PSU Magazine Spring 2003

0 U N D T H E PARK PSU founder gets long overdue recognition It was 56 years in the making, but Ponland State's founding father, the late Stephen E. Epler, finally has a building named after him. The Univer– sity is renaming the Birmingham, a student residence facility currently under construction, Stephen E. Epler Hall. On March 24, 1946, the State Board of Higher Education created the Van– port Extension Center and named Epler director. In the three months before the center opened in June , Epler hired faculty and staff, oversaw the conversion of buildings into class– rooms, and admitted its first students. The Vanport flood of Memorial Day 1948 washed away the center, but Epler made sure that it was reestab– lished. The center began operation again in the summer of 1948 in Grant High School before it moved to the Oregon Shipyards, and later to Lincoln High School in downtown Portland. Despite opposition from organiza– tions throughout Oregon, Epler fought to keep the center operating, to make it a permanent, two-year institution in 1949, and to transform it into Portland State College, a four-year school, in 1955 . He left PSU that same year to direct a community college in California. Epler Hall, located at 1824 SW 12th, will replace the old 13-unit Birmingham Housing with 130 units in a six-story complex. The ground floor will be devoted to University use. Much of the old building is being sal– vaged and recycled and many of the fixtures will be reused in the new building. The University expects the project to be LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified-a designation given by the U.S Green Building Council. The building should be complete in August. B Engineering receives $2.5 million gift The second largest gift in the Univer– sity's history and the donor's largest gift ever in Oregon came to Portland State this winter from Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and his wife, Betty. The Moores donated $2.5 million to the Northwest Center for Engineering, Science and Technology, a proposed 130,000-square-foot new home for the College of Engineering and Computer Science. The engineering center's new five– story building will include 47 research and instructional labs. Ground break– ing is expected this summer. The Moores live in Woodside, California. Gordon Moore, 74, is listed by Forbes magazine as one of the 50 richest people in the United State. He co-founded Intel in 1968 with Robert Noyce. Today the company, based in Santa Clara, California, is the world's largest semiconductor manufacturer. lt employs 14,600 workers in Oregon. Hantavirus-infected mice found in Portland-area parks Amid the lush green foliage of Port– land-area parks, a potential four-legged menace lurks-mice carrying han– tavirus. Tests conducted by biologist Luis Ruedas and his students have come up positive, an unusual worry fo r the metropolitan area and the state. ln the past 10 years, five people were reported to have hantavirus in Oregon resulting in three deaths. According to Ruedas, in North America only deer mice and related species are able to infect humans who handle them or inhale their dried urine or fecal material. The disease is not always fatal but there is no cure. For– tunately hantavi.ruses are relati vely rare, as are its most deadly strains. Ruedas and doctoral students Laurie Dizney and Phil Jones say there is cir– cumstantial evidence that a pathogenic strain is present. 2 PSU MAGAZINE SPRlNG 2003 Student Laurie Dizney weighs a chip– munk in Oxbow Park. Chipmunks can get hantavirus but clear the infec– tion quickly and do not pass it on. Preliminary results show that about 15 percent of the deer mice captured in Forest Park carry a strain of hantavi.rus, compared with about 5 percent in Tryon Creek State Park. Over the next three years, the team will study wildlife in these parks and Oxbow Regional Park, Tualatin Wildlife Refuge , and Powell Butte Park. Ruedas has a theory: The more species present within a biological community, the fewer the vi.ruses. lt's a call for conservation that Ruedas, Jones, and Dizney suspect is more essential than anyone ever realized. To furth er their study, the team is con– ducting animal density counts in the parks by live trapping all animals within a 7.76 acre area. It's too early to draw any conclusions, they say, but the preliminary evidence appears to support Ruedas's hypothesis.