Three years ago, current Oregon State University Assistant Professor Swati Patel and two colleagues wanted to do something to counter systemic racism and inequities in mathematics. In response, they founded the Math For All conference at Tulane University in New Orleans. Math For All is now a national conference that hosts annual local programs throughout the country. In late February, about 40 people attended the Math For All satellite conference in Corvallis for free.
Students from Oregon State University along with thousands of other attendees from across the nation were welcomed to the National Diversity in STEM (NDiSTEM) Conference Oct. 27, 2022. The event was built to serve as a reminder that culture and science are not mutually exclusive or contradictory. NDiSTEM asserted that science is not a place to shed culture, but a place where it should thrive.
Over 11 weeks in 2022, 40 College of Science students worked with faculty mentors to design their own experiments, learn to use new lab equipment, get out in the field and draft papers for publication. In short, they got to be full-time research scientists.
Giulia Wood’s summer activities — or, in her case, winter — have included polar plunges into the Southern Ocean, listening to cracking glaciers and conducting research on Antarctic krill.
When honors student Sahana Shah ran for the student House of Representatives, she won the election with the most votes of any candidate. One of her main platforms? Helping establish a disability cultural center to better adapt the campus to the needs of neurodiverse students. She is now joining forces with other student groups to bring the idea to life.
After graduating with a degree in biology and a certificate in medical humanities, Abigail LaVerdure has moved to Henderson, Nevada to begin her doctorate in occupational therapy (OT) at Touro University.
Native to Edmonds, Washington, graduating senior Abbie Glickman credits her high school physics teacher for helping her see how she could apply mathematical concepts to understand the physical world around her. “When I took physics the first time, he made sure that I knew that I belonged in physics,” she said.
This spring, Karlie Wiese is graduating with a degree in chemistry from Oregon State University and has been accepted into the University’s materials chemistry Ph.D. program. But Wiese is not your typical undergraduate student.
Graduating this year with an online degree in zoology, Zoey Vagner hopes to use her education from Oregon State University to help raise public awareness about science to preserve the world we live in.
