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IN FULL FLIGHT
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F E A T U R E S 2 / In Full Flight, by Brian Doyle What was the Campaign about in its bones? What is really its most soaring accomplishment? 10 / Maxi, by Emily Biggs ’15 A visit to Portland’s Cathedral School (where nine alumni are teachers or staff), and an inimitable small energy who wants to be The Greatest Scientist in the World.
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18 / The Christ-Bearer, by Christopher Hoke Maybe we are all somehow Saint Christopher. Maybe carrying each other is carrying the Christos is why we are here.
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24 / A Circle of Light, by Pico Iyer The University’s 2010 visiting writer on reading and light and intimacy and peace and illumination and God and how we bow our heads when we read. 30 / Science Sculptures, photos by Steve Hambuchen As we celebrate the $25 million raised during the Campaign for science and engineering, a look at velometers, oscilloscopes, roentgen meters, resistors, generators, and some of the other lovely old machines resident in Shiley Hall and the University Museum. 41 / Brown, by Tadeu Velloso ’14 “It’s been a racially brutal world for a long time. It doesn’t have to be that way. Can we create a world where race isn’t ignored but celebrated in honest and productive ways? Why not?”
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...and a look at just some of what the Rise Campaign created: The University’s new theater in Mehling Hall The Dundon-Berchtold ethics initiative The Beauchamp Recreation Center The Molly Hightower Scholarship The Beckman Humor Project The Villa Hall Scholarships The Aquino Professorship in Engineering Fields and Schoenfeldt Halls The new Clark Library and Bauccio Commons and Shiley Hall Rich Baek ’93 and his entertaining 601 challenge The elegant new Bell Tower and Marian Garden Effervescent nursing dean Joanne Warner & nursing scholarships Spanish professor Manny Macias and his nine scholarships
THE UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND MAGAZINE page 41
Cover by the extraordinary Norman LaLiberte, courtesy of the Galerie de Bellefeuille in Montreal; see debellefeuille.com. Our particular thanks to Norman for his generosity and to Kate Braley at Le Galerie for her prompt and efficient kindness and tech savvy.
Summer 2014: Vol. 33, No. 2 President: Rev. E. William Beauchamp, C.S.C. Founding Editor: John Soisson Editor: Brian Doyle Salty Brilliant Exasperated Graphic Designers: Matt Erceg and Joe Erceg ’55 Mooing Assistant Editors: Marc Covert ’93 & Amy Shelly Harrington ’95 Fitfully Contributing Editors: Louis Masson, Sue Säfve, Terry Favero, Mary Beebe Portland is published quarterly by the University of Portland. Copyright ©2014 by the University of Portland. All rights reserved. Editorial offices are located in Waldschmidt Hall, 5000 N. Willamette Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97203-5798. Telephone (503) 943-8225, fax (503) 943-7178, e-mail address: bdoyle@up.edu, Web site: http://www.up.edu/portland. Third-class postage paid at Portland, OR 97203. Canada Post International Publications Mail Product — Sales Agreement No. 40037899. Canadian Mail Distribution Information — Express Messenger International: PO Box 25058, London, Ontario, Canada N6C 6A8. Printed in the USA. Opinions expressed in Portland are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University administration. Postmaster: Send address changes to Portland, The University of Portland Magazine, 5000 N. Willamette Boulevard, Portland, OR 97203-5798.
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In Full Flight
PHOTOGRAPH: HOB OSTERLUND
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our years ago this winter the University publicly announced a soaring ambitious Rise Campaign to raise a stunning amount of money: 175 million dollars, more than it had raised in its entire history – and that history included the entire twentieth century. Some of the reasons for the campaign were obvious: Howard Hall was slowly sagging back into the moist soil from which it had arisen in 1929, Old Science Hall had not been renovated for seventy years, the Commons could easily be used for a cheerful campus comedy filmed in 1950, and Engineering Hall, with dozens of ancient air-conditioners slumping from its ancient windows, looked...dissolute. The University’s student athletes trained in conditions akin to a crowded summer camp; the faculty had not enjoyed new support for research and teaching in a decade, despite their growing national renown; and worst of all, most pressing of all, some 95% of the University’s students needed serious financial aid to enroll or continue on The Bluff. We can and should grin at the officious rhetoric of fundraising campaigns, and their stiff awkward euphemisms like naming opportunities, but we also ought to acknowledge that they are absolutely crucial to the operation and elevation of the University we believe has a remarkable and sometimes incredible effect on thousands of lives. This is more than belief for me. I know it to be true, that the University has changed and bettered and sparked and saved lives, because I have seen it happen with my own holy eyes. I have seen shy frightened kids wake up here and start companies and become doctors and stand up against savages who would enslave women and murder innocents of every faith including their own. I have seen kids with childhoods from hell find peace and strength here and go forth to be adults of shocking courage and grace. I cannot count the number of students I have met in my 23 years here who became riveting and creative and devout and admirable men and women. I have seen this with my eyes and it is miraculous, is what I am trying to say. This is not Campaign blather. This is what happens here. It happens every day. It happens more than I’ll ever know and more than anyone will ever know. It happens in the dorms and in labs and in the chapel and on trips abroad and at games and in the woods and in class and in the cheerful burble of the Commons at night during finals week. We cannot guarantee that it will happen; we cannot force it to happen; all we can do smooth the