2010-2013

2010

Student enrollment: 23,761, including 678 at OSU-Cascades

Population in Corvallis: 54,462; in Benton County: 85,579; in Oregon: 3,831,074

Al Reser, alumnus and longtime supporter of OSU, passed away on April 12th at the age of 74. Reser was one of the most prominent members of the OSU community with his generosity to both academics and athletics, as well as his leadership in various OSU organizations. Reser owned and operated Reser Fine Foods, and Reser Stadium was named in his honor.

In May, construction began on the International Learning Living (INTO) Center in the south end of campus. Designed to provide new classrooms, offices, and living space, the 148,000-square-foot building was part of a plan to double OSU’s international enrollment over a five-year period.

OSU’s Global Formula Racing team won a national championship in May. In beating an international field of 122 other teams, OSU won the 2010 Formula SAE National Championship in collegiate car racing. OSU also placed first in several design categories.

OSU’s Mars Rover Team, part of the OSU Robotics Club, won a national championship in June at the University Rover Challenge in Utah. OSU’s Mars Rover had to complete several tasks in extreme conditions.

OSU oceanographer Kelly Benoit-Bird was one of 23 recipients nationally to receive a 2010 MacArthur Fellowship or "Genius Award." The fellowship included a $500,000 stipend to further the recipient’s scholarship. Benoit-Bird was the second OSU faculty member to receive the fellowhip -- Jane Lubchenco received one in 1993. 

On October 15, alumnus Warren Washington received the National Medal of Science in a ceremony with President Barak Obama in honor of his work studying the earth’s climate. The Medal of Science recognizes outstanding contributions to science and engineering. Washington had been an international leader in climate studies for 40 years.

OSU-Cascades announced its first endowed professorship in November. The Tykeson Family Charitable Trust gave $250,000 to establish the Tykeson Endowed Faculty Scholar in Energy Engineering Management.

2011

In May, OSU’s Global Formula Racing team became just the third team in the history of Formula SAE to win back-to-back national championships when it took first place out of an international field of 99 teams. The Global Formula Racing team consisted primarily of students from the College of Engineering.

Constructions for the Native American Cultural Center broke ground on May 11, marking the first of four new cultural centers on campus. The center was built near location of its predecessor, the Native American Longhouse, a World War II-era Quonset hut.

The International Living-Learning Center opened in September. Home to about 320 domestic and international students, the center was built on Western Boulevard in Corvallis to house the INTO OSU Center, dorms, and administrative offices.

The Hallie E. Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families opened on September 8. The center houses various research projects involving parenting, children, and other family issues.

The Linus Pauling Science Center, the largest donor-supported building project to date at OSU, opened on October 14. Named for OSU's most famous alumnus, two time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling, the building houses the Linus Pauling Institute and part of OSU's Department of Chemistry. Primary gifts for the $62.5 million project, which broke ground in 2009, came from the Wayne and Gladys Valley Foundation and Pat and Al Reser.

2012

In January OSU joined four other university colleges of veterinary medicine to form a consortium designed to create the Consortium of Western Regional Colleges of Veterinary Medicine. The regional "think tank" was designed to create more opportunities for students, faculty and professionals in the field. Other members of the the consortium were Colorado State University, the University of California at Davis, Washington State University, and Western University of Health Sciences.

In April, Oregon State University re-opened the Joyce Collin Furman Hall (previously the Education Hall), home of the College of Education, featuring technology-equipped classrooms, student study spaces, and faculty offices.

The Ettihad Cultural Center established; it represents and supports the unique needs of OSU students who identify with the cultures of central and southwestern Asia, as well as northern Africa.

OSU's Global Formula Racing team won its third consecutive national championship at Michigan International Speedway – the only time this has ever happened. OSU’s racing team, a collaboration between OSU and Duale Hochschule Baden-Wurttemberg-Ravensburg in Germany, received the first place overall award and first place titles in engineering design, endurance, and the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Spirit of Excellence.

On June 17, First Lady Michelle Obama was the speaker for the 2012 commencement ceremony. Mrs. Obama, the sister of the men’s basketball coach Craig Robinson, also received an honorary OSU doctorate.

In September, construction was finished on the first phase of the Whyte Track & Field Center, a facility expected to greatly improve OSU runners' ability to practice and compete. This $5.5 million project was be completed in two phases - phase one included a track, turf infield, and hammer throw area and the phase two was to include grandstands, press box, scoreboard, entry plaza, lights, distance plaza and competitive staging area.

