The Daily Barometer March 6, 2013 by The Daily Barometer

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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 2013 • OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY CORVALLIS, OREGON 97331

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Mike Mangrum gets one last chance at NCAA Championship

VOLUME CXVI, NUMBER 97

Family business steeps in coffee, tea n

From small beginnings, Corvallis Coffee, Tea continues to grow By McKinley Smith The Daily Barometer

Vinay Bikkina

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Dennis Collett owns Corvallis Coffee and Tea, located at 215 Northwest Monroe Avenue, with his wife Casey. The Colletts began their business 10 years ago and offer 350 varieties of tea and 20 varieties of coffee weekly.

Casey and Dennis Collett have made a family business out of selling coffee and tea at their shop in downtown Corvallis. Inside of Corvallis Coffee and Tea, jars of tea and coffee dominate the walls, with smatterings of coffee cups and other related merchandise dotted around the room. The Colletts’ business began 10 years ago in the adjacent shop, now used for storage and coffee roasting. Then, it was called Oregon Legacy, and specialized in packaging coffee for gift shops. Dennis Collett received a six-toeight hour crash-course in coffee roasting from the previous owners and learned the rest on his own, reading “voraciously” and experimenting. “At the end of the roast, the difference between a medium roast and a dark roast is only about 30 seconds,” Dennis Collett said. “The difference between a good batch of dark roast and burnt coffee is only about 10 seconds.” Before Oregon Legacy, the Colletts owned other small businesses, including a skateboard shop, and when the space opened up downtown, they took it. “We saw it on a Friday and bought it on a Monday,” Casey Collett said. After six-and-a-half years, the space became too small for their growing business, Casey Collett said, and they opened up at the current location on the same block at 215 Northwest Monroe Avenue. The Colletts sell 350 varieties of tea and 20 varieties of coffee weekly, including green coffee beans for

self-roasting. The Colletts will be attending the World Tea Expo this June in Las Vegas. Casey Collett said tea sales have been climbing. “We try to offer things for people who want to take a world tour of coffee,” Casey Collett said. “I think what’s happening in this country is that coffee is popular, but teas are being discovered,” Casey Collett said. “And oddly enough in tea drinking countries like India and China, coffees are being discovered.” Casey Collett said they make an effort to include “as many organic and fair coffees as the market will bear.” “There is a price premium in some cases for organic and fair trade coffee,” Casey Collett said. “With teas, it’s a lot harder to get fair trade. We have a few fair trade teas, but we have a lot of organic teas, and we’re always looking for more.” Casey Collett said they are “very mindful of costs” and try to “make tea and coffee accessible” to their customers. “Our customers are very conscious of the working conditions of the people that both pick tea and coffee,” Dennis Collett said. Corvallis Tea and Coffee offers incentives to customers for reusing bags and bringing in their own coffee cups. “We’re a very recycling, green concept kind of family, and we just carry those concepts on to the business,” Casey Collett said. See COLLETTS | page 2

University signs Oregon State names distinguished professors for 2013 memorandum with Defense Department n

Professors Joseph Beckman, Thomas Diettreich will receive honorable recognition for their work this spring By Vinay Ramakrishnan The Daily Barometer

Around 115 students in the armed forces will continue to receive tuition assistance By Don Iler

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Oregon State University signed a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Defense, allowing approximately 115 armed forces members to continue to receive tuition assistance. The university was required to sign the memorandum by a March 1 deadline in order to continue to receive money from the Defense Department for the program. “We have some work to do internally to comply, but nothing that should negatively affect students,” said Gus Bedwell, OSU veterans’ services adviser. Bedwell said staff needed training and guidance from the Department of Defense about how to upload education plans and compliance plans, which vary between the five branches. Tuition assistance is a program that See MEMORANDUM | page 2

This spring, Oregon State University will honor two professors as distinguished. Joseph Beckman, director of the Environmental Health Science Center, and Thomas Diettreich, professor of computer science and a pioneer in the field of machine learning, will become distinguished professors, an honor they will continue to hold as long as they stay with OSU. Distinguished professor is the highest recognition given by the university to an active OSU faculty member. “The honor recognizes outstanding accomplishments as well as the potential to continue to excel in the future,” said Sabah Randhawa, provost and executive vice president at OSU. Randhawa has the final decision in terms of recognizing distinguished professors. Nominations are requested around campus and a small committee of faculty who hold the distinguished professor title evaluate nominations. Both Beckman and Dietterich felt honored to be named distinguished professors. “It’s a very nice honor,” Beckman said. “I have tremendous respect for those who have been selected as

distinguished professors before, and know that many others deserve the recognition.” “We are fortunate to have excellent faculty at OSU,” Randawa added. “Dr. Dietterich and Dr. Beckman have outstanding credentials in their respective fields — Dr. Dietterich in artificial intelligence and Dr. Beckman in neurodegenerative diseases.” Dietterich and Beckman both felt they were recognized as distinguished professors in large part due to contributions to their respective fields. “I’ve made major contributions over many years in understanding the role of oxidative stress in human diseases,” Beckman said. “Also, I’ve been director of the Environmental Health Science Center for over a decade, a very important resource at OSU that’s helped drive many new discoveries.” Dietterich cites his role as an innovator in the field of machine learning. “As a graduate student, I was one of the first people to do research in this field,” Dietterich said. “I was one of the people to help grow machine learning as a scientific field.” Beckman has been interested in researching the progression of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, for the past 20 years. “I made a key discovery about how the oxidant peroxynitrite underlies many different diseases,” Beckman said. “Of all the disease processes that peroxynitrite affects, I focused on ALS 20 years ago because of the discov-

vinay ramakrishnan

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Dr. Joseph Beckman with research assistant professors Dr. Valery Voinov and Dr. Yuri Vasil’ev in the Mass Spectrometry lab at OSU. ery of a mutation in an antioxidant enzyme called SOD1 that reacts with peroxynitrite.” Beckman’s research also involves looking into the cause of the death of motor neurons in ALS. “We’ve discovered, as a number of different investigators, that astrocytes, support cells that surround motor neurons, can be activated and drive the death of motor neurons,” Beckman said. As a pioneer in the field of machine learning, Dietterich was part of a group that founded the first journal in machine learning and was the first president of the international

machine learning society. “The idea of machine learning is to teach the computer by example to do particular things,” Dietterich said. “Cameras that put a square around a person’s face would be an example of the results of machine learning.” Dietterich and Beckman both work in research labs here at Oregon State University. Beckman works in the OSU mass spectrometry lab, helping develop and use new instrumentation. “We are also synthesizing and testing new types of drugs in vitro to treat ALS here at OSU,” Beckman said. Dietterich runs a research group See PROFESSORS | page 2