way, prepare the road, put kids in the way of it happening. It’s expensive to do that. It costs many millions of dollars. That’s why the University set off on the Rise Campaign. And nearly 20,000 donors said yes!, and their gifts built and renovated twelve buildings, and created 9 new professorships, and created new programs in Catholic studies and character formation and humor, and most of all, best of all, gathered nearly fifty million dollars for 232 new scholarships. Fifty million dollars to directly help kids get a chance to have their lives changed and bettered and sparked and saved. Fifty million dollars! The Rise Campaign closes this summer. It’ll finish as a roaring success, with more than 180 million dollars raised. You can pore over the details happily for hours, but the short version is that we set out to soar, and we damn well did soar, because nearly 20,000 alumni and friends said yes! to changing and bettering and sparking and saving lives. That’s incredible. After 113 years on this bluff over the river, after 113 years of preparing and hoping and praying to soar, the University achieved full flight with the Rise Campaign, and I cannot see now that there is any ceiling at all to the astonishing and creative and riveting place we can be in the years to come. That is a stunning thing to be able to say, and I do not have words for how wonderful it feels, after 23 years, to finally say it, shout it, sing it. Editor
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One quiet deft excellent Campaign feat: the intimate new Blair Black Box Theater, in Mehling Hall. The one-act version: The University’s theater program has been craving a second space for years, partly because there’s been a boom in students in drama classes. Former Arts & Sciences dean Father Steve Rowan, a theater nut, avidly supports the idea. A first Campaign gift comes from a man who has always admired the University but never invested; he seizes his chance. A whopping gift comes from an anonymous alumnus in the theater world. Upgrades to Shiley Engineering Hall happily occasion a complete upgrade to the space the Blair Theater will occupy; how apt is that, considering that regent Darlene Shiley is a renowned actress? And finally a whopping gift from the parents of a current student complete the $300,000 project, and the new theater is in constant use, often by students who are not theater majors but love the theater. Cool, eh? And for those of you at home thinking right now well, I would like to make a gift to the cool lively little theater too, call Amy Eaton at 503.943.8551, eatona@up.edu, and she will in her charming way bend your generosity toward elevating and enlightening kids.
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The most adamantly evident effect of the Campaign over the last seven years is the rise of two new soaring buildings (Fields and Schoenfeldt residence halls), the complete gleaming renovation and doubling in size of three others (Shiley Engineering Hall, Bauccio Commons, and the Clark Library), and the undramatic but through renovation of many other parts of campus: the updating of Shipstad and Kenna residence halls, the Chapel of Christ the Teacher, the Clive Charles Soccer Complex, the Chiles Center, Joe Etzel Baseball Field, Romanaggi Science Hall, and St. Mary’s Student Center. The long-awaited Father Bill Beauchamp Rec Center, which started construction in May north of the Chiles Center and will finally supersede ancient creaky shaggy Howard Hall, gets all the a ttention as the Campaign ends, but what the Campaign wrought on the whole campus is stunning. Even the oldest and coolest building on campus, Waldschmidt Hall, got some editing and updating, but we were not foolish enough to cover up a century’s worth of illicit student engraving in the skin of the old castle. PHOTOS BY STEVEN HAMBUCHEN
Or here’s a Campaign story. The wry silly charming Molly Hightower ’09 is killed in the Haiti earthquake, while working at an orphanage there. Her dear friend Rachel Prusynski ’09, determined to celebrate the way Molly changed lives, helped start a Molly Hightower Scholarship for a student from Haiti to come to the University of Portland. The first recipient is the cheerful brilliant Jean Francois Seide, here clearing ivy in Tryon Creek Park as part of a freshman service project. Because people loved and admired Molly, Jean Francois gets an unbelievable chance to change his life and many others. Now that is cool. That’s what scholarships do. That’s what the Campaign was about. Prayers for wry silly holy Molly.
MAXI H
Q: How is second grade compared to first grade? A: I get to read more hard books and I love it! Q: How did you learn how to read big hard books? A: With my iPad! It showed me how to read and say words. They were green words. Q: Do you remember your first day at Cathedral? A: I was late! Q: You were late on your first day? A: My mom thought we were on the right time, but we were on the wrong time. Q: What’s your favorite subject at school? A: Science! Q: What’s your favorite thing about science? A: Chemistry! Q: Why? A: Sometimes I make toys out of the chemistry set. Q: Toys? A: I made an owl! And then I made flying pig! Q: What happened to the owl and the pig? A: My dogs ate them. Q: What do you want to be when you grow up, Maxi? A: A scientist! My mom says dentist, but I go with scientist. Q: Why? A: I want to be the greatest scientist in the world. Q: What did you do before Cathedral School? A: I forgot. Q: If I were to ask your friends here what you were like, what would they say? A: Nice. And fast. Q: Do you have a happy place? A: On the bed. Q: Sadness place? A: Under the bed. Q: What would your teacher say that you are like? A: Nice. And fast. Q: Is there anything that I didn’t ask you that you want to tell me? A: Love. Q: If you had a million dollars, what would you buy? A: All of the TV shows in the world…and cats! Is this a Campaign story? Sure it is. All those alumni teachers needed scholarships from donors to become great teachers to wild students like Maxi. Campaign gifts to the School of Education from 2007 to 2014 totaled some $1 million for scholarships alone, as well as faculty and program support. Could we use more gifts now? Sure! Call Kirsten Heikkala at 503.943.7460, heikkala@up.edu.
