From the Cascades to the coast, small towns to downtowns, Portland State University researchers are working on projects that benefit communities across Oregon.
They study what causes extreme weather events — and how planting more trees in city neighborhoods can lessen the impact. They track how forests bounce back after devastating wildfires — and develop do-it-yourself air cleaners to keep smoke out of indoor spaces. They improve reading literacy and math education in schools — and help inform libraries how GenZ and millennial generations use their spaces and digital media. They evaluate how well programs delivered on their promises, from emergency response for behavioral health crises to a housing policy designed to repair past harms. And that’s just the short list.
Leveraging its location in the state’s largest city, PSU has long embraced its mission to Let Knowledge Serve. A new bill is making its way through the state legislature that would formally designate PSU as Oregon’s urban research university — something that’s been true for decades in practice, if not yet officially.
When Portland State College started pushing for university status in the 1960s, it had the support of business and civic leaders who pointed out again and again that Portland was the only large city on the West Coast without a research-oriented university. At a time when interest in a host of urban problems — from air pollution to drug use to race relations — prompted more people to turn to the urban university as a problem solver, Portland State emerged as a “city-grant” institution that could meet the needs of the urban community much as land-grant institutions impacted rural and agricultural life.
Portland State has since become Oregon’s most diverse and innovative urban public research university. Its urban mission remains core to its identity even as its reach has expanded to address challenges that are also facing suburban and rural communities, in Oregon and beyond.
“The way in which we differentiate ourselves is that we have an urban focus to the nature of the problems that we’re trying to solve through research, and use Portland as a laboratory to test those solutions and look at different interventions or approaches,” says Rick Tankersley, vice president of Research and Graduate Studies at PSU. “We’re embedded within the region to provide those kinds of support and solutions and then share them both nationally and globally.”
SOLVING PROBLEMS
From housing and livability to earthquake preparedness, Portland State researchers are tackling pressing challenges with practical solutions to impact communities statewide.
For example, marine ecologist Elise Granek is working to reduce microplastic pollution in coastal communities by testing how effective filters in stormwater drains and washing machines are at trapping microplastics — findings that will help wastewater management utilities and legislators as they consider interventions and laws.
Earthquake geologist Ashley Streig is leading work to build a comprehensive 3-D database of the active faults that run across the Pacific Northwest, data that will inform earthquake scenario planning and the region’s emergency response plans.
We’re demonstrating that our work has direct application to the kinds of challenges that we see within the city and state. We want to make sure that everybody sees this as the first place you go for solutions, answers and opportunities.
Lisa Bates, a professor in Black Studies whose scholarship focuses on housing and community development policy and planning, leads the Evicted in Oregon team. They track and publish statewide eviction data and help the public and policymakers better understand the eviction process, eviction data and policy considerations to improve housing stability.
“We’re demonstrating that our work has direct application to the kinds of challenges that we see within the city and state,” Tankersley says. “We want to make sure that everybody sees this as the first place you go for solutions, answers and opportunities.”
He adds that PSU’s researchers focus on public-impact research, moving beyond academia to try to solve specific problems and serve as the region’s think tank, helping policymakers make informed decisions.
TESTING SOLUTIONS
One of PSU’s greatest research strengths has been transportation studies, which is no surprise given that Portland, long a national leader in piloting innovative transportation solutions, serves as its laboratory.
For decades, PSU’s Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) has helped address complex transportation problems, drawing from disciplines as varied as urban planning, engineering, economics, design and psychology to produce impactful research and tools.
“One of our roles is to provide the research and evidence that policy leaders, engineers and planners can use to help build a better transportation system, whether it be safer, more equitable, accessible, efficient or effective,” says Jennifer Dill, director of TREC and professor of urban planning.
It's why we came to PSU, and it's why we stay — that ability to collaborate with the agencies and do groundbreaking research, but also research that's going to impact people's lives and help public agencies do a better job.
Studies looking at protected bike lanes and intersections, transit priority lanes, traffic signal timing and the travel behavior of residents living in housing developments near transit stations are just some examples of the ways TREC’s research has informed decision making and policy discussions at the local, regional, state and federal level.
“The transportation research that we do at PSU and the people who are doing it really does embody ‘Let Knowledge Serve the City,’” Dill says. “For many of us, it's why we came to PSU, and it's why we stay — that ability to collaborate with the agencies and do groundbreaking research, but also research that's going to impact people's lives and help public agencies do a better job.”
She says TREC’s agency partners appreciate the objectivity they bring to their analyses as well their work in training the next generation of transportation professionals who go on to work for those very same agencies.
“I have a hard time identifying another university that’s doing the kind of engaged research in urban and multimodal transportation that we’re doing,” Dill says. “We’re definitely a national leader and we couldn’t be doing this if we were [located] in a different place.”
POWERING INNOVATIONS
Tankersley says PSU also shows its leadership in Oregon by serving as a convener and facilitator, bringing partners together from around the state to advance collaborative solutions to regional and statewide challenges.
PSU is leading regional efforts to scale energy storage capabilities, smart grid infrastructure and cleantech innovation through the Powerize Northwest Consortium, uniting more than 80 public, industry, academic and community partners.
“It’s an honor that our community wants us to lead something of this complexity and that we are stepping in to lead it,” says Angela Jackson, CEO of Powerize and executive director of industry and entrepreneurial engagement at PSU.
