Portland State Magazine Fall 2021

FALL 2021 // 9 HIDDEN RESILIENCE IN REFUGEE CAMPS JORDAN Theodore Khoury, business faculty, and colleagues study how refugee- led, informal supply networks in the Za’atari camp just south of the Syrian border in Jordan contribute to the camp’s resilience and benefit the nearby community of Mafraq. The team’s work dispels the notion of refugees as passive aid recipients, demonstrating that people living in refugee camps form societies with complex social and economic systems. THINKING BEYOND BORDERS Alexander Sager, philosophy faculty, writes about the need for new categories of thinking about human mobility. His defense of open borders, Against Borders , was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of 2020. His earlier book, Toward a Cosmopolitan Ethics of Mobility , advocates for an ethics that celebrates human movement, diversity and deep connections across borders. THE OREGON LEGISLATURE has approved $50 million in funding to create a modern facility that brings together all of PSU’s Art + Design programs under one roof, creating a central hub for the school.The University will raise an additional $5 million through philanthropy to complete the project, which is expected to be finished in 2024.The center will provide teaching spaces, digital labs and maker spaces, materials storage and gallery spaces for the school’s nearly 1,100 students. Right now, students and programs are spread across five non-contiguous campus locations, without a unified space to gather as a community or a central site to seek advising and peer support.The project will increase the School of Art + Design’s space capacity and is expected to boost efficiency. Carefully designed spaces will also help advance the school’s focus on increasing retention and completion among students, nurturing partnerships with community partners and employers, and contributing to the diversity of the regional creative workforce. PSU educates the most underserved students in the state, and 43% of students in the School of Art + Design identify as underrepresented minorities. —KAREN O’DONNELL STEIN NEW HOME ON HORIZON FOR SCHOOL OF ART + DESIGN HOPE AND PEACEBUILDING THAILAND In partnership with Chulalongkorn University and the Tham Hin refugee camp in Thailand, Staci Martin, social work faculty, is studying the role of hope and how emotions contribute to peacebuilding, agency and action, specifically with Thailand’s youth and refugee youth integrating into Thai culture. Martin is a 2021- 2022 Fulbright Scholar. MIGRANTS, URBANIZATION AND INEQUALITY CHINA Yiping Fang, urban studies and planning faculty, examines the social and spatial inequalities of China’s urbanization processes, including the disadvantages domestic migrants face when seeking opportunities for upward social mobility. SRG PARTNERSHIP ARCHITECTURAL CONCEPT RENDERING ILLUSTRATION BY AIRDONE, ADOBE STOCK