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PHOTOGRAPH: STEVE HAMBUCHEN
ere’s a story. Portland’s Cathedral School, grades kindergarten through eighth, has nine University alumni among its faculty and staff (principal Amy Biggs ’86, staffers Julie Westerman ’08 and Jennifer Overbay ’94, and teachers Sarah Wellnitz ’05, David Exley ’07, Ingrid Trachtenbarg ’08, Kate Gobel ’10, Stephanie McCoy ’11, and Melissa Bucheit ’11), and too many alumni parents to count. Recently the Cathedral became an ‘Apple distinguished school,’ and was able to share iPads with its students to help them learn to read, among other adventures. Amy Biggs’ attentive daughter Emily Biggs ’15 sat recently with the unforgettable Maxi Javier, who had learned to read this way, and she listened with reverence, and here is some of Maxi, unbound.
Or here’s a Campaign story. From age 18 through 31, Justin Britton ’14 carried up to 70 pounds of mail a day to an average 470 addresses around Mount Tabor in Portland. He faced dogs and bees and wasps and testy residents and malevolent cats swiping at him through mail slots. Autumns and Tuesdays were the heaviest loads. At age 31, after 13 years and diligent night school, he was accepted as a nursing student on the Bluff. He earned a nursing scholarship and a grant from the Dundon-Berchtold Ethics Project to work with nursing professor Lauretta Krautscheid studying deference among novice nurses – essentially looking at how new nurses grapple with ethics in a professional world that can be exhausting and frightening and confusing. He’s already working as a nurse in Portland. He loved his University experience. It would have been difficult to be here without help that came from Campaign gifts. One of the people he delivered mail to will be a new nursing student at the University in August. Was this a great Campaign or what?
We do not celebrate excellent deans enough, for their wry management of many motley energies in their bailiwicks, and their deep stern amused sometimes exasperated reverence and affection for the students in their care, but we do so here with Joanne, who over the course of the Rise Campaign (a) helped raise $2 million dollars for scholarships and new programs and facilities, (b) endured awful exhausting cancer treatments, and (c) never lost her exuberant humor and grace, as you see here, on the day she was named captain of Team Warner by her faculty and staff and students, all of whom gathered to bless her hard journey. Want to make a gift to sing Warnerness or nurseness or grace under duress on The Bluff? Call Diane Dickey, 503.943.8130, dickey@up.edu.
Here’s a cool story: four years ago, mathematics professor Craig Swinyard and Moreau Center guru Patrick Ell, both Villa Hall alumni, proposed that they recruit Campaign gifts from Villa guys for Villa guys – for a Villa scholarship. University administrators smiled and made disparaging sounds. At presstime, though, 77 donors (among them not only Villa madmen but Holy Cross priests, and parents of Villa guys, and a grandmother of a Villa guy) had raised $50,000 and for a Villa Fund yielding two $2,000 scholarships per year for Villa residents. Now that is cool. Want to help? Tell Pat Ell – ell@up.edu.
At left, perhaps the best tactile symbol of the Rise Campaign’s soaring ambitions and somewhat-startling success: the new bell tower, which arose in 2009, a gift from regent chairman Allen Lund and his wry wife Kathie. It vaulted up alongside the Chapel of Christ the Teacher, was flanked by a redesigned Marian Garden, and was instantly a visual and sonic delight on The Bluff. It begins to ring the hours at 9 a.m., peals the Angelus at noon and 6 p.m., plays a hymn (different every season) at 3 p.m., and closes its day by playing the University’s alma mater at 10 p.m., after which it goes to sleep. A most amazing structure; and to the University community’s honor and pleasure it was blessed on the day it first sang by Portland’s beloved Archbishop emeritus John Vlazny. In many ways it stands for what Father Bill Beauchamp did when he knelt to wash the feet of others this past Holy Thursday: celebrate holiness, serve with humility, remember that we are here for each other.
THE CHRIST-BEARER Maybe we are all somehow Saint Christopher. Maybe carrying each other is carrying the Christos is why we are here.
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here is an icon I keep on a shelf above my desk. It is of one of the oldest saints in the history of Christian iconography: Saint Christopher. My namesake. I only learned the legend of this figure behind my name two years ago, from a homeless youth I met in San Francisco’s Mission District. He needed a ride to L.A. and folks at the agency I was visiting told him I was headed that way with my sixteen-passenger church van full of colleagues and ex-gangmembers on our tour of various gang ministries down the West Coast. This homeless youth — or “gutter punk,” they like to say — wore pants as shiny as blacksmith’s leather with soot and oil from a hundred nights under park bushes and by freeway onramps. His long black matted hair stuck out from his trucker’s hat with its deeply curved bill, tattoos his sleeves. “No way!” he glowed. “My name’s Chris, too! And this is my dog.” A huge pit bull jumped up onto the bus’s rear bench. “What’s its name?” an annoyed former gangster in my crew asked as the reeking animal crawled over his shoulder. “That is his name,” Chris said. “My Dog.” As we sailed down the dark I-5 freeway, past miles of monocrops and rest stops, Chris told me the legend of this martyr from the third century who had become the patron saint of travelers. According to tradition, he was a wild man, tall and strong, who lived by the side of a river and helped travelers cross to the other bank. One day, so the story goes, a child came to the riverside and asked for his help. He was all alone, like an orphan. When they reached the middle of the charging river, the child on his shoulders felt heavier than any other Christopher had borne over the water before. It felt as though he were “carrying the weight of the world” on his back. When they finally arrived safe on the other riverbank, the man had one of those epiphanies: this small child now facing him had been Christ in disguise all along. And just as suddenly, the child then disappeared. This is how he became known in Greek as Christoforos, or the Christ Bearer. When our dirty bus parked along-
