Hope Starts Here

LONG BEFORE he enrolled at Portland State, Brett Stinson wanted to do something about climate change. He just wasn’t sure how.

At PSU, he discovered research. He joined a study to determine the best plants for green roofs, which moderate heat in cities and reduce building energy use. He analyzed data that Elliott Gall, engineering faculty, collected while examining air quality inside Portland’s Harriet Tubman Middle School, which sits just above Interstate 5 wrapped in gasoline and diesel fumes.

Then something happened that shifted Stinson’s climate focus into even higher gear. During the devastating Oregon wildfires of 2020, smoke from the burning forests covered Portland for more than a week, pushing in through the cracks of his apartment. His head aching, Stinson struggled to seal the leaks or find an air filter to purchase.

Now, everything that I’m doing, I’m doing because it feels urgent.

“I had a wake-up call in that moment. And now, everything that I’m doing, I’m doing because it feels urgent,” says Stinson, a senior studying mechanical engineering who is a research assistant in Gall’s Healthy Buildings Research Laboratory. He’s part of a team, advised by Gall, that recently won a federal contest for its low-cost do-it-yourself solution to cleaning indoor air during wildfires. (See how they did it in Seeing Science.)

Given the state of the planet, “It would almost feel like a waste of my education to not do something that is applicable, that will help people and is for the greater good,” Stinson says. “To make the planet livable for future generations—as lofty as that sounds, it’s the only thing that matters at the end of the day. I’m just glad to be part of it.”

The urgency Stinson feels is taking hold across PSU, as the University’s longstanding commitment to the climate enters a new, more pressing phase.

In one sense, PSU has been taking action on climate issues for years. Many of Oregon’s environmental problem solvers got their starts here (see the “Green Roots Quiz”); questions of how to make our society sustainable have long been woven into teaching, research and operations, spurred on by a $25 million challenge grant from the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation in 2008; and campus itself has made great strides toward easing its impact on the planet. (See “The Living Laboratory.”)

But now, as Stinson’s experience reflects, something different is brewing. Extreme weather events, driven or exacerbated by rising global temperatures, are hitting the Northwest with greater frequency, from massive wildfires to deadly, record-breaking heat waves, like the one that saw Portland reach 116 degrees last summer—hotter even than cities like Dallas, Texas, or Orlando, Florida, have ever been.

“Climate change has gone from something in the future to something that’s happening right now,” says Jennifer Allen, environmental and natural resource policy faculty. “This is a focusing moment.”

Climate change has gone from something in the future to something that’s happening right now.

At the beginning of this school year, President Stephen Percy called for a renewed university-wide focus on climate change. And as students and campus leaders grapple with how to translate the urgency into action, a theme is emerging: The need for new, transformative connections—between PSU and communities outside of campus, especially those that have been harmed and shut out of decisions for generations; among researchers across PSU’s many schools and colleges; and between students and the knowledge they need to live in and sustain a warming world.

CONNECTING WITH COMMUNITIES

EVEN AT an urban university with a mission to serve the city, the tendency is to first come up with the brilliant ideas, and then spread them beyond the campus. “If we fly in and do our own thing, we are narrowing our potential from the beginning,” says Fletcher Beaudoin, director of PSU’s Institute for Sustainable Solutions. “When we flip that script and start with what the community needs, I think we can actually be more significant partners in change.”

An example of flipping the script is the Institute’s partnership with the city of Portland, Beaudoin says. Through years of projects with city officials and hearing their concerns, researchers learned that separate bureaus—each responsible for different infrastructure, from roads to sewer pipes to bridges—needed to build capacity for a coordinated response after a severe flood, landslide or earthquake. Each bureau manages assets that the others rely on. For example, to restore safe drinking water, the water bureau needs the transportation bureau to keep roads passable, so workers can reach and repair critical pump and pipe networks. If bureaus could plan how to respond together after a disaster, residents might face less time without basic services, making recovery quicker. To tackle this issue, faculty, staff and students designed workshops with city officials to help them develop tools and strategies to make coordination easier—and ultimately, to make Portland more resilient.

Instead of PSU sweeping in to tell officials which climate-related problems they should address, “We really tried to be responsive to this foundational challenge they faced around collaboration and coordination across bureaus. Then, as a university, we came in with research and student engagement to respond to that core challenge,” Beaudoin says.

Another way PSU is connecting with communities is through research that helps to reveal why some face greater climate-related harms than others. For example, research by Vivek Shandas helps illuminate how discriminatory policies of the past put low-income, Black and Latino communities at increased risk from climate change impacts today.