The James E. Oldfield Animal Teaching Facility, which opened officially in October, was the first completed in the planned four-building Animal Sciences Complex. The teaching and research facility included two classrooms, four labs, and a large demonstration area to serve several hundred students each year. The building is named for OSU almunus James Edmund Oldfield, a former head of the animal science department and animal nutrition scientist.

OSU’s large oceangoing research vessel R/V Wecoma made its last official voyage in November. For more than 35 years, the Wecoma served Hatfield Marine Science Center scientists to learn about fisheries, climate change, undersea earthquakes and volcanoes, tsunamis, marine dead zones and other scientific issues. It was replaced in February 2013 by the R/V Oceanus, a ship retired from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution fleet.

2013

Construction began in April on Austin Hall, the future home of the College of Business, between Sackett and Fairbanks Halls. A $10 million gift from Ken Austin and the late Joan Austin, and a $6 million gift from Pat Reser and the late Al Reser and their family, were the lead gifts on the project – an initiative of The Campaign for OSU. The four story, 100,000-square-foot facility, scheduled to open in fall 2014, will include 10 classrooms, a 250-seat auditorium, a Career Success Center, an MBA suite, a research lab, collaborative team rooms, more than 70 faculty offices, staff and program offices, a café and event space.

Two years after its groundbreaking, the new Native American Longhouse hosted its grand opening on May 11; it was named Eena Haws, which means Beaver House. The building replaced a WWII era Quonset hut, which had served as the first longhouse since 1972.

In June, the new Basketball Practice Facility held its grand opening. The 34,500-square-foot, four-story structure containsed two regulation basketball courts modeled after facilities at the universities of Florida and Kentucky. The courts occupy the first and third floors of the building, along with locker rooms, satellite training and medical areas. The partial second and fourth floors contained coach and program staff offices.

In June, Aaron Wolf, a geography professor in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, received the 2013 Il Monito del Giardino (The Warning from the Garden) Award by the Bardini and Peyron Monumental Parks Foundation of Florence, Italy. The honor is given to persons who have distinguished themselves internationally in safeguarding the environment and raising awareness of ecological issues. The scientific committee cited Wolf’s involvement in striving for more democratic access to the world’s water sources.

In June, the OSU Solar Vehicle Team won the 2013 Formula Sun Grand Prix competition in Austin, Texas. Their vehicle, the Phoenix, completed 193 laps (661 miles) around the Circuit of the Americas raceway on solar energy. The name ‘Phoenix’ refers to the mythical bird rising from ashes, significant because the team recovered from their car burning to the ground after a battery fire in 2011.

In September, Brett Tyler, professor of Botany and Plant Pathology at OSU, received the Friendship Award of China for a decade of technical assistance and scientific collaboration with researchers at Nanjing Agricultural University and other Chinese institutions. The award is China's highest civic award for non-Chinese scientists.

Two Oregon State University faculty members, Peter Clark and Phillip Mote, made major contributions to the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations-sponsored group of scientists. Clark contributed to a chapter on sea level change and Mote helped author a chapter on the cryosphere and its key role in the physical, biological and social environment on much of the Earth’s surface.

Oregon State University received 98 points out of a possible 99 as a ‘green’ school in the latest edition of “The Princeton Review’s Guide to 322 Green Colleges: 2013 Edition.” Among OSU’s green highlights were an overall waste diversion rate of 42 percent, its numerous sustainability awards and annual Nonprofit Career Day, and a building policy that ensures students will typically walk no further than 10 minutes across campus for class.

Recognizing the need to document the intertwined story of hops production and the craft brewing movement in Oregon, the Libraries' Special Collections and Archives Research Center established the Oregon Hops & Brewing Archives in summer 2013. The Archives, the first in the U.S. dedicated to hops and brewing, was created to collect and provide access to records related to hops production and the craft brewing industries in Oregon.

On September 21^st, the new OSU Beaver Store had its grand opening in the ground floor of the parking structure just east of Gill Coliseum. The two-story, 45,000 square foot addition to the parking garage nearly doubled the floor space of the store's area in the Memorial Union.

A large amount of snow and below zero F temperatures on December 6th resulted in the university closing at noon due to hazards posed by the inclement weather. The closure continued through Monday of the following week, causing many final exams to be rescheduled in Gill Coliseum and the Langton Hall gymnasium.

On December 23rd, it was announced that the Student Success Center on Oregon State’s Corvallis campus will be renamed the Beth Ray Center for Academic Support in honor of the many meaningful personal and leadership contributions that Beth has provided to students during the past decade as OSU’s First Lady. Ray was seen by many students as a mentor and supporter, making the building, which is oriented toward student support, a natural extension of her interest in student success. Ray passed away in March of 2014 after battling cancer.