By Christopher Hoke side the star-paved curbs of Hollywood late that night, Chris thanked us and said he needed to go make a call at a pay phone for a friend to pick him up. He and My Dog disappeared into the city’s moving lights and we never saw them again. I have since recognized this saint he told me about — the bent-over figure with a staff in his hand and waves up to his knees, a child on his back who is radiating holy light — on many small necklaces worn by the Roman Catholic migrants in the foggy agricultural valley where I live. These people have left their homes in Mexico and crossed the treacherous Border to pluck a new life from the North, one plastic bucket of pennies-a-pound blueberries at a time. San Cristobal is the tiny santo kissed on their sweaty fabric pendants and tucked back into T-Shirts as these families cross impossible distances and barriers, from one life to another, uncertain if they will make it alive. The painted woodblock of Saint Christopher, now above my desk, has become a symbol for me and my vocation. I live alongside a large salmonladen river in the Northwest, and like my namesake, I am tall, though not very wild. As a jail chaplain and pastoral worker among young gang members I meet in the facility and on the streets, I have found my work in accompanying these North American orphans through turbulent legal and existential transitions. I walk with them through their criminal and immigration courts, through drug and alcohol treatment programs, through relapses, job interviews, drivers’ tests, broken hearts, emergency rooms and shotgun wounds, maternity wards, parenting classes, baptisms, and often, finally, into my own home to raise their children together with me and others. The icon’s imagery helps me see a simple narrative in all this: the homies are crossing over from one life to another. And what strengths I can offer — like my education and privilege as a tall, white male with no criminal record — enable me to navigate the lawyers’ offices, streams of paperwork, cross-currents of collections agencies, court payments and fees at every department. These all 18
comprise an intimidating barrier to a vulnerable young man with tattoos secretly wanting a better future. In the slightly bent Christopher figure, I see a shape for my ache as well: not just weariness from ferrying guys all across town in my car, but an invisible spiritual weight, another’s anxious heart and restless dreams that temporarily have no footing, r iding on and trusting my own flexing hope, barely fixed on what I see just ahead. In this legend of the river-crosser, there is a spiritual geography of transition. It is a metaphor I can hold like a map. It helps me see where we are: when I sense one of these guys in recovery suddenly cling to me in a choking relational grip through months of transition, and then when I sense an ease and his weight suddenly slides off. I know we have crossed that river when we see each other face to face, on the same level, as friends, as members of my community, my household, and even my wedding party. And at this point we share the radiant sense that somewhere in the middle of those late nights and jail visits, the long drives to impossible court dates and laughter beside a river where we’d fish, the weight of terror we bore together was filled with a mystical presence we did not understand at the time. That is what I see in those traditional yellow circles looming behind the heads of the ferrier and child in the icon. Not crowns of saintly status, but the simple shape of intuited mystery. Those yellow circles are what have kept me going back and forth between the jail and the shared housing all these years. It is the curve of invisible, ecstatic presence that the human eye could not recognize at the time. It is the indefensible knowledge that the stuff of heaven I’ve always sought was, for a moment with this criminal youth, heavy upon me. In this legend, then, there is a shape to the hiddenness of God. A shape rather like a lonely kid wanting to be picked up on the side of the street. Chris Hoke is a jail chaplain and gang pastor with the Tierra Nueva ministry project in the Skagit Valley of Washington state.
These three original prints are by the Oregon artist and architect Joachim Grube, who created the Stations of the Cross in the Chapel of Christ the Teacher. Grube and the legendary Oregon sculptor LeRoy Setziol (who also carved all the Chapel’s doors and pillars, and the extraordinary work inside and outside Mago Hunt Theater) worked closely with architect Pietro Belluschi on the Chapel when it was built in 1986. Originally these prints (the Sixth Station, Veronica wiping Jesus’ face; the Seventh, Jesus falling for the second time, and the Eighth, Jesus meeting the women of Jerusalem), were a gift to the Setziol family; LeRoy’s daughter Monica Setziol-Phillips gave them to the University in 2013, for which we are most grateful. Did the family’s largesse count as a Rise Campaign gift? Heavens, yes. Do we accept almost anything of value as a way to help out our students? Heavens, yes. Call Diane Dickey at 503.943.8130, dickey@up.edu.
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One quiet sad thread during the Rise Campaign: the loss of many generous, colorful, riveting University faculty, staff, alumni, regents, and friends, among them the cheerful exuberant booming music professor Roger Doyle, above. The wry beloved Fathers Art Schoenfeldt, C.S.C. (for whom Schoenfeldt residence hall is named) and Chester Prusynski, C.S.C. (for whom Pilot soccer’s Pru Pitch is named). The gentle kindly biology professors Becky Houck and David Alexander. Nursing deans Terry Misener and Patricia Chadwick, trumpet maniac Phil Cansler, brilliant inventor Donald Shiley ’51. Boston Red Sox legend Johnny Pesky, who left the University $25,000 in his will; his brother Vince ’41 played baseball and coached for the Pilots. Regents Bill Tagmyer and Joaquin Reis. The uncategorizable Mauro Potestio ’50, who attebnded more Pilot basketball games than any other being ever. So many sweet bright thoughtful alumni… rest in peace, brothers and sisters. Prayers.
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Another fascinating corner of the Campaign: monies raised for direct faculty creative projects, travels for research and exploration, and new funds and professorships. The total: more than $4 million, among them Fulbright grants for journeys like biology professor Katie O’Reilly’s jaunts to Hawaii, Samoa, and New Zealand, studying seabirds. Want to add to that? Call Kathy Kendall Johnston, kendall@up.edu, 503.943.8004.
