PSU Magazine Summer 1987

• • A Pendleton native, Simmons came to Portland in 1959 and enrolled at Portland State because he saw it as the best way to get ahead. "My impression of Portland State was that it was a tough school," says Simmons. "It had a very good faculty and it was very tough because all of the people there basically were there for one reason, and that was upward mobility. They wanted to go to school and get a degree so they could get a better paying job." After graduation, Simmons took a job as a public welfare case worker in Yamhill County and, after one and a half years, made his move to Salem to become a project consultant. In 1969 he began a 15-year position as an analyst for the Legislative Fiscal Office, providing the legislature with the facts it needed to make laws. "We always provided the legislature with options, so they could compare them with other alternatives and make a choice," he said. Through the years he helped elected officials analyze and evaluate what would become milestones in the state's legislative history, items such as the bottle bill, the merger of the fish and wildlife departments, the creation of the Water Resources Department, Portland's light rail project and the development of the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution. That kind of background will stand him in good stead in the move to his new office. "I know all the tech– niques. I know how to get stuff done," he says. rsu PSU Magazine learned - too late for inclusion in this story - that Paul Cook ('71) has been named by Gov. Goldschmidt to the three– member Oregon Public Utility Commission created by voters last November. Cook, 51, is vice president and manager of the head office commercial banking center for Key Bank and is a past member of the City of Portland Planning Commission and the Tri-Met Board. He was appointed to a one– year term on the Commission. Always one to get involved Janice Yaden ('66) Don't let the spark HELP KID~ DRUG·FRE Assistant to the Governor, Human Services J anice Yaden ('66) strides into her office during a short break between committee meetings. Her arms are loaded with files. She flops a sheaf of papers onto her desk, grabs another stack, crumples an old message and throws it into the wastebasket. She makes a quick phone call and is off again. As resolute as when she arrived, she heads back down the hall of the Capitol past crowds of bantering politicos. Is it usually this hectic? "As a matter of routine during the legislature, I'm expecting it will always be that way," says Yaden the next day in a rare calm moment. Yaden is assista nt to the governor for human resources, a new position PSU MAGAZINE PAGE 13 that is Neil Goldschmidt's listening post for all people and topics having to do with child care providers, hospitals, legal aid and welfare, and how they are affected by the legislature. Many issues don't get as far as Yaden, but when they deal with policy and the governor's office, Yaden gets involved. Once the crises of the current legislative session are over, she expects to begin working with the governor on long-term policy. Yaden has always been one to get involved. As a student at Portland State, she demonstrated against the Vietnam War and immersed herself in foreign affairs. As she remembers it, "I was pretty unsophisticated. I had my gut feeling like most students did that somehow it was wrong that some people were living so well and some people were Jiving so miserably. And I don't think we entirely understood how to change that." Later, through her travels and studies, Yaden came to believe that politics were often at the core of social problems. Yaden was attracted to Portland State by its Middle East Studies Center. She took courses in Middle Eastern history and literature and learned to speak Turkish and Arabic. After earning her degree in political science, she traveled throughout the countries she had studied and spent four years teaching school in Ankora, Turkey. "I think that my orientation was toward helping the poor and helping people who, for one reason or another, particularly through their political systems, were downtrodden." She returned to Portland State to earn an American teaching certificate, and taught for two years before moving to Washington, D.C. to work for California congressman George Miller on the Education and Labor committee. Over the next six years she divided her time between Washington and Portland, working for the Pacific Northwest Basin Committee, raising her young children, and later acting as Continued on page 20