Energy and Sustainability « OSU Spotlight

Falkner Glacier — OSU's Kelly Falkner, who is soon heading to NSF, had a glacier named after her.

Oregon State University oceanographer Kelly Falkner’s work has taken her all the way to the North Pole and back, and her work has been so impactful that she even has a glacier named after her. But now Falkner is taking on a new challenge as she leaves the university to take a leadership position with the National Science Foundation, where she will be the new deputy head of the Office of Polar Programs.

A professor in OSU’s College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Falkner will begin her new role with NSF on Jan. 3, and joins a long list of other OSU faculty members who have been elevated to important government leadership positions. “It wasn’t an easy decision, because I’ve had a great career at OSU and I’ll miss my excellent colleagues, the students, and the supportive staff here,” Falkner said. “But I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to take my polar interests into broader community service.”

In 2007, she took a two-year leave from OSU to serve as the agency’s first program director for integrated Antarctic research. Her stint was so successful, her NSF colleagues named a glacier after her. “Falkner Glacier” is an east-flowing valley glacier stretching four miles long through the Mountaineer Range in Victoria Land. In her new role, Falkner will join the NSF Office of Polar Programs, which manages and initiates the agency’s funding for basic research and operational support in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. The office supports individual investigators, as well as research teams and United States participation in multi-national projects.

Falkner isn’t the only OSU professor who has earned a leadership position with a federal agency. Zoologist Jane Lubchenco was named administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last year. Among other OSU professors in leadership positions are:

Mark Abbott, dean of the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences (COAS) is a member of the National Science Board;

Michael Freilich, a COAS professor, is director of the Earth Sciences Division at NASA;

Timothy J. Cowles, COAS professor, is program director for the Ocean Observatories Initiative, the National Science Foundation’s signature research project on climate change;

Jim McManus, COAS professor, recently served as associate program director of the chemical oceanography program at the National Science Foundation;
Mark Hixon, a professor of marine biology, chaired the federal advisory committee that helped produce the framework for the national system of marine protected areas;
Geosciences professor Peter Clark and Philip Mote, who directs the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at OSU, have been named lead authors for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report. It will be the much-anticipated follow-up to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which garnered a share of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007;
Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine Cyril Clarke is a member of the USDA’s National Agricultural Research, Extension, Education, and Economics Advisory Board.
COAS professor Adam Schultz spent some time on loan to the NSF, where he served as program director for Marine Geology and Geophysics, overseeing the Ridge 2000 program, which explored deep-ocean ridges.

The stellar work our faculty does goes a long way to attracting high-achieving students to Oregon State. University Honors College sophomore Sam Kelly-Quattrochi doesn’t know what his major will be, but was initially impressed by the quality of OSU’s marine biology program, and the research opportunities available to undergraduate students at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center.

Honors College sophomore Emily Pickering became the first freshman at OSU to accompany Mark Hixon and his crew to Lee Stocking Island, where she helped survey lionfish and created her ownproject on lionfish prey preference and digestion. Pickering also blogged about her experiences there.

Master’s student Cody Beedlow, following in the footsteps of his adviser, Peter Clark, is providing key data on glacial retreat in Oregon. Every month in the spring and summer, Beedlow treks to Collier with 65 pounds of equipment in tow and the intention to measure Collier’s glacial melt over time. Over the past year, he’s found that the glacier has decreased by more than 20 percent from its size in the late 1980s. He hopes that when he graduates, someone else takes on the work he’s doing to measure Collier.

OSU alums also go on to make a difference in government. Marine resource management alum Laura Anderson owns and operates the popular Local Ocean, a fish market and restaurant in Newport, Ore. It’s the kind of place where people frequently leave feeling like they’ve had the best seafood in their lives. But Anderson also keeps a keen eye on issues revolving around healthy fisheries. She volunteers as an advocate for the fishing industry in Oregon and beyond, making trips to Washington, D.C. to testify before Congress.

Alum Gail Kimbell, who holds a master degree in forest engineering from the OSU College of Forestry, was named the first woman to lead the U.S. Forest Service. After graduating from OSU with an M.F. in forest engineering in 1982, Kimbell began her career in the federal government as a forester with the Bureau of Land Management in Medford, Ore. Kimbell held the position until last year.

Ever since Oregon State University’s earliest days, we have been dedicated to providing an excellent education for our students. Being Oregon’s land grant university means keeping a tradition of service – and our faculty and students embody that tradition. Our faculty make themselves accessible to our students, and our students are dedicated to making the world a better place.

“Recently I attended a national student success conference on the East Coast. Another attendee from a large research university approached me and said, ‘You’re so fortunate to be at OSU. We’ve been admiring from afar what a strong student-centered campus you have,'” says Susie Brubaker-Cole, associate provost for academic success and engagement and director of advising at Oregon State. “I told her, ‘I know, I feel very fortunate to work with faculty who are so committed to their students.”