PHOTOGRAPH: HOB OSTERLUND
ACircle ofLight By Pico Iyer
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the errant creations he’d set upon the page, which is a way of saying that he knew they didn’t come from him, and were really at the mercy of something much vaster. Not many days ago, in my circle of light, I had a long talk with my old friend Blaise Pascal again. He was telling me that we’re always longing for distraction—running after hares we could buy for a penny, hiring clowns and carousing with friends to prevent us having to sit still, with thoughts of what comes after death or deeper than the self. Perverse, he noted, because all our happiness lies in sitting still. All our disappointment, fear, anxiety come from restlessness. We run from our peace and light, therefore, when the Garden, in portable form, sits right next to us, in that upright chair, with the keys to Eden scattered about it. Stop, he might be saying. Look around you. Stay where you are and just sit in the light. Pick up a volume and let it take you farther, faster, than any Dreamliner could—into another universe, or that distant planet of the person you’ve met only in your innermost self. Books cast light upon the world; light casts books into sharpest relief. My joy at Christmas is to give praise and humble myself before all the many things far beyond me. Pico Iyer is the author of many books, most recently The Man Within My Head, about the great English Catholic writer Graham Greene. Pico has written often in these pages about grace and prayer in all its uncountable forms. Raised for the Clark Library during the Campaign: some $12 million to totally renovate (nearly double) the actual library (19 new study rooms!), to create the Eugene Snyder Fund for acquisitions, purchase the extraordinary Saint John’s Bible on exhibit in the foyer, and much else. Want to keep flinging gifts toward the Library as a verb, not just a place? Call Diane Dickey at 503.943.8130, dickey@up.edu.
PAINTING: KAREN HOLLINGSWORTH
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sn’t this what really we’re looking for? A quiet corner of light, a warm chair to hold us, the chance to adventure deeply into someone else’s world and mind through the secrets they’ve committed to the page? Isn’t this what we mean by “luxury”? The time and space to turn away from chirping e-mails and ringing phones and the demands of the world and travel off into wisdom and illumination, remembering what we ought to know and do, finding that world within the world that pulses with light and lastingness? I’m writing this on Christmas morning, and I’ve come to a place of prayer: a chair in the light. The sun beats down on me from the blue Californian heavens, and the Pacific Ocean down below is panels of silver in the sharp midwinter light. The islands across the horizon are etched so intensely in the December clarity, I feel as if I can count every ridge on them. I pick up a book and something in me is hushed, as something else is brought to a new alertness. What is it? That deepest part of me that partakes of a logic I can’t understand. That place of intimacy and depth where I want to speak—and hear—only of essential things, which may be my daughter and that work of illumination, or that encounter with death, but that many of us find interchangeable with talking about God. A book admits you to that deeply private space where you are not quite yourself, but someone else. In every sense. And being lost in Earthsea, next to Walden Pond, on the heath with Lear, you’re also something much larger than yourself, as large as the sky around you and the quiet of that armchair in the light. The peace that passeth understanding, some call it. Have you ever noticed how you bow your head when you’re reading? How sometimes you close your eyes? How you hear yourself speaking to presences, and holy ghosts, and what you speak are petitions, vows, the kind of prayer that says “Thank you,” not “Please”? Graham Greene used to get down on his knees to pray for
One hilarious aspect of the Campaign was the entertaining 601 Challenge, in which engineering alumnus Rich Baek ’93 said he would make a $50,000 gift toward the new Beauchamp Rec Center (on top of his other Campaign gifts) if 601 graduates of the last decade made a Campaign gift of any kind, toward any target, before 6/1/2014. The young alumni rose roaring to the challenge, going over the 601 mark in March, and Rich ponied up cheerfully. As part of the project’s launch, the University’s marketing office made a goofy video showing students playing basketball, lifting weights, doing yoga, and bicycling in the now- empty spaces where those crafts will be practiced inside the Rec when it’s finished next year; this photo is lifted from those wry films. Hit YouTube for the 601 challenge and laugh. And if you want to chip on in the Rec, call Colin McGinty at 503.943.8005, mcginty@up.edu.
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Underneath the Campaign numbers there are some fascinating details, such as this one: parents of current students, and parents of alumni, contributed $7.2 million to the Campaign; and that doesn’t even count alumni parents of current and former students. In other words, people who have already given the University a lot of money for tuition and room and board for their beloved children gave us a lot more money for lanky children because they were delighted by the education their beloved child received. Boy, talk about outcome assessment. Want to chip in even more for scholarships for tall children? Call Andrew Keippela at 503.943.8329, keippela@up.edu.
