PSU Magazine Winter 2001

-& 0 U N D T H E P A R K Opera Theater program takes top honors The Opera Theater program, directed by Professor Ruth Dobson, is receiv– ing a first-p lace award from the National Opera Association's Opera Production Competition this month. The award wi ll be given at NOA's 46th annual convention in New York. T his good news comes on the heels of three PSU singers winning top spots in a recent Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions for the Oregon district. The Marriage of Figaro, which was performed in April and May of 2000, is receiving recognition as an out– standing production by an academic or community ensembles. The opera won for Division II schools. PSU was in good company: judges chose from 32 taped submissions, and College Con– servatory of Music, Univers ity of C incinnati, won for Division I. The Marriage of Figaro performed to sold-out houses and earned outstand– ing reviews. Because of its popularity, the Opera Theater has chosen another Mozart opera, The Magic Flute , for its upcoming production on May 4-12. Many of last year's singers are return– ing for the opera. Audrey Luna, a win– ner in the recent Met competition, will also be part of the cast. Rocket club launches another one On a windy day in Central Oregon last October, a trucker on Highway 20 saw a strange object floating down through the sky and called the local sheriff. Not to worry. We're not being invaded by aliens. It was just the payload of another successful launch by the Portland State Aero– space Society. The society, an amateur group of rocket enthusiasts featured in the Winter 2000 issue of PSU Maga– zine, fired up the last of its Launch Vehicle 1 units near the town of Millican on Oct. 7, and will move on to the more sophisticated LV2 in 2001. The October launch broke through another set of barriers in the Aerospace Society's three-year history. For the first time, the pro– ject included a global positioning system and a high-speed (19.2 kbps) modem that enabled a steady two-way flow of information between the rocket and the crew below. The Holy Grail of the launch, according to project princi- 2 P U MAGAZINE WINTER 2001 pal Andrew Greenberg, was the suc– cessful capture of voluminous flight data by electronics within the rocket's nose cone. "We hit every one of our goals," says Greenberg, who is looking for– ward to launching the LV2. Helping to fund that project will be a $10,000 NASA Space Grant obtained for the society through electrical engineering professor James McNames. The group plans to launch a scaled-down version of the LV2 next summer, gradually working up to the first computer– controlled launch in the amateur rocketing world in 2002. Last winter's PSU Magazine arti– cle and a story in the Oregonian helped attract new members to the society as a few others dropped out, Greenberg says. Membership now stands at about 20 students and non-students in the Portland area whose interests range from electri– cal engineering to chemistry to computers. The group receives fac– ulty guidance, and manufactures its rockets at members' homes. B L 0 C K S PSU in movie Bounce Actress Gwyneth Pa ltrow looks good in a PSU T-shirt in the major motion picture Bounce, and the Portland State dip loma on the wall fits with the story line that has her husband an alumnus of the Univers ity. So what that he dies early in the film. His memory and that of PSU live on through at least two more scenes. The film, starring Paltrow and Ben Affleck, was released before the holi– days by Miramax Films. The produc– tion's costume designer came looking for PSU props more than a year ago to fill out the Greg Janella character played by Tony Goldwyn. No one at PSU thought to ask, "why us?" It's probable that someone on the Bounce production team was familiar with the Univers ity, and with luck, director– screenwriter Don Roos will use PSU in another major film. Student numbers at all– time high for University The University marked -it highest enrollment ever this fall at 17,241 stu– dents. Until this year, the record was 16,841 students in 1979-80. Compared to last year, Portland State is experiencing a 7.5 percent increase. Combined enrollment, which includes Extended Studies, rose 3.9 percent to 19,029. The University saw its largest increase in freshmen enroll– ment (up 8.5 percent}, especially in the College of Engineering and Com– puter Science. The college experi– enced a 12.4 percent increase in undergraduate students who declared engineering or computer science as their major, and a 10.6 percent increase in the number of graduate students declaring these majors. In addition, total graduate student enrollment rose 6.4 percent; minority student enrollment rose 8 percent to 2,808 students, representing 16 per– cent of total enrollment; and interna– tional student enrollment rose 23 percent from last year to 961 students.