Shandas, geography faculty, and his students have spent years driving vehicles equipped with highly sensitive thermometers around city streets to map urban heat islands. His research showed that extreme heat doesn’t affect everyone equally. In Portland, researchers found an almost 18-degree difference in temperatures between neighborhoods. That difference can be deadly. More than sixty people died during last year’s heat wave in Portland alone.

After collecting data around the country, Shandas and his co-researchers realized a pattern had emerged on their maps, and it was one that looked familiar. The hottest neighborhoods in 94% of the 108 U.S. cities they studied were ones that had been “redlined” in the mid-20th century, or subject to racist housing policies that denied residents in segregated neighborhoods access to federally backed mortgages and other credit.

Far from being a thing of the past, the data showed that those policies—banned by the Fair Housing Act of 1968—still affect the often low-income, Black and Latino residents who live in the same neighborhoods today. Compared to whiter, more affluent areas, redlined neighborhoods benefited from fewer municipal investments in trees, parks and transportation that provide “cooling services.” The inequity compounded over decades and today makes residents of formerly redlined areas more vulnerable during heat waves.

The inequity compounded over decades and today makes residents of formerly redlined areas more vulnerable during heat waves.

Jola Ajibade, geography faculty, is building on Shandas’ findings with research that looks at how efforts to address the inequitable distribution of trees in Portland can benefit residents—without leading to gentrification. She and her team will interview forest managers, city officials, nonprofit organizations and community members to ask questions such as: Are people who manage urban forests a diverse group? Do people in the hottest areas get a say in where to add trees and parks in their neighborhoods? If they’d prefer different investments in their community, will their voices be taken seriously?

“I’m not just looking at the distribution of harms, but how they are produced in society. What factors and decisions enable the production of harm, who are the decision makers, and who are the people affected by those decisions?” Ajibade says. “How is it that we’ve allowed these things to continue, unintentionally or intentionally? And what are some of the policies we currently have to address these inequalities?”

What sets PSU apart is this community-based approach, says Allen, a public policy expert who chairs the Oregon Parks Commission.

“Many, many universities and colleges are working on climate…and we have good scientists doing the same rigorous work as other universities,” she says. “But our context and our opportunity is that community-based aspect and our willingness to celebrate work that can have an impact outside the university. That’s not the case in a lot of universities.”

The challenge now is for more people at PSU to connect with what communities are asking for, says Todd Rosenstiel, a plant biologist and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, who with Allen is leading a committee to refocus PSU around climate action. They will host a campus symposium May 12 where government officials, civic leaders, community-based organizations, employers and others can explain their most pressing climate-related problems.

“Before we jump in as academics often do and say, ‘Oh, here’s my big idea. This is what I want to do,’ let’s actually take a moment to hear what is needed of us,” Rosenstiel says. “If we do that with enough intentionality and diversity, I really believe everyone at PSU, regardless of school or college or department, will find a way they can show up and have some agency in helping the metro region respond to and prepare for climate change.”

CONNECTING DIVERSE RESEARCH

ALLEN AND ROSENSTIEL’S committee is currently taking stock of PSU’s array of climate-related research. It’s a huge task. From architecture to public health, business to biology, nearly every part of the university is engaged in answering the question of how we can ensure a habitable planet for future generations.

Chemists are exploring new ways to capture the sun’s energy and convert it into usable fuels that don’t add carbon to the atmosphere, as geographers assess how a warming climate affects water quality. Engineers test technologies that could reduce energy use in buildings and evaluate the promise and pitfalls of e-bikes. Botanists collect the seeds of native plants before they are lost, as ecologists examine how to build trust between residents and the governments that are charged with preparing them for life-altering changes, like increased flooding due to sea level rise.

Faculty are also coalescing around new themes like urban heat—what Rosenstiel describes as “the clear and present danger of extreme temperatures”—and how PSU can prepare the region to live with them. Another new theme is climate migration, which brings together researchers in geography, global studies, urban studies and planning, philosophy, population research and environmental sciences.

Faculty are also coalescing around new themes like urban heat...and how PSU can prepare the region to live with them.

Ajibade is part of this group, with her research into how climate migration—an often haphazard phenomenon—differs from managed retreat, or planned movements of individuals, communities, businesses and infrastructure threatened by climate change.

“Sometimes you’re not aware that your colleague in a different department is working on the same issue, just from a different perspective,” she says. “What PSU is trying to do is to bring different faculty together to look at areas where we already have in-house strengths.”