Science Sculptures Photographs by Steve Hambuchen
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cattered all over Shiley Engineering Hall and the University Museum are lovely strange devices and machines, many of them harking back to when the Physics Department was housed there, and many procured by the legendary Brother Godfrey Vassallo, C.S.C., a master at “scrounging, begging, borrowing, and buying anything that might be even halfway useful,” as physics professor emeritus Karl Wetzel notes. Velometers (which measure circulating air, often in mine shafts), oscilloscopes, x-ray machines, roentgen meters (which measure radiation), generators, survey and drafting equipment, on and on... As we celebrate the Campaign’s stunning effect on science and engineering at the University, we gape with affection and appreciation at the beautiful and creative instruments used by so many students and professors on The Bluff over the last eighty years, and housed here now with reverence. Among the ones pictured here, with erudite comment from Karl Wetzel: “Number 2 is a direct current ammeter, or amp meter; the scale is from 0 to 10 amperes, very large values for an ordinary lab exercise; this was probably used only by seniors and faculty. Number 3 is decade resistance box, which allows a circuit to be set up to have a range of Ohm values. Number 4 is a Geiger counter/ radiation survey meter; the headphone allowed the user to choose either the headphone or loudspeaker mode. The yellow color indicates use for Civil Defense in the 1950s and 1960s. Number 5 is another decade resistance device. Number 8 bears a Works Progress Administration logo; probably this was used in Oregon during the late 1930s. Number 9 is an analog ammeter; modern meters are digital.” Our thanks to Karl, to engineering professor Aziz Inan (who excavated a 1947 Tektronix 511 oscilloscope from the basement and had it meticulously restored, good man), and to the heroic Carolyn Connolly, who runs the University Museum with a budget of about eight dollars. The University is delighted to celebrate the stunning $25 million raised during the Rise Campaign for science and engineering; wouldn’t it be sweet now to gather huge gifts for the Museum, and watch that crucial story-saving entity soar? It’s easily done; call Kathy Kendall Johnston at 503.943.8004, kendall@up.edu. Editor
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The idea for a ‘low level virtual machine’ came to Chris Lattner soon after he left The Bluff, just as he began his pursuit of a doctorate in computers at the U of Illinois. He built a prototype the first chance he got (on vacation back home in Banks, Oregon); today his invention is used extensively by Apple and Google, among many other entities, and Chris works for Apple. LLVM is essentially a way to build software compilers – devices that receive raw code from programmers and convert it into live software applications. It lets individuals run programs on machines and microprocessors they weren’t explicitly written for. Brilliant invention? Yes; Chris shared the 2013 ACM Software System Award, given annually to one software system worldwide. Credit for his superb education in computing? “Steve Veghdahl and Mark Utlaut, who really cared about me and pushed me to keep going and helped me get a summer job with FEI...” Campaign gifts toward seething creative ideas like the one that hatched inside Chris: $49 million. Itching to make a gift yourself? Call Diane Dickey, 503.943.8130, dickey@up.edu.
Or here’s a Campaign story. The inventor and entrepreneur John Beckman ’42 and his elegant wife Patricia, who already had created five scholarships in honor of the legendary University physics professor Brother Godfrey Vassallo, C.S.C., made two epic gifts during the Campaign: one for the annual entertaining Brian Doyle Scholarships in Gentle & Sidelong Humor, which award students $3,333.33 a year to do one public project of a humorous nature, and a $3 million gift to begin the Beckman Humor Project, to explore how humor can be used, as John says, to gently bring people closer, to deftly puncture arrogance and lies, to be a brilliant weapon against the dark. As far as we can tell the University will be the only college in America poking into humor in the arts, health care, commerce, management, politics, culture, education, the sciences, spirituality – wow. Herewith three of this year’s Humor Scholars – Sara Jacobs, whose project was humor and little kids; Andrew Stacey, working on a comic film festival; and Kate Hampl, who dreams of a cool annual Comedy Week on The Bluff.
One weird and hilarious Campaign moment: the Battle on The Bluff for young alumni in March, during which more than 150 graduates from the last 20 years (some from Seattle and Boise) returned grinning to campus for a day of kickball, dodgeball, basketball, frisbee golf, bocce, and volleyball, much of it swirling in and around ancient decrepit Howard Hall. The event, organized by former student president Kyle Bunch ’09, featured a talk by regent Rich Baek ’93, whose 601 Challenge Project is designed to draw Campaign gifts for the new Beauchamp rec center, which should open in the fall of 2015 – and finally replace ancient decrepit Howard Hall, built in 1928. Want to help with Rich’s fervid dream of (respectfully) knocking down ancient decrepit Howard Hall? Call Colin McGinty at 503.943.8005, mcginty@up.edu.
PHOTOGRAPH: BOB KERNS
PHOTOGRAPH: JERRY HART
On the left, political science professor Loretta Frederking, who had Jessica Lewicki ’08 in a politics class, which inspired Jessica to go to law school, and then return to Portland to work with the law firm Hart Wagner, and start volunteering with the Oregon Innocence Project, which welcomes University pre-law students to help try to free wrongly convicted prisoners. So let’s review: a fine teacher inspires a fine student, who chooses a career in which she involves more University students in an effort to free people who ought not to be in prison. What was the Campaign about? Making this sort of creative amazing thing happen as much as possible. Wow.
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Meet Hayley Petersen. Sophomore from Medford, Oregon. Nursing student. “I’ve wanted to be a nurse since I was a kid. My dad is a firefighter and I am very proud of him and I wanted to do something to help people like he does. I shadowed friends of his who are nurses at Rogue Regional Hospital, and I thought yes, that’s for me. It’s being there, being present, being attentive. And everyone likes their nurse, you know? How satisfying to do work that’s hard and appreciated and about caring...” Hayley, a superb student at North Medford High, has a President’s Scholarship; the Rise Campaign raised nearly $50 million for students like Hayley who have got to have scholarships and grants to be here on The Bluff. We can always use gifts for scholarships; there’s a campaign that will never end. Call Kirsten Heikkala at 503.943.7460, heikkala@up.edu, if you would like to make our Hayleys grin even brighter.
