Portland State University - History

History

Portland State University was established as the Vanport Extension Center in June 1946 to satisfy the demand for higher education in Portland for returning World War II veterans, taking advantage of the G.I. Bill. The G.I. Bill was passed in 1944 to provide college, high school or vocational education for returning World War II veterans, as well as one year of unemployment compensation. Classes were held in the Vanport Junior High School. This first summer session had 221 students, and tuition and fees were $50. Over 1,410 students registered for the 1946 fall term, which was delayed until October 7, 1946 due to a lack of space. Since the population in Vanport City, Oregon was decreasing after World War II, the extension center was able to use buildings created for other purposes: two childcare centers, a recreation building with three classrooms, and a shopping center, which required substantial modification to house a library, offices, and six classrooms. In addition to Vanport Junior High School, Lincoln and Jefferson high schools were used after school hours, as well as the University of Oregon's dental and medical schools, located in Portland.

Following the May 30 Vanport Flood of 1948, the college became known as "the college that wouldn't die" for refusing to close after the flood. The term was coined by Lois Hennessy, a student who wrote about the college and the flood in the Christian Science Monitor, though students nicknamed the school "The college without a future." (Hennessy was the mother of poet Gary Snyder.) The school occupied Grant High School in the summer of 1948, then to hastily converted buildings at the Oregon Shipyard, known as the Oregon Ship. In 1953, the school moved to downtown Portland and occupied the vacated buildings of Lincoln High School on SW Broadway street, including Lincoln Hall, then known as "Old Main." The school changed its name to the Portland State Extension Center between December 1951 and February 1952, and in 1955, the Center changed its name to Portland State College to mark its maturation into a four-year degree-granting institution. It was also called "The U by the Slough". By 1956, the veterans had subsided, and baby food was no longer stocked in the bookstore.

Portland State's entry in the 1965 General Electric College Bowl Team won the nationally televised quiz show that pitted teams of college students from across the country against each other. The team knocked off its competitors for five consecutive weeks, retiring as champions, and setting a new record for total points scored. The University's Smith Memorial Student Union building was named after team member Michael J. Smith, who competed in the tournament while suffering from cystic fibrosis and died in 1968.

Portland State University's growth for the next couple of decades was restricted under the Oregon University System's 1929 ruling that no public university or college in Oregon could duplicate the programs offered by another, with grandfathered exclusions for the University of Oregon and Oregon State University. Nevertheless, graduate programs were added in 1961 and doctoral programs were added in 1968. The institution was granted university status by the Oregon State Board of Higher Education in 1969, becoming Portland State University.

In 1994 PSU did away with the traditional undergraduate distribution system and adopted a new interdisciplinary general education program known as University Studies. This program has been controversial both on and off campus due to some evidence that University Studies does not produce students who are adept at writing at the college level, but it is one of the programs at Portland State that has garnered national attention for its successful retention of first-year students. U.S. News & World Report has on multiple occasions listed University Studies as a "Program to Look For". In 2003 Portland State was approved to award degrees in Black Studies. That same year the university opened a center housed in a new building to support Native American students.

In 2004 Dr. Fariborz Maseeh donated, through The Massiah Foundation, $8 million to the College of Engineering and Computer Science. The college was renamed the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science. This was the largest single donation to the University at the time and this gift along with others led to, in May 2006, the opening of a new engineering building, the "Northwest Center for Engineering, Science and Technology" which houses much of the College. The LEED gold-certified engineering building reflects the university's increased emphasis on engineering, science and technology. The 130,000-square-foot (12,000 m2) facility includes classrooms, offices and 41 research and teaching labs.

In May 2004, Portland State announced a joint offering with Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) to establish the nation's first biomedical informatics program.

In 2006, Portland State was declared to be the nation's first Salmon Safe University by the nonprofit organization Salmon Safe. The award was given to recognize campus-wide efforts toward environmental sustainability by treating storm water runoff before it reaches the local watershed.

On June 3, 2008, The Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Partner Foundation announced Portland State as the recipient of The Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Partnership Award for Campus-Community Collaboration for their Watershed Stewardship Program. The program has led over 27,000 community volunteers donating a quarter million hours to install 80,000 plants and restore 50 acres (20 ha) of watershed along two miles (3.2 km) of river. Individual projects have been led and supported by 700 students working as part of class projects, resulting in two master's theses and three research articles.

In September 2008 the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation awarded Portland State University a $25 million challenge grant. The $25 million Miller grant and the funds raised to match it must be used exclusively for sustainability programs. Today, Portland State's sustainability research and education, led by Jennifer Allen, director of the Portland State Institute for Sustainable Solutions, is focused on four primary areas of inquiry: creating sustainable urban communities, the integration of human societies and the natural environment, implementing sustainability and mechanisms of change and measuring sustainability. Since 1998, the Miller Foundation has also contributed more than $5.3 million to Portland State.