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In recognition of Veteran’s Day, we’ve gone to our archives to reflect on some of the amazing OSU people who’ve combined education with military service. We salute our veterans and value their contributions to both the nation and our university community.

After two tours in Iraq, Marine Sgt. John Dickman is preparing to become an officer through OSU’s Naval ROTC program.

John Dickman signed up for the Marines shortly after 9/11

John Dickman signed up for the U.S. Marine Corps on Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

He was planning to become a Marine anyway — in fact he had been in the Young Marines since age 13 — but 9/11 “sped up my plans by about a year,” he says.

Dickman’s first tour in Iraq was from January through September 2003, and he returned again from February through October 2004.

“The first tour was the actual invasion,” he says. “We worked up to Baghdad during the combat operation and then want to Karbala where we worked on stability and security operations. We built a couple of schools and got the power plant going.”

The second tour was in Al Anbar province on the Syrian border. “That was more of a search-and-destroy mission,” he says. “We were looking for munitions and insurgents. The province was an entry point for terrorists from Syria and other countries.”

Dickman says his experience with Iraqis is that “90 to 95 percent are very happy we’re there and recognize Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant.”

After the second tour, Dickman was accepted into the Marine Enlisted Commissioning Education Program, which brought him to OSU, where he currently is color guard commander for the NROTC unit. The history major from Boise, Idaho, says he chose OSU because he wanted to stay in the Northwest, and only three schools in the area have Naval ROTC, which houses the Marine Corps officer program.

“I thought I might study engineering, so I wanted a school with a strong engineering program, and that was OSU,” he says. Later, he decided to go with his lifelong interest in history and major in that field.

His military background isn’t unique at OSU. More than 325 students are receiving veterans benefits, and it’s estimated that a few dozen of them have served in Iraq.

Dickman wants to be a career Marine officer, probably serving for 30 years. “I want to see the world and be the best citizen I can for the United States of America.”

And after retirement? “I want to start a custom hot rod shop. I like to build custom cars in my spare time.”

OSU Navy ROTC Web site

Marine Enlisted Commissioning Education Program

Young Marines Web site

OSU Department of History

An auto accident caused Holli Kaiser to rethink and refocus her life. Now she’s on her way toward a teaching career.

A car crash forced Holli Kaiser to refocus her life

When Holli Kaiser was attending Medford High School a decade ago, no one — least of all her — would have envisioned her as a teacher. A halfhearted student, bored and restless, she dropped out and took a job at G.I. Joe’s. College was not on her radar.

But in the crumpled metal of a devastating car crash that severed her spinal cord, her life took a paradoxical turn. Her new physical limitations forced her to refocus her life. So began a 10-year intellectual quest that has earned her top academic honors and taken her — in another twist of irony — back to the high school environment she once rejected. This time, she’ll be at the front of the classroom.

Kaiser found in OSU’s Education Double Degree Program the optimal blend of subject-area specialization with a teaching focus. Launched in 2003, the program was designed to attract new talent to the teaching ranks and fill looming workforce gaps, especially in math, science and technology. Kaiser embodies the program’s goal: to draw a broader range of talented candidates into the teaching pool.

“The real problem is that most teacher preparation models create self-imposed structural limitations on who can access the field,” says Sam Stern, dean of the College of Education. “This innovative program takes advantage of the existing talent, knowledge and interests of our current undergraduate students and targets them to the hardest-to-fill teaching jobs where we need them the most.”

Combining teaching with her subject-area major, family and consumer sciences, Kaiser sees her degrees as a chance to give students what was missing in her own high school experience: real-life applications. She thinks she might have stayed in high school if the curriculum had answered that universal question, “Why do I need to know this stuff?” Family and consumer sciences, she says, is all about the real-world skills and understandings that underpin a healthy, satisfying, successful life.

“This discipline runs the gamut, from pre-birth all the way through aging,” says Kaiser, who was the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences student of the year for Oregon in 2005. “As a teacher, I want to make the connection of relevance for my students.”

Education Double Degree Program

Family and Consumer Sciences option

College of Education story on Holli Kaiser

Oregon State 39 – Missouri 38

sunbowl06_p2 — 2006 Sun Bowl champions raise their trophy

Thrilling finishes were nothing new for the Oregon State football team, so it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise when the Beavers pushed into the end zone on a 2-point conversion run with 22.1 seconds left, and No. 24 OSU beat Missouri 39-38 in the Brut Sun Bowl on Dec. 29.

Yvenson Bernard completed the 2-point conversion run after Joe Newton caught a 14-yard touchdown pass as the Beaver racked up another last-minute victory.

The victory was the latest in a series of nail-biters for Oregon State, which won eight of its last nine games, including beating Hawaii and Oregon by a combined five points in the last two regular-season games. The Beavers’ biggest triumph of the regular season was a 33-31 stunner over then-No. 3 Southern California on Oct. 28.

