OSU People and Programs « OSU Spotlight

Terry Reese is helping libraries move into the electronic age — and winning awards for it.

Terry Reese is the OSU Libraries digital production unit head

When OSU’s Terry Reese was named a Mover & Shaker by Library Journal, was featured in the magazine, and then picked up a major award from the American Library Association, people in the library profession weren’t particularly surprised.

That’s because Reese, the OSU Libraries digital production unit head, is known throughout the library world for his skills in developing applications that save staff time in performing tasks within a library’s online catalogs and services.

His Open Source applications are freely available to any library and are used in libraries worldwide. Most notable is his improvement upon the Library of Congress’s MARC editing system, which has more than 50,000 users.

“I do a lot of work with other libraries,” Reese says. “I write software that they use and then I end up doing a lot of consulting with them on projects they’re using the software for.” It’s not unusual for him to get 100 questions in a week from his various program users.

He offers consultant work pro-bono as a service to the library community, and he is frequently called upon to make presentations at various library and information technology meetings.

Last summer he worked with librarians in Lahore, Pakistan, to get their first library conference set up, and he has worked with UNICEF on a project in Africa. “A hospital in a small village in Kenya had a medical library that needed to be migrated to a new system,” he says. “We had to send data back and forth for a half year but we finally got it done.”

Reese is now working on building a metasearch program to bring all library resources into a single interface. “We have commercial software for that, but it doesn’t work as well as we’d like,” he says.

And, with all the demands on his time, he still finds time to bicycle to work each day from his home in Independence, Ore., 25 miles from the campus.

Terry Reese Web page

Library Journal 2005 Movers & Shakers awards

Library Journal article about Terry Reese

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

Michael Campana wants OSU’s new Institute for Water and Watersheds to lead the way in resolving Oregon’s water problems.

Michael Campana will serve as the director of the Insitute for Water and Watersheds

Despite its reputation for abundant rain, Oregon faces a myriad of water-related challenges, from water rights issues in the Klamath basin to pollution concerns in the Willamette River.

To coordinate the far-flung water research efforts, involving 80 faculty members in six colleges, the university has established the OSU Institute for Water and Watersheds.

The institute involves a statewide network of resources, including research laboratories, classrooms, Extension offices and experiment stations, which will allow OSU scientists to connect with decision makers at state, federal and local levels to develop solutions to water problems.

A multidisciplinary team of researchers helped build the water initiative into reality, and now it is ready to take the next step forward with the hiring of Michael Campana, a hydrogeologist and international expert on complex water management issues, as the first director of the institute.

Campana says he hopes to focus the institute’s efforts on large, multidisciplinary, long-term projects and significantly increase external funding for water research activities at the university.

“Oregon is facing a variety of water and environmental problems,” he says. “OSU’s water expertise must be brought to bear in solving these problems, and the Institute for Water and Watersheds needs to reach a point where it is the first organization Oregonians think of when water issues arise.”

The institute is one of six strategic initiatives for investment that will bring OSU new centers for research and outreach, outstanding faculty and students, and scholarship, fellowship, internship and educational opportunities.

The other initiatives are:

A Center for Healthy Aging Research, linking individuals, families and environments
Computational and genome biology
Ecosystem informatics, involving mathematics, computer science and ecology
Subsurface biosphere education and research
Sustainable rural communities

Institute for Water and Watersheds website

Institute for Water and Watersheds history and goals

Michael Campana hiring news release

OSU’s six strategic initiatives

Kurt Peters has fostered educational opportunities for Native Americans and established close ties between OSU and Oregon’s Native American communities.

Kurt Peters helped create the Department of Ethnic Studies at Oregon State

Kurt Peters is the son of a Blackfoot-German father and a Pohatan-Scottish-Irish mother. He grew up in Oklahoma among Sac, Fox, Pawnee and Otoe communities.

Then he spent 22 years as a financial planner for a national investment company. Eventually though, he found himself longing for a return to his roots.

So he earned a doctorate and decided to find an academic career that involved working with Native American communities.

