Portland State Magazine Winter 2016

winter 2016 pORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE 19 future be, Thompson earned a 3.8 at Franklin High and was named a Gates Millennium Scholar, a program funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The scholarship covers undergraduate tuition and living expenses—plus graduate school in certain subjects—for black, Latino, Native American and Asian-Pacific Islander American students with significant financial need. Gates Scholars can use the awards at any college they choose. Thompson picked PSU over the University of California, Berkeley for its Honors College, strong engineering program and focus on sustainability. She also received PSU’s Eubanks Memorial Trust Scholarship and Rose E. Tucker Charitable Trust Honors Scholarship. KNOWING her education and living expenses are fully covered has given Thompson the freedom to live on campus, take a heavy course load and join seven student clubs, including the American Indian Science and Engineering Society and the Society of Women Engineers. But her first year was tough. Several close relatives have died in the past few years: her grandfather who helped raise her and taught her the Yurok language, an aunt who was missing for two years before her body was found, and a favorite elder she visited often. She also has dyslexia, which makes college-level writing more difficult. Yet Olyssa Starry, an Urban Honors professor, says Thompson let none of her circumstances get in the way of her academic work. She was a standout student with a “let’s get to work” attitude and a passion for sustainable urban design, Starry says. “It is very clear to me that Brook has a very strong connection to her cultural heritage,” she says. “I would imagine reconciling this with life outside of the reservation must be challenging. That’s why one of the things that impresses me about Brook is the grace and enthusiasm with which she explores and addresses challenges.” For one assignment, Starry asked students in her year-long freshman course on The Global City to design a backyard habitat in an open space behind the Honors building. Thompson included a digital sketch of the garden and even specified where to buy recycled materials, which native plants to include, and how to attract butterflies and birds but not mosquitoes. “Brook was able to incorporate a lot of ideas from the texts we read in class into her design,” Starry says. ”You could also really tell from the details that Brook was ready to implement it.” Thompson says small Honors class sizes of 25 students, one-on-one writing tutors, the disability and Native American centers and friends in her student groups helped her excel in her first year. PSU’s Roads2Success program, a two-week introduction to study skills and campus life, made her feel confident from the start. Last summer and fall, she studied at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and shared a flat with three other students. Her classes included one on the indigenous Maori people, who were colonized at about the same time as the Yurok and struggle with some of the same problems. Thompson wants to take some of the Maori strategies for continuing to speak their native language back to her own tribe. “I’m not just going to college for myself,” Thompson says. “I’m trying to improve other people’s lives just as much.”  Suzanne Pardington is a staff member in the PSU Office of University Communications. Gates scholar is committed to improving the lives of her people