Portland State Magazine Fall 2015

FALL 2015 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE 7 PA R K B L O C K S Creating à la carte seating THE FOOD CARTS along Southwest Fourth Avenue between College and Hall streets are a favorite grazing ground for the campus community and employees from surrounding buildings. But where do you sit? Architecture students in partnership with the South of Market (SOMA) EcoDistrict designed and built seating in June with more than $15,000 raised through crowdfunding. The city of Portland-approved wooden structure replaced two parking spaces on the street with seating for more than two-dozen people. The space, known as a parklet, is the first public street seat installation in downtown Portland. There are others around the city, but they are for exclusive use by restaurants and bars. Lightening the textbook burden STUDENTS ARE SAVING MONEY by downloading free textbooks written by Portland State faculty through PDX Open, a publishing service provided by the PSU Library. Five textbooks, exploring topics such as Japanese language and Portland’s artisan economy, were published as open-access ebooks as part of the University’s reTHINK project to reduce higher education expenses. In the service’s first term, the textbooks saved students more than $23,800—and because anyone has access to the books, they were also downloaded in countries such as Poland, Thailand and Brazil. Due to this success, the library will publish five more faculty- authored, open-access textbooks in January on topics in language and business. 