The Oregon State University Sesquicentennial Oral History Project

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Justin Fleming Oral History Interview

Life history interview conducted by Mike Dicianna.

December 15, 2015

Biography

Justin David Fleming was born in 1980 in Salem, Oregon, and grew up outside of Salem in the small town of Aumsville. A very active student, Fleming graduated from Cascade High School in Turner, Oregon in 1999. Fleming originally intended to attend Oregon State University on an ROTC scholarship, which was rescinded during his senior year of high school due to a medical disqualification. He decided to enroll at OSU anyway, and spent his first year in college as a member of the Ranger Challenge Team.

Initially a Computer Science major, Fleming switched to Business and also completed an Environmental Economics minor while at OSU, and environmental sustainability quickly emerged as a passion for Fleming during his undergraduate years. A student employee of the Campus Recycling and Surplus Property programs, Fleming worked with his supervisors to create an Organic Growers Club in the early 2000s. In late 2003, he became the campus recycling coordinator, and in this capacity he helped to reinvigorate Earth Week celebrations at OSU. He likewise co-founded the Student Sustainability Initiative in 2006, a program that used student fees to launch multiple sustainability-related projects on campus. A part-time student for much of his college experience, Fleming graduated from OSU in 2007.

While working for Campus Recycling, Fleming realized that there was a void in the program's IT sector. Seeking to address this, Fleming taught himself a wide array of programming skills, and he was eventually moved into a business analyst position within OSU Business Services. Not long after, he was relocated to the OSU Motor Pool to help with the unit's IT and infrastructure projects. A year later, Fleming applied for and received the position of Motor Pool manager.

A year into this new role, Fleming oversaw the subsuming of the University of Oregon's Motor Pool into a larger University Motor Pool that is now managed at Oregon State. Fleming also purchased the first electric vehicles for use on the two campuses, and has continued to promote environmental sustainability as a core value guiding Motor Pool operations.

A former member of the OSU Professional Faculty Leadership Association, Fleming has served as a volunteer for the Corvallis Fall Festival and OSU's commencement exercises. He has also been a member of the board of the OSU Beaver Store since 2010.