OSU undergraduates can involve themselves in research with top-ranking faculty and utilize facilities that few universities in the world can offer, including the university’s own research forests, an ocean-going ship, the nation’s most sophisticated tsunami wave basin, a marine science laboratory at the coast, a nuclear reactor, test fields for experimental crops, a wine institute and beer brewing facility, and the Linus Pauling Institute for the study of nutrition and health.

Here are just a few ways our diverse students are taking advantage of opportunities they can take into the world beyond Oregon State.

A Personal Connection

Christine Kelly and Kelsey Childress — Chemical engineering professor Christine Kelly and student Kelsey Childres

Chemical engineering professor Christine Kelly is more than just a mentor in the lab, where she likes to make sure that her undergraduates are contributing real data to research. For Kelly, it’s important to be a support system for her students. “”It’s great to be able to come and hang out on Christine’s couch after a tough day,” says Kelsey Childress, a University Honors College student whose experience in Kelly’s lab has made her think about going to graduate school.

California sophomore Sam Kelly-Quattrocchi was hooked on Oregon State after his campus visit. Not only was the campus beautiful, the University Honors College student got ample attention from an Oregon State adviser. “People here took a genuine interest in me,” he says. “It was something that other schools didn’t do.” Kelly also recognized the great marine biology program at Oregon State, as well as the Hatfield Marine Science Center, which provides research and internship opportunities for undergraduates.

Opportunities for real impact

Oregon State is one of 12 universities around the country selected by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to create an undergraduate genomics lab for freshmen and sophomore students that specifically researches and catalogues phage DNA. This three-year genome research project provides undergraduates with the opportunity to do research that is published and could be used by other researchers to develop treatments for tuberculosis. “This is one of the first national projects to change the way undergraduates experience biology labs,” says co-instructor Barbara Taylor, a zoology professor.

Water restoration on the Metolius — Students enrolled in a restoration field course collect stream macro-invertebrates with Matt Shinderman, top, and Instructor Karen Allen, lower right

Students in natural resources instructor Matt Shinderman’s classes have contributed directly to restoration work on a tributary of Central Oregon’s Metolius River. Shinderman and co-instructors Matt Orr and Karen Allen and their students surveyed aquatic insects, or macro-invertebrates, to determine how the ecosystem was responding to the tributary’s being restored – via backhoe and dump truck – to its original shape. The group collected insects and took them back to the lab to get a sense of how the insects were faring. The results of their study provided a model that agencies can use for restoration work throughout the region.

2009 civil engineering graduate Erika McQuillen felt prepared to enter the workforce from her Oregon State coursework alone. But what really gave her an edge was getting out of the classroom. “OSU encouraged us to get internships and real work experience,” she says. And McQuillen did. She had internships with Hoffman Construction in Portland, Ore., a company dedicated to sustainable building techniques. Now, McQuillen works for Hoffman full-time.

Imagine a dry, ancient place that is known mostly for its modern-day political strife and bloodshed. Imagine several sources of water — all precious and needed — that ignore political boundaries. Then imagine going there to learn how people manage these issues in their day-to-day lives. That’s what a group of 19 Oregon State University students did last year. They traveled through Israel and Palestine under the guidance of renowned water conflict expert and Oregon State professor Aaron Wolf. They studied the geography and geology of the Middle East’s water supply and sources, as well as how those factors affect cities, agriculture and, ultimately, politics. “It felt natural to take the students there to look at these separate issues, and then look at them together,” says Wolf.

Follow OSU in the 2008 North American Solar Car Challenge.

Designing and building a solar-powered car fit to take on the North American Solar Challenge took OSU Solar Vehicle Team captains and College of Engineering doctoral students Kathy Van Wormer and Hai-Yue Han three years of work and $50,000. They also enlisted the help of nearly two dozen team members to make sure that Rain Dancer, which is powered by more than 400 solar cells and weighs 600 pounds, was competition-ready.

But that was only the beginning of their trip.

The North American Solar Challenge, in which Van Wormer, Han and 10 of their teammates are currently participating, is a 2,400-mile race from Dallas, Texas to Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It’s the longest solar power race in the world, beating out the World Solar Challenge by almost 500 miles. OSU’s team is racing with 15 others from universities all over the United States and Canada, including the University of Michigan, Northwestern University, Queens University and the University of Kentucky. “Everyone here is fantastic. The atmosphere is so helpful,” says Van Wormer. “It’s the best time I’ve ever had. We are definitely doing this again.”

Rain Dancer’s solar array only outputs around 1.5 hp during the brightest time of the day, forcing it to drive more than 2,000 miles with less power than a hairdryer.

Follow the OSU Solar Vehicle team’s progress in the race on their blog.

Barbara Bond and other OSU researchers are taking a multidisciplinary approach to studying forest ecosystems.

Barbara Bond is looking at forest ecology in a new way

Throughout her career, Barbara Bond has taken a multidisciplinary approach to studying forests. And her current research, which looks at forest ecology in a new way, is no different.

Participants include a forest scientist, oceanographer, atmospheric scientist, and soil scientist.