39 PHOTOGRAPH: CARLOS LEON
Brown ness or brownness historically had on people in the United States; at the same time I grew increasingly fascinated by the possibilities of a world where race could be embraced positively. In California, however, where I spent the next ten years of my childhood, there are clear and definite divisions among whites and people of color. In my schools, immigrants and the children of immigrants were often assumed to be gangbangers and trouble makers. Though I was neither, I was aware from an early age that people I was growing up with were seen as threats and probable criminals simply because of their color or ancestry. At age 14, I took part in my first public protest against those divisions – an immigrant rights march. A group of us kids left school and marched around our town. This was a monumental moment for me. It was the first time that I embraced the fact that my mom was an immigrant, that my mom had an accent, that my mom was a part of a rich culture, and that all those things were a part of me as well. For the first time in my life, I was proud of being Latino; I was proud of being brown. That realization has shaped my life since then. I have been dedicated to advocacy and social justice awareness since that moment. I worked with migrant workers, people experiencing homelessness, low-income families. I always approached it from the perspective that I was engaging with a community, and separated myself from any ideology that I was somehow capable of saving anyone. When I came to the University, a traditionally white space, in Portland, a predominantly white space, I began to engage with social justice in an academic way also, particularly modern race relations and the reflections of modern race relations through music like hip-hop. But after going on the Moreau Center’s civil rights immersion through the South, I really struggled with everything I had witnessed, and felt that I needed to find something to do to make a change. For me it became criminal justice reform, the rehabilitation of formerly 40
incarcerated people, and the push for systemic racial equity. One of the most obvious and ignored forms of institutional racism is the criminal justice system. Low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately affected by incarceration and its consequences – which include, if prisoners are even freed, inability to find employment, inability to qualify for assistance with housing and food and student loans, and inability to vote. I have tried to figure out tangible ways to get people talking about these issues, while also directly helping people affected by incarceration; and so came the idea of a ‘transparent’ clothing company – one that told the stories and struggles of people in prison making the clothes, while also helping those same incarcerated people learn job skills, work collaboratively and productively, and get a rare chance to be proud of their work. After a while I discovered an extant company called Stripes, connected with them about my vision for a brand of clothing that would empower incarcerated people while also telling their story to the wider world, and we went into business together. I’ll be working with Stripes after I graduate, working to introduce this new business model to the market, and looking for more ways to help create a world where race isn’t ignored but celebrated in honest and productive ways. It’s been a racially brutal world for a long time; it doesn’t have to stay that way. Tadeu Velloso ’14 earned four scholarships on The’14Bluff, allfour of which Tadeu Velloso earned scholarshipsaugmented on The Bluff,during all of which were were the Rise augmentedthe during the Rise Campaign: Campaign: Maloney Family Scholthe Maloney Family Scholarship, the arship, the H.J. Belton Hamilton H.J. Belton Hamilton the Scholarship, the RoyScholarship, and Marlene Roy and Marlene Martin Summer SerMartin Summer Service scholarship, vice scholarship, and the Kathleen and the Kathleen Andrews scholarAndrews scholarship. For all the glory ship. Forbuildings all the glory of new builof new and programs, the dings and programs, the creation creation of 232 new scholarships during ofthe 232 new scholarships the Campaign, and terrificduring generosity Campaign, and terrific generosity to our 447 others, is glorious. Want to bright students like Tadeu? tohelp ourmore 447 others, is glorious. Want Diane Dickey, 503.943-8130, dicktoCall help more bright students like ey@up.edu. Tadeu? Call Diane Dickey, 503.9438130, dickey@up.edu.
PHOTOGRAPH: JEFF KENNEL
G
rowing up I always dealt with the question What are you? From my earliest years I knew this was a loaded question – people weren’t asking if I was an avid reader, an adventurer, a jokester; they wanted to know who I was racially, so that they could classify me and figure out how to interact with me. I am American, the son of Brazilian immigrants. I grew up first in California, where I was constantly mixing with immigrants from El Salvador, Mexico, and Guatemala. When I was four, we moved to Brazil. I returned to the States at age seven. By the time I returned to the States I didn’t speak any English, so from second grade I was foreign and international and an English as a second language student, even though I was, as I tried to say, a United States American, when people asked me What are you? But my answer wasn’t good enough. No one believed it. My skin color and my accent didn’t add up to United States American in their minds. “I’m Brazilian,” I’d try. But that didn’t work either – I had adopted too many attributes of the “white” culture, whatever that is, to claim Latino identity. I began to notice how differently people looked at me if I was with my Latino friends’ families or black families as opposed with a white family. Curious eyes were trying to figure out what the relation was between white family and brown boy. There are weird transition phases that the children of immigrants go through, most notably the declaration of our United States American identity over our other identities. We become cultural straddlers. I felt that I had to choose one. In a culture that shames immigrants on a daily basis, I tried my hardest to claim my United States American identity, and rid myself of my Latino identity. This grew complicated once I began to learn about the civil rights movement. Seeing the images of segregated places made me think, if I was alive during this time would I have been considered black or white? I began to realize the implications that claiming black-
And let us choose one cheerful alumnus to stand for the thousands who contributed very generously indeed to the Rise Campaign: the avuncular George Galati ’54, who earned his education master’s in 1960 and enjoyed a stellar career as a teacher and administrator in Portland. George somehow contributed $54,000 during the Campaign, part of his many years of steady support, but it’s the imaginative breadth of his generosity that makes us happy this morning. He contributed the lovely statue of the Madonna in the Marian Garden, and a bell for the chapel, and gifts to this magazine, and for soccer and basketball, and toward a scholarship for kids from the Slabtown neighborhood of Portland, and most of all, best of all, scholarships honoring his late wife Ann and daughter Margaret Mary. And every year he comes to campus to meet the students who receive the Galati Scholarships – this year Ashley Woster (left) and Katy Jo Novinger. Thanks, George; and thanks to all the alumni whose gifts make a University education possible for their successors on The Bluff.
