THE VIKING AGE How PSU’s new president plans to right the ship CALL THE NURSE EDUCATOR Schools scramble to train the next generation of caregivers September 2023 | OregonBusiness.com THE EDUCATION ISSUE How AI is disrupting the world of high school sports A Whole New Ball Game
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⁄Contents⁄ September 2023 FEATURE 36 Keeping Score Cover Story How a new AI-enabled software application turned the world of school sports upside down REGULARS 6 Editor’s Letter 8 Newsfeed 12 Tactics OSU-Cascades’ new dean and chancellor, Sherman Bloomer, talks about what’s next for the campus. 18 Profi le Portland State’s new president, Ann Cudd, talks about how she’ll guide the school through a challenging moment. 22 Spotlight PCC’s nursing school narrowly avoided closure this spring — but faces ongoing challenges in educating the next generation of nurses. 42 Powerlist Oregon’s public universities and colleges, ranked by enrollment 52 Downtime Live, work and play with Sen. Jeff Merkley. 54 Policy Brief Perry Stokes, co-chair of the Oregon Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee, makes the business case for protecting access to diverse literature. Follow @OregonBusiness for breaking news, blogs and commentary. Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter featuring the best of OregonBusiness.com, plus articles from our print publication. To sign up, go to OregonBusiness.com. 22 BRAND STORIES 10 Pendleton Convention Center Offering hospitality and amenities in a unique locale 14Aldrich Advisors Reflecting on 50 years of servant leadership and success 28Comcast Direct How the Family Justice Center coordinates its many services THE VIKING AGE How PSU’s new president plans to right the ship CALL THE NURSE EDUCATOR Schools scramble to train the next generation of caregivers September 2023| OregonBusiness.com THE EDUCATION ISSUE How AI is disrupting the world of high school sports A Whole New Ball Game COVER PHOTO: Jason E. Kaplan JASON E. KAPLAN CHECK OUT THESE EXCLUSIVES (AND MORE) ON OREGONBUSINESS.COM ■ Megabus Announces Oregon Expansion — New Jerseybased bus line expands service options in 24 cities in Oregon and California through a partnership with Pacific Crest Bus Lines. ■ Easterday Family Abandons Boardman Mega-Dairy Plan — Records show the dairy site has been sold back to its original owners, ending plans to resurrect the controversial operation. ■ Arts Scene Central to Heathman Hotel GM’s Game Plan — Laura Maldonado says making the historic Portland hotel a “portal to the arts” means engaging with local artists and vendors, and turning the Heathman into a hip hangout. ■ Medical Office Trends Report Finds Sales Momentum Slowed Despite Strong Demand — The CBRE report suggests difficulty changing medical offices and inability to adapt to remote work are behind the lag. 100 BEST NEWS The 2024 100 Best Companies to Work For in Oregon Survey Is Open! Find out how satisfied your employees are with their jobs through our anonymous and confidential survey. Register at OregonBusiness. com/2024Register. For information on how the survey works, visit OregonBusiness.com/Statements. 2024 4
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⁄From the Editor⁄ Changing the Game I GREW UP IMMERSED IN THE WORLD of school sports, not because I played but because my older brother did. Then as now, I was only a casual sports fan, often wandering off in the direction of the concession stand or in search of other team siblings to play with. My mother, a compulsive multitasker, for years volunteered as the team’s scorekeeper, tracking runs with paper and pencil. By the time he was in high school (and my mother had traded the scorekeeper clipboard for a cross-stitch hoop), the team scorekeeper was joined by a local reporter with a notebook — sometimes a full-time reporter from a local paper, sometimes a stringer hired specifically to write up local games. While I never did the job myself, several of my journalist friends and colleagues cut their teeth recapping local athletic events for small papers. So I was fascinated when writer Rachel Saslow told me about an AI-enabled software tool that combines the role of the parent-scorekeeper and the community sports reporter. Called GameChanger, the app helps spectators keep track of plays during a game, then generates a prose story recapping the game. Saslow’s cover story for this issue (“Keeping Score,” p. 36) details GameChanger’s rapid ascent in the world of high school sports — and what it could mean for sports and sports journalism as a whole. This April Portland Community College nursing students learned that, due to the departure of the program’s director, their program was in danger of closing. The school quickly remedied the problem by hiring a new director, but as Amy Milshtein found when reporting “Nursing School Blues” (Spotlight, p 22), that momentary crisis was symptomatic of a much larger one: the shortage of educators who are willing and able to train