Portland State Magazine, Spring 2021

Making 10 13 History Portland State’s story is one of perseverance—founded in 1946 as the Van- port Extension Center for the surge of World War II veterans returning to Portland, resurrected from the devastating 1948 Vanport food, designated a four-year college in 1955 and given university standing in 1969 after years of political struggle.Te aptly named book “Te College Tat Would Not Die” by the late Gordon B. Dodds, former chair of the History Department, chronicles the school’s frst 50 years, taking its title from the Vanguard student newspaper, which after the food, included the line “Te College Tat Wouldn’t Die” under its name, inspired by a national story in the Christian Science Monitor about Vanport’s post-food success. “One of the major themes of the university has always been a sort of eye-of-the-storm institution, beleaguered and making its way against tremendous difculties,” Dodds told PSU Magazine in 1988, after he was charged with preparing a history of PSU in time for its 50th anniversary in 1996. He drew on oral interviews with faculty and administrators, the University Archives’ hundreds of boxes of materials, minutes of faculty senate and state board meetings, and articles from the Vanguard,Te Oregonian and Oregon Journal to compile the history. He dedicated the book to Stephen Epler, “founder and savior of the university.” Find copies in the University library as well as in limited quantities through Powell’s Books and Amazon. —CRISTINA ROJAS 14 A NewMoto Portland State’s motto “Let Knowledge Serve the City” was adopted in 1990 when Judith Ramaley, sixth president of Portland State and frst woman to serve as a president in the Oregon state system, created the phrase to sum up her vision for the University’s future. “Across the country there is a kind of institution emerging in the major metropolitan areas,” Ramaley told PSU Magazine in the Summer 1990 issue. “Tis kind of institution draws its strength and its inspiration from the urban area, and frst and foremost responds to the needs of the urban area.” Professors Rod Diman and John Cooper translated the motto into Latin (“Doctrina Urbi Serviat”) and Professor Robert Kasal fashioned it into a new seal, incorporating a classic rose window in reference to “Port- land, the City of Roses.”Te old seal had mirrored the State of Oregon’s. “Somehow it didn’t seem to me that a picture of a Conestoga wagon and team, or a sailing vessel, represented us very well,” Ramaley explains today. Neither did the old seal’s reference to 1955 as the institution’s beginning. Tough that was when Portland State ofcially became a college, it had actually been established in 1946 as the Vanport Extension Center—a fact Portland State now embraced with pride. Te new seal was etched onto Ramaley’s presidential medallion for her inauguration that fall in 1990. “Given our fnancial condition at the time, the medallion was made of steel,” she says. A few years later, it was replaced with the fancier golden version seen here.Tough the original medallion Ramaley wore has been lost, the message that frst appeared on it shapes Portland State to this day. —SCHOLLE McFARLAND P S U P R E S I D E N T ’ S O F F I C E SPRING 2021 // 29