Even within global themes like climate migration, PSU must deliver scholarship that directly helps local communities, Rosenstiel says. PSU students become the Portland community with some 62% of alumni (124,724 and counting) living here. They, and all Portland-area residents, he says, should be able to learn from PSU how to live in a place that’s likely to be transformed by climate change and by climate refugees—people who will arrive here from other states or countries that become inhospitable, or unlivable, due to the impacts of climate change.

“You could easily study climate migration in the abstract and talk about, you know, massive numbers of refugees coming out of the river deltas of Asia. But I think our role is to really focus on: What are the climate change impacts here in the metro region?” Rosenstiel says. “What role do we as an institution play in ensuring our local communities have a basic understanding of what we already know, and are prepared to make smart decisions for themselves and their families as it relates to the climate futures of the Pacific Northwest?”

CONNECTING IDEAS WITH ACTION

STUDENTS DESERVE credit for PSU’s climate urgency and emphasis on equitable solutions, says Jenny McNamara, campus sustainability director.

As a result of their demands for swifter, systemic change, “We’ve begun to ask ourselves different questions around climate planning and climate action…about who’s impacted and who benefits,” McNamara says. “And it’s because students have this really well-developed understanding of the intrinsic connections between social justice, equity and climate change. That’s been groundbreaking for us in the last few years, and it’s largely student-driven.”  

Serena Dressel has been involved in campus sustainability for seven years, as an undergraduate and now a graduate student, and in leadership at the Student Sustainability Center. Her role in the Greater Portland Sustainability Education Network, which brings together student leaders from throughout the region, adds to her perspective. PSU stands out for the breadth of opportunities for students to plug into climate-related issues, she says.

Students have this really well-developed understanding of the intrinsic connections between social justice, equity and climate change. That’s been groundbreaking for us.

Students can pursue hands-on learning and leadership outside of class through the Student Sustainability Center, which offers a range of opportunities for students to volunteer and create change—from helping maintain campus gardens and bee hives; to reducing waste by hosting clothing exchanges and reuse fairs; to organizing climate-focused events and outreach efforts that promote social justice. They can learn tangible skills via the Living Lab, a program that connects students and faculty with operations staff, who work together on sustainability-related campus projects. Students can also pursue multiple degrees and certificates with a sustainability emphasis, including a minor in climate change science and adaptation—to name just a few examples.

At the same time, Dressel believes PSU could do much more to involve and respond to students who seek swifter action on climate issues. President Percy’s renewed focus and his administration’s support for the second Portland Youth Climate Summit, scheduled for April 23 at PSU, are promising, she says.

“The thing that gives me the most hope is seeing how so many youth right now are so passionate about changing their future and changing the world in a positive way…who really have concrete ideas of what a better world would look like,” she says.

Connecting students across different fields of study and helping them turn their ideas into real-life solutions is the goal of the annual Cleantech Challenge, a program of PSU’s Center for Entrepreneurship.

Over the past decade, the program has brought together more than 150 student teams to create new products and processes that move society toward environmental sustainability. In 2021, the winning team created an ethanol-based fuel cell capable of efficiently generating renewable energy. The team included students from mechanical engineering, biophysics and computer science, as well as Karelly Ramirez Gonzalez, now a Portland State senior pursuing bachelor’s degrees in chemistry and physics.

The program has brought together more than 150 student teams to create new products and processes that move society toward environmental sustainability.

Her Cleantech mentors and peers broadened the way she approaches problems, says Gonzalez, who also conducts research in atmospheric sciences in PSU’s Stable Isotope Lab. The experience revealed connections between her research and the role she can play in preserving a habitable planet, plus the importance of explaining those connections in language that non-scientists can understand.

After she graduates this summer, Gonzalez is contemplating a career as a process engineer, helping businesses lessen the negative impacts of climate change by improving their methods.

Her Cleantech experience showed her “I don’t have to just be the science person,” she says. “I can look at a business and take something that they’re doing and just make it better. I think if I can do that, I’ll have some peace of mind.”

Gonzalez says she will graduate from PSU with a firm understanding of how she personally connects to climate change—and how she can do something about it.

“It’s really showed me that you have to approach things more like: What is the human focus, what is the people focus?” she says. “And that’s how I approach most of my work now—reminding myself that this research that I’m doing is for a bigger purpose and always finding those connections, so that what I’m doing can be relevant and make sense.”