—2— President’s Message LARRY SAWYER Congratulations to all five recipients of this year’s RAPS awards at the President’s Luncheon on April 22. Along with the rest of you, I didn’t know the recipients’ identities before the luncheon. Many people contributed to the success of our pictorial history of the University, Portland State: A History in Pictures. Although Ken Brown, Kathryn Kirkland, and Dennis Stovall are mentioned in the book’s acknowledgements, many probably weren’t aware of their contributions. This is my next-to-last column as president before turning over the reins to Clarence Hein at the June Board of Directors meeting. My focus has been to inform you of your board’s activities that might not be noted elsewhere. An example is the presentation from two staff members of the Office of International Affairs at our March meeting; they asked RAPS to help coordinate a mentoring program for international students. The mentoring is cultural, not academic. Marge Terdal volunteered to be the coordinator, and I appointed her as the chair of a “committee of one” to work with International Affairs. The program will probably run in the winter and spring terms, and Marge will likely be recruiting mentors this fall. The University has set rules to protect them and us from liability issues. During the first week of May, Robert Vogelsang and I will represent RAPS at the regional retirement association’s spring meeting, hosted by Western Washington University in Bellingham. One of the questions we will ask other organizations is how they fund their scholarship programs. RAPS will cover a very small part of the expense. —Larry Sawyer Annual icecreamsocial set for May 20 It’s May, and that means it’s time for RAPS’ Ice Cream Social! The Social will be held on Thursday, May 20, in the Vanport Room, 338 Smith Memorial Student Union. The event starts at noon, with the presentation beginning at 12:30 p.m. The Social is a superb opportunity to add to your cholesterol count while meeting some of Portland State’s current students. The student panel will tell RAPS about their experiences at Portland State— why they came, what they’re studying, what’s good and, possibly, what could be better at the University. It’s an opportunity to discover how much things may have changed, and how much they’ve “staid” the same. suggestions that the present OUS governance structure is in dire need of an overhaul. “It doesn’t make sense to me to run Portland State University as if it were the Department of Motor Vehicles,” Wiewel said, warming to his subject. “And that’s what it’s like now—we’re subject to the same rules and administrative requirements.” But Portland State is in a very different kind of business from the DMV. “For instance, for us to buy a building, it takes about 18 months, with six months of publicity,” Wiewel said. “When we’re negotiating with a potential seller, and they already know what the state has told us we can pay for it, you’re just not in the strongest position to get the best deal. And that’s just one example of how (PSU) being a state agency costs everybody more.” The PSU web site has a draft white paper, “Restructuring PSU’s Relationship with the State: A Case for Change,” that is billed as “the beginning of an ongoing discussion between PSU and its sister institutions in the Oregon University System.” You can find the paper at www.pdx.edu/president/restructuring. Still, Wiewel said Portland State is successful on a number of fronts—partnering with other community entities, finding ways to improve student success, and boosting research dollars. One recent partnership example is a project to demonstrate and evaluate the next-generation Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid vehicle. Toyota selected PSU and its Oregon partners, including PGE, for the project. Portland State will administer the program regionally. Another is a partnership with Intel, which is paying Portland State to educate Vietnamese engineering students who will work in a new production facility Intel is building in Vietnam. State funding down, tuition up . . . continued from page 1
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