the next generation of nurses. Milshtein looked at what PCC — and the state — are doing to fix the problem for the long term. Also for this issue, writer Tim Neville spoke to OSU-Cascades’ new dean and chancellor, Sherman Bloomer (Tactics, p. 12), and Sander Gusinow profiled Portland State University’s new president, Ann Cudd (“Course Correction,” p. 18). Both leaders step into their roles during crucial moments for their respective institutions—and amid rapid change for the communities where they are situated. While temperatures in Portland were in the low 90s during the final days of production for this issue, I found myself looking forward to the promise of autumn’s cooler, milder weather, and the sense of change and possibility that comes with a new school year. It’s hard to say what all the shifts we cover in this issue will mean in the long run — but we’ll be tracking them either way. VOLUME 46 ⁄ NUMBER 8 OREGON BUSINESS (ISSN 02798190) is published 10 times per year, monthly except Jul/Aug and Nov/Dec issues, by MEDIAmerica Inc. at 12570 S.W. 69th Ave., Suite 102, Portland OR 97223. Subscription inquiries should be directed to 503-445-8811. Subscription charge is $24.95 per year, $49.95 for two years in the USA. Single copies and back issues available at above address and at selected newsstands. The editor is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts. Copyright © 2023 by MEDIAmerica Inc. All rights reserved. All material is protected by copyright and must not be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Printed in Oregon. Periodicals Postage Paid at Portland, OR. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Oregon Business, 12570 S.W. 69th Ave., Suite 102, Portland OR 97223 EDITORIAL EDITOR Christen McCurdy christenm@oregonbusiness.com ART DIRECTOR Joan McGuire joanm@oregonbusiness.com STAFF WRITER Sander Gusinow sanderg@oregonbusiness.com STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Jason E. Kaplan jasonk@oregonbusiness.com COPY EDITOR Morgan Stone CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Amy Milshtein, Tim Neville, Rachel Saslow, Perry Stokes PUBLISHING PUBLISHER Courtney Kutzman courtneyk@oregonbusiness.com EVENTS MANAGER Craig Peebles craigp@oregonbusiness.com ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Evan Morehouse evanm@mediamerica.net ADVERTISING AND PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Greta Hogenstad gretah@mediamerica.net DIGITAL PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Alison Kattleman alisonk@mediamerica.net PRESIDENT AND CEO Andrew A. Insinga CONTROLLER Bill Lee BOARD OF DIRECTORS CHAIRMAN André W. Iseli PRESIDENT Andrew A. Insinga SECRETARY William L. Mainwaring TREASURER Win McCormack 6
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ECONOMY & FINANCE ●Record Low. Oregon’s unemployment rate dropped to 3.4%, matching the state’s record low, though manufacturing employment continues to drop. HEALTH CARE ●Urge to Merge. Oregon Health & Science University and Legacy Health signed a nonbinding letter of intent to merge. The deal would make the new health care provider the largest employer in the Portland metro area. ●Care-Free. PeaceHealth announced plans to close Eugene’s only hospital, PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center University District, later this year, citing sunk costs of $2 million a month. ●Right to Access. Gov. Tina Kotek signed House Bills 2002 and 2697, which guarantee abortion rights and access to transgender health care in the state. POLITICS ●Safety in Numbers. Gov. Kotek signed seven public safety bills into law, including bills that raise the penalty for fentanyl possession, make public defenders state employees (as opposed to subcontractors) and establish a juvenile justice policy commission. ●Drawn and Quartered. Portland’s Independent District Commission unanimously approved the final design for the city’s four-district plan, the foundation for a new system that expands the number of people on the Portland City Council and replaces at-large commissioners with district representatives. MANUFACTURING ●Chip Change. Intel announced its Washington County facilities will undergo a “multibillion-dollar expansion and modernization” following a $90 million award from the Oregon CHIPS fund. REAL ESTATE ●Built Up. Oregon Housing and Community Services and homebuilders officially surpassed the state’s 2019 goal of creating 25,000 affordable housing units in five years. ●Rent Dent. Rent prices in Oregon fell 5.66% year-overyear in July, according to a report from Rent.com. FARMS & FORESTS ●Cloak of Smoke. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality issued quality advisory warnings for Deschutes, Jackson, Josephine, Douglas, northern Klamath and northern Lake counties, due to smoke from fires in Oregon, Northern California, Northern Washington and Canada. ●Cattle Call. Gov. Kotek signed into law SB 85, which requires a multistep permitting process for industrial agriculture. TOURISM & HOSPITALITY ●Putting Off the Ritz. The downtown Portland Ritz- Carlton delayed its Aug. 15 opening, citing supply chain issues for setbacks in the final stage of construction. ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT ●Showstopper. Portland’s Artists Repertory Theatre suspended production on what was planned as its 2023-2024 season, saying it lacked the critical funds to continue the season. ●Coast to Coast. The Oregon Symphony on Tuesday named Isaac Thompson from the New York Philharmonic as its next president and CEO. ●Smoke on the Water. Indie rock band My Morning Jacket and folk-pop singer Noah Kahan canceled outdoor concerts in Bend due to worsening air quality from wildfire smoke. EDUCATION ●Community Care. Oregon’s 17 community colleges generated over $9 billion in annual economic impact for the state in the 2021-2022 fiscal year, according to an analysis from the Oregon Community College Association. ●Duck/Beaver Break Up. The Big Ten college football conference expanded to include the University of Oregon, leaving Oregon State University as one of four remaining teams in the Pacific-12 conference. ●Cherry Crush. Falling cherry prices led Rep. Jeff Helfrich (R-Hood River) to write an open letter to the governor asking her to declare a state of disaster to help the industry. ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT ●Power of the Pump. Oregonians can now pump their own gas after the state reversed its 72-year ban on self-serve gas stations. ●Rhythm and Blooms. A toxic algae bloom in the Ross Island Lagoon contaminated the Willamette River, causing the Oregon Health Authority to issue a health advisory for a large section of the river near downtown Portland. RESTAURANT & RETAIL ●Mom and Pop Pride. Xalisco Latin Cuisine in Redmond earned 9th place in the restaurants category for “America’s Favorite Mom and Pop Shops,” according to Yelp’s list published in Entrepreneur magazine. ⁄Newsfeed⁄ Toxic algae blooms, visible to the right of the barge in this photo, caused the Oregon Health Authority to issue a health advisory for large sections of the Willamette River. JASON E. KAPLAN This should be interesting. 8
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10 BRAND STORY PRODUCED BY THE OREGON BUSINESS MARKETING DEPARTMENT BY JON BELL Pat Beard has one simple question for you: When was the last time you’ve been through Pendleton? If your answer is, “It’s been a while,” or “I’ve never been,” you might want to reconsider. “We are a diverse, interesting, undiscovered gem of a community that has all kinds of art, music and culture,” says Beard, event manager for the Pendleton Convention Center. “And we really do excel in making people feel at home, that all their needs are met and that their expectations are exceeded, every time.” While Beard is talking about the larger Pendleton community, he’s also talking more specifically about events at the Pendleton Convention Center. Located next to the famed Pendleton Round-Up Stadium, the center offers up more than 40,000 square feet of meeting and event space for up to 3,500 people, nine breakout rooms, the latest broadband technology and a large, on site, commercial kitchen offering exclusive in house catering from the Pendleton Catering Company, which can cater meals for up to 600 attendees at a time. “If you are a regional corporation or organization, you have to come here,” Beard says. “We have world-class hospitality, great audio-visual and killer food. Once you’ve found those things, everything else goes away.” Pendleton’s Calling The Pendleton Convention Center offers hospitality, service and amenities in one of Oregon’s most unique locales. In addition to the facilities and amenities that the convention center offers, Beard says Pendleton itself is a prime location smack dab in the middle of the Northwest. It’s a three-hour drive from Portland, Boise and Spokane and four from Seattle or Bend. The city is consistently ranked one of the safest in the region, there’s virtually no traffic and it’s got all the draws of a big city with the feel of a friendly, tight-knit western town. Pendleton is also home to more than 40 restaurants — from high-end steak houses to pho shops and Thai food — 1,000 hotel rooms, two golf courses, several museums and unique attractions like the subterranean labyrinth known as the Pendleton Underground. “We are a community of fun-havers who like having company,” Beard says. What’s more, there’s something extra coming to the Pendleton Convention Center in 2024: a brand new, 60,000-square-foot event center next door with an arena and spaces for food trucks. It’s all part of the package of attractions that Beard says should have anyone headed to Pendleton. “It’s an eddy in the big stream of life,” he says. “There’s a more relaxed pace, but we get things done. People come here not just because of this incredible facility, but because it’s in this engaging community that wants you here, that appreciates you being here.” Learn more at MeetinPendleton.com.