About that time, Oregon State was creating its Department of Ethnic Studies, and in 1996 Peters became one of the first two faculty members in the department.

When Peters arrived, OSU had regular contact with only one or two of the nine federally recognized tribes in Oregon. Today, the university has educational, cultural, and economic ties with all of them.

Peters has been involved in establishing the Native American Collaborative Institute, which provides a focal point for building tribal relationships, and is active in a proposed Virtual Tribal College that will facilitate OSU attendance by Oregon Native Americans through the Extended Campus program.

Peters has been chosen as a member of the College of Liberal Arts Master Teachers program, which is designed to use experienced and talented faculty to teach first-year discovery courses. He also is active in teaching ethnic studies courses and conducts research on the 20th century Native American experience and Native American labor.

He teaches courses for and with tribes and has taken his ethnic studies classes to tribal communities.

“A lot of the students have never been to a tribal community, and what they learn is that Native American people have the same interests, hopes, and aspirations of any other community — a good clean place to live, a healthy environment, a relevant education and financial security,” he says.

“The only difference is that those desires are tempered by cultural matters that have been molded by a history and culture that are a little different than the one with which most students are familiar.”

Kurt Peters Ethnic Studies page

Native American Collaborative Institute website

Ethnic Studies home page

Football players Mike Hass and Alexis Serna have been honored as the best players in the country at their positions.

Oregon State University wide receiver Mike Hass and placekicker Alexis Serna have been honored as the best players in the country at their positions.

Walk-ons Mike Hass and Aleixis Serna were honored recently

Both players, who started as walk-ons (non-scholarship players) at OSU, received their awards at the College Football Awards Show on Thursday, Dec. 8, at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. Hass, a senior majoring in civil engineering, won the Biletnikoff Award as the nation’s top wide receiver, beating out USC’s Dwayne Jarrett and Notre Dame’s Jeff Samardzija.

Hass, who was also named to the Walter Camp All-America team that same day, was the nation’s leading receiver this season with an average of 139.3 yards a game, despite being sometimes double- and triple-teamed. He set a Pacific-10 Conference record with 1,532 receiving yards this season and owns the conference mark for yards in a single game (293 yards at Boise State in 2004).

A former star at Jesuit High School in Portland, Hass is OSU’s all-time leading receiver and ranks second all-time in the Pac-10 with 3,924 yards. He holds OSU records for career receptions (220) and single-season receptions (90) and shares the touchdown catches record of 20 with James Newson.

Hass is the only receiver in Pac-10 history with three 1,000-yard seasons.

Serna, a sophomore majoring in history, received the Lou Groza Award, given to the nation’s best placekicker. Serna was selected over Mason Crosby of Colorado and Jad Dean of Clemson.

Serna made 23 of 28 field goals this season and connected on all of his 32 extra-point attempts. He has made 61 consecutive extra points going back to the 2004 season. Serna is the active NCAA career percentage leader at 83.3. He tied the Pac-10 Conference record with six field goals on six attempts in an 18-10 victory over the University of Washington in November.

He was recently named to the American Football Coaches Association All-America Team.

Maret Traber is trying to set the record straight about the role of vitamin E.

Maret Traber is setting the record straight on Vitamin E

You’ve undoubtedly heard the claims.

“Everyone needs a vitamin E supplement.”

“Vitamin E has no value in protecting people from disease.”

“We get all the vitamin E we need in a normal diet.”

Maret Traber, a scientist in OSU’s Linus Pauling Institute who has studied the vitamin most of her professional life, says research so far just scratches the surface about how the body absorbs vitamin E, what forms should be used, how they interact with the immune system and what role they play in cancer prevention.

“A lot of people out there make all kinds of wild claims about the value of vitamin E without having a solid scientific basis for what they say,” according to Traber.

With more than 170 scientific publications, including over 100 peer-reviewed articles, Traber is one of the world’s leading experts on vitamin E.

She stepped into the middle of the controversy when she disputed the recent claims of a 10-year study of women over 45 who took vitamin E. The scientists conducting the study reported that vitamin E was ineffective at preventing heart disease.