Oregon State (10-4) trailed by 14 points with 12:08 to go before rallying for the Sun Bowl victory. Bernard’s 7-yard reception had cut the gap to seven with 6:02 to go.

Matt Moore threw four touchdown passes and ran for a fifth for Oregon State, which helped produce the second-highest scoring game in the Sun Bowl’s 73-year history. Moore was 5-for-7 for 55 yards on the winning drive, set up after Sammie Stroughter’s 38-yard punt return to the Oregon State 46.

Bernard’s conversion run came after Missouri called a timeout to freeze kicker Alexis Serna before the extra point. Instead, it gave the Beavers time to persuade coach Mike Riley to go for two, and the gamble paid off.

Moore was 31-for-54 for 356 yards and set a school record of 182 passes without an interception before getting picked off by Brandon Massey in the third quarter. Oregon State retained possession on the play after Massey was fumbled after intercepting the ball.

Bernard is now the third leading rusher in OSU history with 2,664 yards rushing. He sits in good company behind Ken Simonton and Steven Jackson.

Moore finished the season with 3,022 yards passing. This is only the fifth time an OSU quarterback has passed for more than 3,000 yards in a season.

OSU football Web site

Brut Sun Bowl Web site

When Keith Frost couldn’t find the quality of barbecue sauce he wanted, he decided to try his own hand at it.

Keith Frost started a business searching for better sauce

Keith Frost, a consummate griller, was frustrated with run-of-the-mill barbeque sauces. Mere “spiced-up versions of ketchup” he complains. So began his quest for the quintessential sauce.

The backyard hobby soon became an obsession. Using fresh Oregon produce — sweet onions from Hermiston, garlic from Klamath Falls, plums from the Willamette Valley — the Rogue Valley native was soon serving up platters of ribs glazed with his Sweet Honey & Garlic BBQ Sauce, salmon marinated in Plum-Ginger Teriyaki Sauce, and T-bones garnished with Not-So-Hot Garlic Pepper Sauce.

“If you create a sauce with patience,” says the OSU graduate student, “you can add layers and complexity to the foods you eat.”

Once he enrolled in OSU’s Austin Entrepreneurship Program, Frost gained the business skills to parlay his culinary discoveries into a start-up. The Southern Oregon Sauce & Spice Co. got a big boost when it won seed funds from the Portland OSU Business Roundtable in 2005.

“Our sales have exceeded expectations,” says Frost, who at 33 is what OSU President Ed Ray calls an OTA (“older than average”) student. “We’re in eight stores, our Web traffic is off the charts, and we’re gaining traction.”

A graduate (summa cum laude) in agriculture with minors in animal science and business, Frost finds the time not only to run his start-up but also to pursue a master’s degree in agricultural education. “Ag-ed is natural fit for me,” says Frost. “My company is focused on ‘value-added agricultural products,’ and the Ag-ed program places special emphasis on leadership development and communication — two skills essential in the classroom or the boardroom.”

Like any talented entrepreneur, Frost is constantly pushing the envelope — expanding the customer base, growing the product line, envisioning the possible. A sugar-free line of sauces is one concept under development. New spices, too, are being rolled out.

“Now we’re looking for an angel investor to help us grow through this next phase,” Frost says. His goal? To sell 10,000 bottles of sauce before 2010.

Austin Entrepreneurship Program

Agricultural Education Program

Tammy Bray enjoys both of the challenges that keep her schedule more than full.

“I enjoy problem solving, building, moving forward and finding new answers, and those go with both of my jobs,” says Tammy Bray, dean of OSU’s College of Health and Human Sciences and a renowned researcher in health-related fields.

One of her areas of interest is exploring how genes and environment relate to human disease. “You can’t do much about the genes you inherited, but you can affect your health with what you eat and how active you are,” she says. “Many foods have antioxidants and anti-inflammatories that help us shape our environment.”

Cancer and diabetes, for example, “are influenced by diet tremendously. You can reduce the risk by 70 to 90 percent by eating right.”

She serves on the nutrition and physiology external advisory council for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, funded by NASA. The group is working to solve many of the human issues related to a long space flight such as a trip to Mars.
Back at OSU, she tries to ensure that students in her college have an opportunity to learn the excitement of research. “We have a great student research program,” she says. “Undergraduates in the college develop a good relationship with faculty and learn problem solving skills by working on research projects.”

Being the dean of a college with strong educational, research and service programs, takes up a lot of her time, but Bray says she loves the challenge it adds to her academic life. “Oregon State excited me when I came here,” she says. “We have great faculty, great people and a great environment. We have people who are on the same platform, working toward the same thing. That’s not true everywhere.”

And in her “spare” time? Every morning she takes a walk around the campus about 5:30, and when she’s at home, nature provides her with pleasure. “I like being able to spend time in my garden. It gives me great excitement to just wander around or to pick vegetables and make something from them. It’s like somebody gave me a gift, and I feel blessed.”