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⁄Tactics⁄ It’s been a few months since May 1, your first day. How are you settling in? I am mostly working and meeting people and slowly getting familiar with Bend neighborhoods and mastering roundabouts. It’s a fully packed calendar, but what an incredibly welcoming community. Everyone has been very engaged in wanting to see OSU-Cascades be successful. I’ve been struck by how many really love working here and how committed members of the community have been — some of them for 40 years. Sherman Bloomer Takes the Helm at OSU-Cascades INTERVIEW BY TIM NEVILLE LAST SPRING Oregon State University announced its fastest-growing branch, Bend’s OSU-Cascades, had a new chancellor and dean at the helm, but Sherman “Sherm” Bloomer, who started the job in May, was no stranger to Oregon’s largest university. As a marine geologist by academic training, Bloomer, now 69, earned a doctorate in earth sciences from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego before teaching at Duke and Boston universities, eventually coming to Corvallis for the “bigger and better” marine geology group. While there he conducted ocean research expeditions, raised $1 million in grants and contracts, and rose to become OSU’s Dean of the College of Science, where he stayed for 11 years. He then left academia to run the university’s $1.5 billion budget-planning office as an associate vice president. Bloomer helped write the proposal to bring a four-year branch to Bend that opened on 10 acres in 2016. He replaced Andrew Ketsdever who served as interim vice president after OSU-Cascade’s first top official, Becky Johnson, was tapped to run the entire university system. Ketsdever left OSU to become Dean of Engineering at California State Polytechnic University-Pomona. Bloomer steps into a role that will largely be defined by his ability to help the university build out the infrastructure needed to grow enrollment, ultimately to around 5,000 students, up from about 1,300 in fall 2022. The first cohort of the branch’s first doctorate program, in physical therapy, will be graduating in the spring 2024. Meanwhile, in October workers will break ground on a $21.6 million, 22,500-square-foot “student success center.” The university also has plans to remediate 24 acres of adjacent land, a former pumice mine and landfill, into a building-ready plot slated for a 500,000-square-foot public-private innovation district, the first of its kind on a university campus in Oregon. But serious challenges remain. Salem recently awarded about $227 million for university construction projects across the state, but OSU’s biggest ask — $45 million of the $60 million needed to build a health and recreation center — went unanswered. “It’s probably our biggest challenge right now,” Bloomer says. “How do we get the physical infrastructure built out to keep up with the student growth we’re trying to create? One of the strengths of higher education is that you’re in it for the long view.” Bloomer sat down with Oregon Business to talk about those challenges, trends in higher education in Oregon today and the branch’s green-energy goals. This interview has been edited for space and clarity. Now you have an opportunity to help channel that commitment. What’s your vision? I don’t need to craft a new vision. I see myself continuing one that the university created, and particularly Becky Johnson. OSU is a very visible, very successful, very prominent national research and land-grant university, and we’re bringing that brand here but around the needs in the community. What does that look like? For one, we’re creating an innovation district and it is really different and powerful, and the reason I took the job. It’s a space where you intentionally bring in private-sector partners that can engage people and activate that space. It’s not just offices but places to eat, shop and maybe some entertainment. We’re trying to support folks in those early phases of entrepreneurship, so they can hopefully grow and get large enough to find space someplace else in the city. The vision is to build a resource for people who don’t know how to get capital or how to manage a startup, maybe in outdoor products or tech. We’re also keeping a real eye on the workforce needs in Central Oregon, what’s going to help the economy grow and what our role is as a catalyst. I just walked through a building that harnesses geothermal energy on-site. How far are you on your net-zero energy goals? In the end, one of our goals is to be net zero in energy, water and waste, and we have a chance to kind of be a demonstration project for that. It’s really hard to retrofit a 100-year-old building, but we’re building from the ground up. Part of the purpose of the innovation district is to think about how to handle wastewater and sewage. Waste is the hardest one because it’s a highly distributed function across all your employees and all your students. But universities, of all places, ought to be able to think innovatively about this. 12
