The Oregon Senate, on September 18, approved Governor Kate Brown’s appointments to the Portland State University Board of Trustees. Governor Brown appointed four new members: Dr. Yves Labissiere, Dr. Judith Ramaley, Lisa Sablan and E. Walter Van Valkenburg. The appointments are effective immediately. Ramaley and Van Valkenburg are filling at large positions on the board and will serve four-year terms. Sablan and Labissiere fill staff and faculty positions, respectively, and serve two-year terms. All appointees are full voting members of the board. Leaving the PSU Board of Trustees are Erica Bestpitch, Gale Castillo, Maude Hines, and Lindsay Stewart.
Dr. Yves Labissiere
Associate Professor, Community Health, Community Health — Urban & Public Affairs
A social psychologist by training, Yves Labissiere is an associate professor at Portland State University where he teaches classes and conducts research on the psychology of oppression and empowerment, diversity and learning, inter and intra-group relations and conflict. He also conducts workshops on diversity in the workplace and on minimizing the influence of “groupthink” on highly diverse work teams. His research interests focus broadly on intra/intergroup relations and more specifically on the negotiation of notions of Blackness and racial and ethnic identities among groups categorized as Black in the US. He has years of experience conducting fieldwork with vulnerable populations: immigrants, refugees, and Black populations in Miami, New York, and Portland. Yves recently finished a Pew Funded project examining ethnic difference in civic engagement among African Americans, Cuban, Jamaicans, Haitians, and European Americans and the role that faith and religion played. As the Chair of the Institutional Assessment Council, Yves leads a campus-wide initiative to develop campus learning outcomes and to bolster campus-wide assessment. Yves received a BA from Yale, and a doctorate in Psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is an experienced assessment specialist and program evaluator.
Dr. Judith Ramaley
Dr. Judith A. Ramaley (pronounced Rah may’ lee) is President Emerita and Distinguished Professor of Public Service at Portland State University in the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government and President Emerita of Winona State University. Dr. Ramaley holds an appointment as a Senior Scholar with the Association of American Colleges and Universities. She is also a member of the board of Second Nature, an organization committed to creating a healthy, just, and sustainable society through the transformation of higher education.
Dr. Ramaley has taught in the Civic Leadership curriculum in the Department of Public Administration, College of Urban and Public Administration at PSU.
Prior to returning to Portland State University, Dr. Ramaley served as President of Winona State University (WSU) in Minnesota from July 2005 to May 2012. She served as a Visiting Senior Scientist at the National Academy of Sciences in the spring of 2005. From 2001-2004, she was Assistant Director, Education and Human Resources Directorate (EHR) at The National Science Foundation (NSF). While serving at NSF, Dr. Ramaley also held a presidential professorship in biomedical sciences at the University of Maine and was a Fellow of the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy. Dr. Ramaley was President of The University of Vermont (UVM) and Professor of Biology from 1997 to 2001. She was President and Professor of Biology at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon for seven years from 1990-1997.
Dr. Ramaley has a special interest in higher-education reform and institutional change and has played a significant role in designing regional alliances to promote educational cooperation. She also has contributed to a national exploration of the changing nature of work and has written extensively on civic responsibility and partnerships between higher education and community organizations as well as articles on science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. One of the lasting features of her presidency at PSU is the current motto: “Let Knowledge Serve the City.
Lisa Sablan
Departmental Specialist, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Chemistry Department
Lisa Sablan joined PSU in 2005 and has been in the Department of Chemistry for the past eight years. As the Departmental Specialist, Lisa’s work spans the entire university community, including student and faculty support, research support, financial processing, purchasing and contracting, and facilities access and maintenance. With over a decade of experience, Lisa is widely known as a team player who frequently shares her expertise with colleagues across the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Lisa is also active in SEIU, Local 503, serving as a member and as lead on the Communications Action Team and as the Hardship Leave Liaison.
Wally Van Valkenburg
Partner, Stoel Rives
Wally Van Valkenburg is a partner in the Stoel Rives’ Technology and Intellectual Property Group and co-leads the firm’s privacy initiative and the firm’s education law industry group. He has extensive transactional experience, including M&A, technology licensing, SaaS agreements, and other IP related contracts. He also advises clients on a wide range of regulatory and compliance matters, including privacy and data security, antitrust and competition law, and consumer protection laws. He has been recognized by The Best Lawyers in America© in Antitrust Law, Copyright Law, Litigation - Intellectual Property, Patent Law, Technology Law, and Trademark Law. Wally is also certified as an Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/US) by the International Association of Privacy Professionals.
Wally’s subject matter expertise includes the following:
- Intellectual property, including patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secret protection
- Antitrust compliance, including issues arising in pricing, competitor collaborations, distribution, health care transactions, trade associations, joint ventures, and Hart-Scott-Rodino merger review
- Privacy and data security, including compliance and risk management
From 2006 through 2016, Wally served as Managing Partner for the Stoel Rives Portland Office. He also previously served as Practice Group Leader for the Technology and Intellectual Property Group and as a member of the firm's Executive Committee. Wally was an instructor at Columbia University School of Law from 1982 to 1984, where he wrote a dissertation on constitutional theory and the First Amendment. After graduating from law school and before practicing law, he was a law clerk to Justice Edward H. Howell of the Oregon Supreme Court from 1978 to 1979.