Using a sophisticated array of electronic sensors in the H.J. Andrews Forest near Eugene, the researchers are literally watching the forest breathe, the plants interact with and feed the soil microbes, and rivers of air pour up and down slopes-all in ways never before understood.

Doing this kind of research in a forest with mountainous terrain is unusual. Historically, says Bond, who is the first holder of the Ruth H. Spaniol Chair of Renewable Resources at OSU, flat terrain has been an easier, less costly environment in which to do experiments, and much of the science about forest processes is based on data from such areas. Most research also has been done by people from individual disciplines, looking at small pieces of the puzzle.

“What we need to do now is look at where we really grow most of our trees, which is in mountainous terrain,” Bond says. “And we need to bring together the ecosystem scientists, the atmospheric experts, the engineers and soil scientists, and try to put all the pieces back together to really understand how the whole system works.”

All of this will be made easier in coming years, thanks to a new $1.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation that will allow placement of a new generation of battery-free, interactive sensors over a much larger area to enhance the data stream coming from the forest into the OSU laboratories.

Barbara Bond web home page

OSU President’s Report feature (PDF format)

News release on Bond’s research project

News release on Bond’s appointment to Spaniol Chair

OSU is leading an international consortium seeking to help people in sub-Saharan Africa improve their lives.

McNamara is the administrative project director for this program

The problems are significant but so are the rewards as Oregon State University leads an American and African coalition in an effort to improve the lives of rural people in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Rural Livelihoods Consortium has received $2.35 million from the United States Agency for International Development to find ways to revitalize the southern African research network while working to improve and diversify rural livelihoods, beginning in the Chinyanja Triangle regions of Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique.

“It’s a daunting challenge,” says Marion McNamara, administrative project director, “because they have a lack of infrastructure such as roads and communications, the schools are poorly funded and unreachable for some people, and the horrible impact of HIV/AIDS affects the productive ability of the family and the community.”

The consortium is targeting small farmers who are ready to move from subsistence to small-scale commercial agriculture, along with vulnerable households, including those headed by females and those affected by HIV/AIDS.

Because of the diverse issues involved, the consortium relies on multidisciplinary teams to develop interventions that will improve the quality of life. Other U.S. partners in the effort are Pennsylvania State University, Michigan State University, Tennessee State University, and Washington State University.

The universities are working with field-based partners in Africa to improve the profitability of farming through such methods as low-input irrigation systems, improved forage for dairy cows and technologies to add value to raw products.

“As with any development project, you want to work yourself out of a job,” McNamara says. “If we’re really successful, the people will have enough food to eat, be able to educate their children, and envision a satisfying future for themselves.”

OSU International programs website

The Kelley Engineering Center is the new home for the rapidly growing School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Kelley Engineering is LEED Gold Certified

It features wireless classrooms, “plug-and-learn” alcoves, flexible learning laboratories, and many high-tech innovations, along with office clusters and common areas that foster communication.

But it also offers an array of “green” features, including an atrium, glass-walled conference rooms, and dozens of windows designed to take advantage of sunlight for light and heat.

In fact, the four-story, 153,000-square-foot Kelley Engineering Center, new home of OSU’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, is on track to receive a “Gold” certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, which will make it the greenest academic engineering building in the nation.

OSU is the 23rd largest engineering school in the U.S., and, according to engineering dean Ron Adams, “as we continue to build a nationally ranked program, we will continue to grow. The timing for the new building could not be better.”

The $45-million building was funded by a $20-million gift from OSU engineering alumnus Martin Kelley, $20 million in public funds authorized by the Oregon legislature, and $5 million in other donations.

Adams says the new facility will help the College of Engineering in its efforts to be ranked among the top 25 in the country. “Today, innovation is all about collaboration, teamwork, and new ideas,” Adams says. “This new building is designed to help spark those ideas by ensuring that the people inside connect.”

To encourage connection, labs in the new building are not dedicated to individual faculty members. Instead, each lab is the central element of a “research-learning suite” surrounded by faculty and graduate student offices and assigned to a specific research project. In addition, the building contains a centrally located e-café where faculty, staff, students, and industry partners can gather to share ideas.

The building was designed by the Portland architectural firm of Yost Grube Hall and built by Baugh/Skansa of Portland. It features six ceiling-suspended kinetic aluminum sculptures by Tim Prentice, a wall-mounted sculpture of commercial safety reflectors by Dick Elliot, and a 20-foot-tall stainless steel sculpture by Po Shu Wang in the exterior plaza.

A grand opening ceremony will be held during Homecoming, October 29 at 10 a.m. Jen-Hsun Huang, a 1984 engineering graduate and co-founder of nVIDIA, one of the most successful high-tech companies in the world, is the keynote speaker. The day’s activities, called “A Home for Innovation,” feature departmental gatherings throughout the College of Engineering in addition to the building dedication.

Information about Kelley Engineering Center

Photos of the completed building

Kelley Engineering Center animated tour

“Green” characteristics of Kelley Engineering Center

School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science website

College of Engineering website