Portland State Magazine Fall 2015

FALL 2015 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE 23 “We hear from a lot of auditors in the program that they simply enjoy being with younger people,” she says. “This is the perfect place to have those interactions.” Now that Reed has finished her degree, she is continuing to volunteer in Anderson’s lab this fall and she might use her new knowledge to volunteer at archaeological sites such as Fort Vancouver. She lives near campus, making it easy to come back to campus. Over the summer, she published her fourth mystery, Books of the Dead , about archaeologists in Egypt, and is in the middle of writing two more. She has her own publishing house for her books and those of other writers. Her advice to others considering a return to school? “Go for it.” “It’s such a mistake to become complacent,” she says. “As my English teacher from high school used to say, ‘Don’t rest on your laurels.’ Make new laurels.”  Suzanne Pardington is a staff member in the PSU Office of University Communications. How to audit classes PSU’s Senior Adult Learning Center allows Oregon residents 65 and older to sign up for classes tuition-free on a space-available basis. Popular classes often fill up with paying students, but PSU offers thousands of courses open to auditors. The program is supported by donations. For details, call 503-725-4739, email salc@pdx.edu or go to bit.ly/SALCinfo . With a new PSU degree in archaeology, Michelle Reed plans to continue to catalog artifacts in a campus lab.