And, of course, the exercise and good nutrition fit in well with her research findings.

Tammy Bray Web page

College of Health and Human Sciences

National Space Biomedical Research Institute

Mary Jo Nye has been honored with a prestigious lifetime achievement award, but that doesn’t mean she’s done.

Mary Jo Nye has received the History of Science Society’s highest award, the 2006 Sarton Medal, for a lifetime of scholarly achievement.

“It’s somewhat daunting to receive a ‘lifetime achievement’ award, since I’m not ready to call it a day,” says Nye, Horning Professor of the Humanities and professor of history at OSU. “However, I know of Sarton medalists who have done even more research and writing after they received the award than before.”

In presenting the medal, Alan Rocke of Case Western Reserve University said “Mary Jo’s work has brilliantly illuminated important areas of the history of modern European and American physics and chemistry, with significant additional contributions to institutional and disciplinary history, philosophy of science, and the social and political relations of science. Her elegant writing is always a joy to read, her research as deep as it is broad and her historical arguments are judicious and convincing.”

Nye has written a number of books, including Molecular Reality: A Perspective on the Scientific Work of Jean Perrin (Elsevier, 1972), Science in the Provinces (University of California Press, 1986), and From Chemical Philosophy to Theoretical Chemistry: Dynamics of Matter and Dynamics of Disciplines, 1800-1950 (University of California Press, 1993). Her latest, Blackett: Physics, War, and Politics in the Twentieth Century (Harvard University Press), came out in 2004.

The History of Science Society is the world’s largest society dedicated to understanding science, technology, medicine, and their interactions with society in historical context. Over 3,000 individual and institutional members across the world support the Society’s mission to foster interest in the history of science and its social and cultural relations.

This isn’t the first time Nye, who came to OSU in 1994 after 25 years at the University of Oklahoma, has been honored with a lifetime achievement award. In 2000, she received the Dexter Award for Outstanding Achievement in the History of Chemistry from the American Chemical Society.

Mary Jo Nye Web page

History of Science Society Web

Previous Sarton Medal winners

Sarton Medal news release

Sammie Stroughter, a third-team Associated Press All-American, and the No. 24 OSU Beavers defeated Missouri 39-38 in the Brut Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas.

Sammie Stroughter and the OSU football team will head to the Sun Bowl

Wide receiver Sammie Stroughter played a big role in OSU’s success in football this season. He set a school record by returning three punts for touchdowns, ranked fifth in the nation and second in the Pac-10 in punt return yards per attempt, and was among the best receivers in the nation with 66 catches for more than 1,200 yards.

But football isn’t his entire life. When he’s off the field, Stroughter loves working with children. He says one of his dreams in life is to run a Boys and Girls Club somewhere. Before that, he says, he wants “to graduate from college with a 3.0 GPA and inspire others to do the same.”

The junior sociology major from Roseville, Calif., says his mother, Andrea Brown, is his biggest hero “for being both my mom and dad. I’ve never seen someone work so hard in my life.”

He knows the value of college to his future, and he says the most unforgettable moment of his life was “finding out I had received a scholarship for college. The look on my mother’s face was priceless, knowing that I was the first person in my family to go to college.”

Although the Beavers finished third in the Pac-10 to earn a spot in the Brut Sun Bowl this season, that success wasn’t a sure thing early on. When the Beavers lost three of their first five football games, a winning season and a bowl game looked like a long shot.

Now, with eight wins in their final nine games, including the Sun Bowl victory and thrilling last-minute victories over Rose-Bowl-bound USC, Oregon and Hawaii, the Beavers are ranked in the top 25 nationally.

“I’m really proud of the football team and have been all year long,” OSU head coach Mike Riley said after the Sun Bowl victory. “It was just another example of their heart, their character and their determination.”

OSU football Web site

William Oefelein takes his love of exploration to the International Space Station as the pilot of December’s Discovery mission.

Since it went into orbit in 1998, the International Space Station has been running on a temporary electrical system, basically a generator in outer space.

But with the installation of two new electricity-generating solar array panels in September, all of the pieces are in place for the permanent electrical system to take over. That leaves rewiring the entire station to hook it up to the new system.

That will be the task of astronauts on the Space Shuttle Discovery, and included among them is William Oefelein, who received his electrical engineering degree from OSU in 1988 before becoming a pilot in the U.S. Navy and later an astronaut.

Oefelein, called “Billy-O” by his fellow astronauts, will be piloting the spacecraft for the mission during which he and the seven-member crew will reconfigure the electrical system and add a truss segment that will accommodate more solar arrays.

“This will allow us to gain more power in order to do more science,” Oefelein says. “The mission will be full of challenges, but a lot of fun.”