“I was so surprised when I read the study that they didn’t emphasize what I considered the most exciting finding in 10 years of vitamin E research,” Traber says. “The study shows that women over 65 years old had a 24 percent reduction in major coronary vascular events, a 34 percent reduction in heart attacks, and a 49 percent reduction in cardiovascular deaths.”

So while some say vitamin E could be dangerous and others claim it’s a panacea, Traber says more work needs to be done.

“We owe it to the public to do good research on these issues, find out the truth and then be honest about it. The potential value of vitamin E is just so important, we have to find out what the facts are.”

Maret Traber’s Linus Pauling Institute web page

Maret Traber’s College of Health and Human Sciences page

Results of Traber’s study of vitamin E and smoking

Linus Pauling Institute website

Through OSU’s Austin Entrepreneurship Program, Dylan Boye and Blake Heiss are making their business dream come true.

Dylan and Blake are in business thanks to the Austin Entrepreneurship Program

Dylan Boye and Blake Heiss want to be filmmakers, and they’re finding OSU an ideal place to develop that dream. The juniors from Brookings, Oregon, both photography majors, have been friends since 5th grade and, because of their similar goals, went into business together in the 7th grade.

At first, most of the business was transferring old movies to DVDs. “It originally was an excuse to make money and get camera equipment to work with,” Blake says.

Both came to OSU, but during their first year they lived in separate residence halls, and the business languished. This past year, however, the Austin Entrepreneurship Program residential program in Weatherford Hall was opened, and they moved in together.

“At Weatherford, with faculty living in and checking on how things are going, that keeps the idea going, and it really helps,” Dylan says. “Looking at how we did compared to the previous year shows how much it helped. The faculty and students in Weatherford were really helpful in getting the business back off the ground.” Now the two are doing what they want to do.

“We’ve pretty much abandoned transferring movies,” Dylan says. “Now we’re more into shooting and production. We made a presentation video for alumni awards night, and we have a fair amount of other business.”

How do they work together? “It would be easy if we always thought the same, but we don’t,” Blake says. “That causes ‘creative abrasion.’ It comes out in our work and improves it, I think.”

And their friendship? “Having a business makes a friendship different, but we’re still good friends,” says Dylan.

Austin Entrepreneurship Program

Weatherford Hall

Weatherford Hall virtual tour

An OSU scientist’s trip to the coast inspired a new adhesive that may revolutionize the wood products industry.

Kaichang Li developed a wood glue based on mussels

One day a few years ago, Kaichang Li was at the Oregon Coast harvesting mussels. When the day was over, in addition to mussels, he returned to Corvallis with questions that led to development of an environmentally friendly wood glue.

Li, an associate professor in Wood Science and Engineering in the College of Forestry at OSU, noticed during his visit to the coast how mussels clung tenaciously to rocks despite being pounded almost continuously by ocean waves.

“I was amazed at the ability of these small mollusks to attach themselves so strongly to rocks,” Li says. “Thinking about it, I didn’t know of any other type of adhesive that could work this well in water and withstand so much force.”

The protein in the small threads the mussel uses to attach itself is an exceptional adhesive, but it’s not readily available. In trying to identify a protein that could be adapted for this purpose, Li had another inspiration–while eating tofu. Soy beans, from which tofu is made, “are a crop that’s abundantly produced in the U.S. and has a very high content of protein,” Li says.

But soy protein lacks the unique amino acid that provides adhesive properties. So his research group went to work and was able to add these amino acids to soy protein, making it work like a mussel-protein adhesive. They’ve also developed other strong and water-resistant adhesives from renewable natural materials using the mussel protein as a model.

Their discoveries have resulted in three pending patents and should lead to a wide range of new products. The research work also has resulted in 11 papers in journals such as Macromolecular Rapid Communications and Journal of Adhesion Science and Technology.

One of the new adhesives is cost-competitive with a commonly used urea-formaldehyde resin, researchers say, but it doesn’t use formaldehyde or other toxic chemicals. Formaldehyde, which has been used to make wood composites since the 1950s, has been shown to be a human carcinogen, and in some circumstances it may be a cause of “sick building syndrome” when used in building products.

