Portland State Magazine Spring 2012

Wind tunnel testing YOU DON'T have to build full-size windmills to figure out ways to make them work better. Mechanical engineering students are doing it with six-inch miniatures, which they've placed inside a new state-of-the-arc wind tunnel on campus. Under the guidance of professor Raul Bayoan Cal, the students control the temperature and terrain as well as the angle and velocity of airflow. They also rearrange the windmills to see if, for example, putting one behind another helps-or hinders-electrical generation. 1he National Science Foundation underwrites the work. Wisdom for graduates WHILE IN HER 40s, Jean Auel reinvented her life. She received her first university degree, quit her longtime job, and became a novelist-an amazingly successful novelist. Her books, Clan ofthe Cave Bear, published in 1980, and the other five in the Earth's Children series, have sold more than 50 million copies in 35 countries. Auel could never have predicted the course of her life when she was in her 20s or 30s, and neither can today's graduates, says Auel, the featured speaker at Spring Commencement on June 17. She will receive an honorary degree along with Ken Thrasher, local business executive and philanthropist. "I want to cell graduates that what you are going to be today is not the same as what you will be at 45," she says. Auel had written poetry, but writing fiction was new to her. She had a glimmer of an idea for a book, and following meticulous research, created her main character, Ayla, an orphaned Cro-Magnon girl adopted by a tribe of Neanderthals. She received a $130,000 advance for Clan ofthe Cave Bear, at the time a record-setting amount for a first book, and her research of prehistoric Europe earned her the respect of anthropologists and paleontologists around the world. The Land of Painted Caves, the final book in the series, was published last year. At age 76, Auel looks back at a life of continual learning. Before earning a degree, she took night classes for years at PSU while working and raising five children. Those early years ar PSU are now coming full circle. Among the graduates at Spring Commencement will be two of her grandchildren. "Life will come at you with all kinds of possibilities and different paths," Auel will tell her grandchildren. "Be open and enjoy it." PARK BLOCKS KEN THRASHER will receive an honorary degree at Spring Commencement June 17 . He has held senior management positions at Fred Meyer, Inc., and Compli, a Portland software company. At PSU, Thrasher serves on the Foundation and Social Work Advisory boards, and, in 2006, he helped lead PSU's successful $100 million comprehensive fundraising campaign. ■ SPRING 2012 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE 5