Portland State University Alumni News Winter 1986 Inside An All-Star Event I 3 PSU invites alumni and friends to a 40th blfthday party filled with piZLaLZ Memories of Vanport I 4 S'x \Ianport Extension Center students and staff remember PSU's first campus 40 yea .. 01 great teaching I 6 Basil Dmytryshyn shmes as an outstandmll teacher dUflnS PSU's 40-year history Grooming the high school student I 7 Future college students prepare for the rigors of academic life In search of homeles. women I 8 PSU students examine 'he ',ves of Portland', homeless ~ " , " O m e n Serving the visually impaired I 12 Grace E. Hobbs Center provides innovative equipment and training for visually impaIred students and community members AlumNotes I 10 Foundation New. I 11 Campus New. I 12 Calendar I 15 tivc Vanport students relax between classes at PSU's first campus. Van port Extension CenterPSU's tenacious first campus led the way by Clarence Hein It was "The College That Would Not Die," and it was born in Portland in the spring of 1946. Two years later, Vanport Extension Center was washed downstream by the disastrous 1948 flood, but the momentum generated by Portland State University's first faculty and student body could not be contained. World War II had been over less than a year and across the country men and women were trying to step back into their lives interrupted by the war. For many, education was high on the agenda and 36,000 certificates of eligibility for GI education benefits were issued that year in Oregon alone. By 1947, 1.1 million veterans would be in colleges across the United States. There simply was no way ~ x i s t i n g educational institutions could absorb the post-war crush. In Oregon, there was no public higher education institution in the state's population center where the majority of returning veterans congregated. They wanted classes located near jobs and housing for their families. The existing extension service was tapped to take up the slack and provide temporary lower-division courses in Portland. Students would have to transfer elsewhere to complete their degrees. Campus on the Cutting Edge Attention then turned to the question of a physical structure - a place for classes and a supply of low-cost housing. The answer to that question put Portland in the forefront of higher education in 1946. The end of the war meant not only abrupt change for the Gl's, but also the end of thousands of defense-related jobs, including those at shipbuilding facilities in Portland. The government had built an enormous public housing project in 1942-43 for shipyard workers in North Portland near the Columbia River. At one point, 50,000 people lived in Vanport, making it Oregon's second most populous city. With the end of the war, the shipyards closed and many workers vacated their Vanport housing. Steven Epler, veterans' counselor at the State System of Higher Education, viewed the waning Vanport as an opportunity and suggested its use for the extension center. Some of the buildings already were dismantled and en route to other West Coast campuses. Why not, he reasoned, retain some of the buildings and use them? The plan was presented to the State Board in March, 1946, and by June, the first classes were called to order with 221 students in summer session. Of those first students, 208 were veterans, 31 of them disabled. 8y September, enrollment had swelled to more than 1,400. High-Spirited Campus There was a dominant pirit among the students, faculty and families of Vanport. While studies came first (engineering and business were the most popular fields), there also was time for social life, jobs, families and campus activities. A student newspaper, The Vanguard, edited by a blind veteran, Don Carlo, began publishing almost with the first week of classes. There were also clubs, dances, and athletics. Continued on page 3
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