The effort, co-led by Jackson and engineering professors Antonie Jetter and Robert Bass, envisions a modern, resilient electrical grid that can improve energy efficiency and remain stable even as the share of renewable energy like wind and solar power fluctuates. PSU brings long standing industry partnerships and research expertise in power engineering and cybersecurity to the coalition.
“We've come together to solve a really urgent need in the region,” says Jetter, also an associate dean for research in the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science. “We all want renewables on the grid, but as you add those, your grid becomes inherently less stable. At the same time, we have this huge increase in power demand as a result of the data centers that are driving AI and advanced manufacturing like semiconductors that we want to expand.”
The role of the urban university is to create the opportunities and the conditions to bring about the workforce, to have the research foundations that keeps this going and to act as a convener and help people align around a vision.
The group was invited to apply to become a National Science Foundation Regional Innovation Engine and, if successful, would be awarded up to $160 million over 10 years to catalyze an innovation ecosystem to address these challenges. They will work to position the state as a leader in clean energy tech manufacturing and innovation, helping advance recommendations from the Oregon Clean Technology Task Force — of which Jackson was a member — and strengthen Oregon’s capacity to develop these new technologies and train the workforce.
“The entire nation and every modern country has these problems, so we see the potential for making our region the go-to place for these solutions,” Jetter says. “Because of the industry structure and the expertise we have, we're building on capacity that already exists. At the same time, becoming the place where this is happening also solves our very immediate power problems.”
Jetter says urban research institutions like PSU need to be engines for opportunity.
“The role of the urban university is to create the opportunities and the conditions to bring about the workforce, to have the research foundations that keeps this going and to act as a convener and help people align around a vision,” she says.
PARTNERING FOR STATEWIDE IMPACT
Partnerships are often at the heart of PSU’s research efforts, as faculty and students closely collaborate with government agencies, industry partners and community organizations for greater impact across the state.
Formed in 2007, the unique partnership between PSU and the U.S. Geological Survey’s Oregon Water Science Center is becoming a model for others to emulate. The partnership is redefining the way universities and federal agencies work together, advancing scientific research and training future water science professionals through internships and graduate student support. As many as 100 researchers across PSU and USGS and 120 students are benefiting from the partnership.
We’re known by community partners, city partners and Oregon partners because we’ve been here and we do quality work that is trusted.
“Having the opportunity to work with students that are here in the Portland area and having these relationships with our Portland State faculty just strengthens the things that we can do here at the Oregon Water Science Center,” says center director Joanna Thamke. “PSU, as Oregon’s urban research university, is in the middle of the Willamette River Basin — one of USGS’s 10 large integrated water science basins — and our staff that are working on that project interact often with PSU folks.”
In recent years, seed grants have provided new opportunities for PSU and USGS scientists to collaborate on innovative joint research projects that can lead to larger funded proposals.
One recent project brought PSU electrical engineer David Burnett and USGS hydrologist James White together to develop and deploy novel instruments that can collect underwater sound data in rivers. Thamke says the success of the project is helping scientists better understand what’s going on in the Willamette and will inform other projects in Oregon and watersheds across the country.
“That’s one of the biggest benefits from these great collaborations,” says Alison Hopcroft, who manages the PSU-USGS Partnership in her role as partnership manager for PSU’s Institute for Sustainable Solutions. “We’re bringing together researchers and students, doing really important work that’s impacting local watersheds and impacting the state.”
NURTURING COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS
Another institute on campus that nurtures strong community partnerships is the Regional Research Institute (RRI). Housed in PSU’s School of Social Work since 1972, RRI has gained a national reputation for its community-engaged interventions, training programs and evaluations that address critical issues like trauma-informed care, youth and young adult mental health and social and disability justice.
“We are part of the community,” says Mary Oschwald, director of RRI. “We’re known by community partners, city partners and Oregon partners because we’ve been here and we do quality work that is trusted.”
So much so that community partners return to collaborate again and again. They contract with RRI on projects as varied as a community needs survey of park use in Portland and evaluations of drug and rehab interventions in southern Oregon and Gresham Police’s behavioral health unit. RRI is also home to Trauma Informed Oregon, a statewide collaborative aimed at promoting and sustaining trauma-informed care across child- and family-serving systems.
Oschwald says a common thread — and a point of pride — through all of RRI’s work is the involvement of students, whether they’re turning around a deliverable on a tight timeline for Oregon Health Authority or providing integrated behavioral health services to rural and historically underserved communities across Oregon as part of the federally funded Behavioral Health Integration Project.
This designation positions PSU as a critical partner in Oregon’s future, ready to leverage our expertise and resources to benefit communities across the state.
“We could, as evaluators or researchers, be outside of a university and do our own work,” she says. “But with students, the research projects are always better. It’s a ground for improving the work, and it’s also an opportunity to provide mentorship, work with students and learn from them as a co-learner.”
And that’s what research at a university is all about. Tankersley says getting the designation as Oregon’s urban research university will only deepen PSU’s collaborations that make the critically important public-impact research and workforce development possible.
It will also help to elevate PSU’s national profile, boost its competitiveness for research grants and attract even more world-class faculty and diverse, talented students who can contribute to the state’s vitality.
“This designation is not just an acknowledgment of what PSU has accomplished — it is an investment in what we can achieve together,” Tankersley says. “It positions PSU as a critical partner in Oregon’s future, ready to leverage our expertise and resources to benefit communities across the state.”