDS, FELLOWSHIPS AND OTHER HONORS

1. Cameron Bennett, graduate student, received the Walter H. Kramer Fellowship from Portland State's Transportation Research and Education Center; a Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship presented by the U.S. Department of Transportation at the 2022 annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board; and a 2021/22 National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) scholarship.

   

2. Darshan Chauhan, graduate student, was named the National Institute for Transportation and Communities Ph.D. Student of the Year.
3. Apy Das, graduate student, was named the National Institute for Transportation and Communities Masters Student of the Year. 
4. Jenna DePasquale, graduate student, was hired to teach Gender and Work at Washington State University Vancouver next term.
5. Jenna DePasquale, graduate student, was interviewed as an academic resource for an upcoming documentary named “Distance,” which looks at sex work in the pandemic and is directed by Vivian Veidt, film student.

   

6. Macy Eiesland and Nia Musiba, graphic design students, were named by Graphic Design USA magazine as promising “Students to Watch” for 2022.

   

7. Kyuri Kim, graduate student, received the PSU Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation Excellence in Active Transportation Scholarship. She is also a recipient of the Nohad and Dirce Toulan Endowed Scholarship. 
8. Trevor Luu, graduate student, received the PSU Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation Active Transportation with Alta Planning + Design Scholarship.
9. Nya Mbock, communications student, was recently awarded a five-year Ph.D. fellowship from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
10. Kelly Rodgers, graduate student, was named the National Institute for Transportation and Communities Outstanding Student of the Year.
11. Shreya Suresh, a high school intern in PSU’s teuscher.:Lab run by Christof Teuscher, electrical and computer engineering faculty, won the Congressional App Challenge for Oregon’s 1st Congressional District. Shreya created an app called “Sightly,” which allows those who are visually impaired to use a smartphone’s camera to identify objects in the world, like a staircase or crosswalk signal, and report them to the user with audio messages. 
12. Khalid Thomas, post baccalaureate student, was named Big Sky Player of the Week in men’s basketball.

PRESENTATIONS, PUBLICATIONS, AND EXHIBITIONS

1. Stephanie Johnson Lawson,  Rachel Adams, Karina Agbisit, Jenny Davis, Anna Wehmeier Giol, Amanda Hines, Megan Jessop, Kaylee Lovato, Jazzminn Morecraft, Rachael Renz, Riley Roberts, and Emma St. John, graduate students, recently published “Short, Vigorous Roots,” a contemporary flash fiction collection of 32 migrant voices, with Ooligan Press, the trade press operated by master’s students in PSU’s book publishing program

SHARE SUCCESSES WITH THE COMMUNITY

We want to celebrate your students! Email submit student success items to currently@pdx.edu and include the following information: 

• The student’s full name
• The student’s year and area of study (example: Jane Doe, a junior studying art history)
• Student’s job, volunteer or research position if applicable. For example, if a student won an award for their work as an employee with the PSU Residence Hall Association, their position with residence life would be necessary for the write-up
• The full name of the award, honor, scholarship or fellowship the student received
• The date the award was given
• Any other relevant information about the award, such as length of fellowship, total scholarship amount, location of award ceremony
• A horizontal image, if you have one
• Links to any other additional information you would like to be included in the write-up, such as news stories, web pages or documents for the awards/scholarships/fellowships, and accessible pages for publications (such as the listing for a student book available for purchase, or the article's journal web page for an academic publication)

If you have news about PSU alumni, please send it to the alumni magazine at psumag@pdx.edu.