As Discovery’s pilot, Oefelein will undock Discovery from the space station, coordinate the mission’s three spacewalks and use the shuttle’s robotic arm to inspect for any damage. He is making his first flight in space. “I’m really looking forward to wearing a lot of hats,” he says.

Becoming an astronaut wasn’t always a goal. “As a kid, I always liked math and science,” he says. “I never really wanted to become an astronaut; I just wanted to fly airplanes and explore.”

In the Navy, he became a test pilot, and the idea of becoming an astronaut grew on him. He applied and was selected by NASA in June 1998. He had been scheduled to make his first shuttle trip in 2003, but the Columbia disaster during reentry in February of that year put the program on hold. Now shuttles are flying again and Oefelein’s turn has come.

Oefelein is the second OSU alumnus to fly in the shuttle program, following Donald Petit, who was on the space station in 1998 and had to remain there for nearly six months when the program was shut down. Finally he returned safely to Earth aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Ron Adams, dean of engineering at Oregon State, says having two alumni as shuttle astronauts is an honor for the university. “I’m proud to be associated with an engineering program that counts among its ranks such stellar individuals as Bill Oefelein and Don Pettit. Their work inspires young people to pursue careers in engineering, which helps keep America on the cutting edge of innovation.”

NASA site for Discovery mission

NASA interview with William Oefelein

OSU College of Engineering

Don Petit space flight story

Jackie Balzer spends a lot of her day talking to students, listening to their concerns and finding ways to promote their success.

Jackie balzer is finding ways to promote student success

When you see Jackie Balzer just about anywhere on campus, you’ll probably see students chatting informally with her, clearly feeling comfortable in the company of the Dean of Student Life.

There isn’t a better illustration of the connection OSU students have with Balzer than this. She is there when they need her. She says it’s an important part of her job to help students when they’re having difficulties.

“I feel honored to work in an environment that is about preparing students to find their potential,” Balzer says. “OSU students have lives outside the classroom as well as in the classroom, and I want them to flourish wherever they are.”

She supports students’ intellectual, ethical, social, and leadership development and works to stimulate a dynamic and engaging student life. “I enjoy the opportunity to engage with students and help them meet their potential,” Balzer says.

“It really floats my boat when I go to commencement and see their success or when they call back after settling into a career and say how much OSU helped them,” she says.

Balzer’s commitment to student success was recognized earlier this year when she received the McKay-Wight award from the OSU chapter of Phi Delta Theta. The award is given annually to a faculty or staff member who makes a difference in the lives of students.

Balzer is well prepared for her job. Her undergraduate degree is in sociology, and she has a master of education degree in College Student Services Administration and a doctorate in Community College Leadership, both from OSU’s College of Education.

Larry Roper, vice provost for student affairs, says Balzer is ideal for the job. “I think she is wonderful,” Roper says. “Jackie loves this community and the students. It is definitely reflected in her work.”

Dean of Student Life Web site

College of Education Web site

Alex Johnson is taking his master of public policy degree to Washington, D.C., as a Fellow for the Congressional Black Caucus.

Alex Johnson is spending the next nine months in the nation’s capital as one of seven Congressional Fellows for the Congressional Black Caucus. He sees it as an opportunity to get more experience in his areas of interest. And it may even be training for possible future political involvement.

“I expect to look at environmental and governmental reform issues,” says Alex, who will be working with the office of Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida. “This should synthesize my interest in public policy and my interest in the environment.”

Alex, who received his bachelor’s degree in natural resources from OSU in 2004 and his master’s this past June, started his college career looking for ways to involve people of color in environmental issues. “Later I became interested in access issues and got involved in student government,” he says.

That led to a strong interest in politics, “and I became really excited about opportunities in graduate school.” He looked around at other schools but decided to stay at OSU because he wanted to see some of the issues he had been involved in through to completion.

“I looked at the master of public policy program, and I’m glad I did it,” he says. The program opened doors to a number of opportunities, including a trip to Bulgaria for a research project on environmental science and getting his first journal article published, with Brent Steel, director of the MPP program.

Because of his activism and his involvement with MPP and OSU’s Community and Diversity Office, Alex was asked by Corvallis City Council members to review the city charter with an eye toward diversity and inclusion, a process that involved numerous meetings and public discussions and resulted in a measure that will be on the November ballot.

As he thinks about his future, Alex acknowledges that there may be opportunities for him in the capital, “but I’m hoping to make it back out to the Northwest.” And then? “I might even run for office eventually.”

Congressional Black Caucus Web site

Master of Public Policy program Web site

Office of Community and Diversity

OSU Spotlight

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Author Archives: andrewsc

About andrewsc

Answering the call

Dropout to high school teacher

Congratulations Beavs! Sun Bowl Champs

Cooking up a new business

Researcher, administrator and nature lover

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Goin’ Bowling

A challenge in space

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