Winners of Oregon State University’s first Engagement Awards were honored during the inaugural OSU Engagement Conference Sept. 5 at the CH2M Hill Alumni Center on the Corvallis campus.
At Oregon State, community engagement is collaboration that generates co-created knowledge and impact benefiting OSU and its partners. Community partners can include social and cultural organizations; nonprofits; business, industry and entrepreneurs; government agencies; individuals; and other higher education institutions across Oregon, the nation and the globe.
The awards recognize and celebrate faculty, staff and community partners for their efforts to develop programs or projects that adhere to the principles of community engagement and engaged scholarship.
“As Oregon's land-grant university, it's critical that we engage with communities in a spirit of reciprocity,” said Marina Denny, associate vice provost for engagement. “If we bring the research and resources of the university and our community partners bring their knowledge and ideas to the table, together we can co-create mutually beneficial solutions to wicked, real-world problems.”
This year’s honorees are:
She convened community meetings, wrote grant requests and managed the project with community partners in an effort to address the need for internet connectivity in small towns and unincorporated communities in her region. The first CyberMill location opened in Seneca in 2021 and the second in Prairie City opened in October 2022. A location is planned for John Day in 2024.
They considered the social, economic and ecological costs and benefits and engaged with entities that serve underrepresented groups, with a focus on Latino/a/x residents. Researchers’ findings show how specific policies may disproportionately impact vulnerable populations.
This project produced 14 publications and over 30 presentations; trained 11 graduate students and postdocs in transdisciplinary, community-engaged research methods; and laid the groundwork for a $19 million-dollar National Science Foundation grant to expand the work to the Pacific Northwest.
Faculty accepting the award on behalf of the team were: Peter Ruggiero, professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences; John Bolte, professor and head of the Department of Biological and Ecological Engineering in the College of Agricultural Sciences; Patrick Corcoran, associate professor emeritus in CEOAS and Oregon Sea Grant Extension coastal hazards specialist; Daniel T. Cox, professor and director of the Cascadia Lifelines Project, College of Engineering; Steven J. Dundas, associate professor in the College of Agricultural Sciences and researcher at the Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station; Felicia Olmeta Schult, professor of practice in CEOAS and Oregon Sea Grant Extension coastal hazards specialist; and Jenna Tilt, assistant professor in CEOAS.
The project focuses on Indigenous perspectives and facilitates greater reciprocity towards the Siletz tribal community. On a wider scale, it features Indigenous peoples’ ocean relations more globally.
The inaugural course, which was planned for five years, occurred over a pair of three-day stints in April and May 2023. The Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport served as a collaborative space and base of operations for pairing marine and coastal science learning with the traditional ecological knowledges and practices, such as shellfish aquaculture communities, sustainable fishing, sea otter reintroduction and forest-ocean relations.
- Michelle Klampe