PHOTOGRAPHS: STEVE GIBBONS
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Far left, Pilot catcher Beau Fraser ’13, a WCC all-academic student (finance) who hit as high as .316 and was a famously good fielder who went an entire season behind the plate without an error, only the tenth man in University history to have a flawless year with the glove. At right, one of the world’s finest soccer players today, science major Sophie Schmidt ’10, who now splits her time between pro soccer’s Sky Blue club in New Jersey and the Canadian national team. More than $2 million was raised for Pilot athletics during the Campaign; perhaps the most easily seen effect is soccer’s beautifully renovated Merlo Field, and the beginning of a thorough renovation for baseball’s Joe Etzel Field.
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The new Aquino Professorship in Engineering sounds cool and impressive, doesn’t it? But like all Campaign generosities there are sweet brave cheerful human beings behind those tall formal words; in this case the late Vincent Aquino ’57 (at right above, with his brother Robert, circa 1944), a brilliant engineer at Argonne National Labs for many years; but also a beloved Scoutmaster (Troop 310, Idaho Falls), terrific cook, lifelong forest hiker, tireless volunteer at hospices and soup kitchens. He was a gracious generous cheerful affable avuncular man and now his spirit will always be at the University he loved; celebrated particularly by mechanical engineering professor Ken Lulay ’84, the first to hold the professorship Vince established with his will, and named for his mom and dad.
Let us sing the gentle generous Manny Macias ’51, emeritus professor of Spanish, who started teaching on The Bluff in 1958, and has created nine, count ’em nine, scholarships over the years, together totaling some $240,000 and awarded to 91 students so far. His scholarships are named for his parents, for his beloved brother Salvador, for Holy Cross priests and colleagues he admired during his career, and (during the Campaign) for the Holy Cross Grade School he loves dearly. What a sweet and wonderful man, is Manuelito. Prayers.
Last page of The Campaign Closing Issue goes, properly, to a student. It was all about students. It was all about finding every way we could to jazz and lift the minds and hearts and souls of our students. So here is Andrea Turel. She will be a junior when school starts up again in August. She has wanted to be a doctor since she was eleven years old and said to her mom I want to be a doctor and her mother said, not kidding, better start saving your money now, then, Andrea, because there are five of you who want to go to college... So Andrea Turel cleaned houses and babysat kids and worked as a camp counselor for the next nine years, and saved $37,000 (!) to come to the University of Portland and take pre-med courses. And she worked as hard as she could at Wilson High, and got perfect grades, so she could earn a scholarship to the University of Portland, with which she had fallen in love when she came for summer dance camps in high school. The lovely campus, the challenging curriculum, the chance to get a spiritual education also... “That’s why I came here. I always wanted to come here. I wouldn’t be here without scholarships. No way. I hope people realize how crucial scholarships are. My scholarship is giving me a chance to be a pediatric doctor. You bet I will give money to scholarships if I am ever in position to be generous. What’s money for if not for doing something good with it?” To which we can only say amen, slightly awed by the cheerful energy of Andrea Turel, Class of 2016. To all the Campaign’s 19,304 donors, our heartfelt thanks.
PHOTO BY CARLOS LEON
PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX
He takes over this summer as the University’s president. He’ll oversee a corporation with hundreds of employees and a budget of many millions and an economic impact on Oregon and Washington of many many millions. Twenty thousand alumni around the world will be watching with keen interest and deep commitment. The largest freshman class (more than a thousand students) in the 113-year history of the University arrives in August. Having raised a stunning $180 million in the last seven years, the University will have to raise even more in the next seven years, for scholarships, for new residence halls, for the new river campus. Does any of this make Father Mark Poorman, C.S.C., blink? Nope. You never met a more equable soul, with a more cheerfully blunt take on what he wants to accomplish as the University’s 20th president. “Look, we are producing extraordinary students who are technically and professionally savvy, who have had concrete experience in personal formation and ethical decision-making, who are intent on contributing to the common good. In this time of enormous economic pressure, they are terrific resources for companies and communities. The world wants and needs them and we will do much better at showing the world how to find them. There’s an energy and creativity here that we have to bring out to thousands more people in the city, the region, the nation. We have got to do a much better job of telling the world who we are, how great our students are, how unique our Holy Cross approach to education is. It’s time to really raise the profile. That’s my dream.” Soaring dream, that. Bet it happens. Help make it happen, if you can, with prayers and gifts and prayers.
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A SLATHER OF LIGHT
SUMMER IN OREGON... ...and some are not so lucky. We forget, sometimes, here at Oregon’s Catholic university, that one of the University’s greatest gifts and graces is its home, in one of the most blessed places on this miraculous earth. Clean water falling (thoroughly) from the untrammeled sky, clean air, deep and productive soil, not much class-consciousness and social snobbery, soaring peaks and a sea of sage, a willingness to creativity and generosity, a vast ocean beach, a general moist cheerfulness, a general feeling that education of the mind and heart and soul is the best road forward for us all – we are lucky to be here, delighted to be here, grateful to be here. Surely one of the reasons that benefactors were so generous to the University’s Rise Campaign was a shared pleasure in the astonishing gift of our home here in the Far Corner – caught here beautifully by the Oregon painter Marla Baggetta, from a recent show of her work on campus. For more of her lovely swirl, see marlabaggettastudio.com.