In addition to the environmental advantage, the new adhesives have superior strength and water resistance. “The plywood we make with this adhesive can be boiled for several hours and the adhesive holds as strong as ever,” Li said. “Regular plywood bonded with urea-formaldehyde resins could never do that.”

Kaichang Li home page

OSU news release on development of new adhesive

Columbia Forest Products announces use of new adhesive in its products

OSU Department of Wood Science and Engineering

OSU College of Forestry website

OSU’s Education Double Degree is allowing Evan Johnson to take advantage of his love for computers and for teaching.

Evan Johnson has a love for computers and teaching

“Growing up in the computer generation, I was always interested in computers,” says Evan Johnson, an OSU senior from Oregon City. “I knew it was the future and I wanted to be in on it.”

But he also had the feeling that he’d like to teach. “Playing basketball in high school, people told me I’d be a good coach. Teaching people was something I liked.”

He got a taste of teaching when he volunteered to tutor students at Corvallis High School last year. “It was supposed to be for a term, but I liked it so much I decided to stay with it for a full year.”

That caused the computer engineering major to enter OSU’s Education Double Degree program, which allows students to get two degrees–one in their primary field and one in education when they graduate.

Evan now plans to teach high school mathematics. “I hope I can put both majors to work,” he says. “As a computer engineer, I can think of about a thousand reasons students need to learn math. And I could also teach technology education.”

He hopes to make an impact on his students. “One of my personal goals is to be a motivator–an encourager–that’s important,” he says. “Students can’t carry all of their books home, and they want to take books from classes they enjoy. I want them to take math books home.”

He recently was awarded a $2,500 College of Education scholarship for his final year of school. “That will really help,” he says.

But engineering is still part of Evan’s life. He was part of a team that took second place in OSU’s Engineering Expo this spring, developing a cell phone-car alarm interface that allows users to arm and disarm their alarm by phone.

Education Double Degree

College of Education

College of Engineering

Pua McBride became involved in OSU’s Residence Hall Association to keep busy and to try to help other Hawaiian students adjust.

Pua McBride feels at home despite being 2,00 miles away from it

Pua McBride is more than 2,500 miles away from her hometown on Hawaii’s Big Island, but she feels right at home in her OSU residence hall. “I know everyone and am friends with everyone in my hall,” Pua says. “In that respect it’s just like in Hawaii–a small community where everyone takes care of everyone else.”

Pua learned about Oregon State from her high school English teacher, an OSU graduate. Besides the strong programs in her areas of interest, business and education, Pua chose OSU because of the large Hawaiian population. “It made me feel comfortable that I’d be part of that community,” she says.

“I came to OSU with the dream of being a teacher,” Pua says. “As a child of two deaf parents, I learned sign language at a young age and then taught both of my brothers. At OSU I have had the opportunity to teach sign language to other students as a teaching assistant in the Speech Communication 379 (Sign Language) class.”

Realizing that being far from the comforts of home can often be hard for Hawaiian students, Pua decided to run for office in Finley Hall. She thought that if she could design programs of interest to Hawaiian students they would be more likely to be active in their residence hall and it would help keep them from becoming homesick.

“I know that it’s important to be involved and active,” she says. “I have been so busy that I haven’t had the time to be homesick.”

As her first year progressed Pua took on more responsibility, becoming active in the Residence Hall Association, serving as the National Communications chair and the Educational Programs Activities chair. She had the opportunity to attend two national leadership conferences through RHA and plans to continue this year as the Fundraising/Marketing Communications chair.

Hui-O-Hawaii website

University Housing & Dining Services

Residence Hall Association

OSU Spotlight

The people and stories of Oregon State University

Category Archives: OSU People and Programs

A “Mover & Shaker”

Watching forests breathe

Ready to tackle water issues

Connecting Oregon cultures

From walk-ons to superstars

In the middle of the controversy

Developing their dream

A glue with “mussel” power

Combining education and engineering

Making herself at home

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