JASON E. KAPLAN What’s your take on enrollment trends post-pandemic? Nationally, the number of high school graduates is declining, and the way that seems to be playing out post-pandemic is large flagship universities are seeing modest to really strong enrollment growth while smaller universities, the 1,000- to 2,000-student universities, are struggling. We’re not competing with each other — more than half of our students come from Central Oregon — the problem is there aren’t enough students going on to higher education. One of the things I think that the seven public universities need to think about is how do we together increase the participation rate of high school graduates going on to college? You’ve been involved with both public and private universities. What made you stick around for so long at OSU? Both Duke and Boston University were big, private, very successful universities with excellent students, but there was a bigger and better group of marine geologists at OSU. But the reason I stayed at OSU is because I found the public university mission really much more rewarding. The idea that the university is there to serve the people of Oregon is something almost all the people I know who work here take really seriously. It was wonderful to teach students at Duke, but you’re teaching a certain kind of student and a narrower slice of students. Here we’ve met every qualified Oregonian, and having admitted them, we try to get every single one of them graduated. That’s a very fulfilling mission. I hear you come from a family of five sisters. Tell me about growing up. Yes, five younger sisters. I grew up in upstate New York, in a small town in an agricultural county right under Lake Ontario. We had a football team, but I wasn’t good enough, so I picked up soccer. I learned to play because of the love of the game. So I talked to my colleagues here, and when we build athletic fields, the first thing we’re going to do is paint soccer lines. What about leadership here? Do you have plans to change the structure? I’ve got a number of people in interim leadership roles, so we’re working on what our permanent leadership structure should look like. The biggest change isn’t a change in management. It’s more clarity on the idea that we’re part of OSU. It’s one entity. The success of OSU-Cascades is a university priority. That’s always been true, but it’s not always been clear. That lets us take advantage of the fact that OSU-Cascades is not starting from zero but is a part of a very successful, very visible, very established university. Meanwhile, OSU-Cascades didn’t get state help funding a new health and recreation facility. What’s plan B? We’re learning what the options are to diversify the funding mix. Are there private partners that might be interested? Philanthropy? And how do we build a stronger case to the state? We’re going to build the building at some point. A different strategy would be helpful. I don’t know what that strategy looks like. Before becoming chancellor, you ran the university’s $1.5 billion budget-planning office. How would you describe your work there? It was an opportunity to learn the other half of how universities work. The business folks don’t necessarily understand the work that faculty do. The faculty worries about things that don’t make sense to the business side. A lot of my work would be policy and making the budget more visible and understandable: How does it work? What’s driving decisions? I had a very talented financial guy, so I didn’t do any of that. Is there anything you’d like to add? OSU has been in Corvallis forever, it’s been part of the community forever. It’s not the same sense as here,x where we’re creating something new, and that level of active engagement. People advocate for us, help us with financing, help introduce me to people in the community who might be interested in being part of the innovation district. I don’t have just my staff, I have all of these people in the community who actively want to help us be successful. Most places don’t have that in the same way. 13
14 BRAND STORY BY STACEY COOK When the pandemic was shuttering businesses in March 2020, CEO John Lauseng and partners at Aldrich Advisors told their employees that they had made a decision. There would be no layoffs, furloughs, or pay reductions. The partners would take pay cuts while continuing to serve their clients and communities. “We decided to prioritize our people and create a sense of safety in a time of fear,” Lauseng says, noting that the firm’s culture provided the roadmap. “One of our tenets is we do the right thing, even when it’s not easy.” Lauseng had anticipated that the decision would hurt the accounting firm financially. By retaining top talent and driving thought leadership on how businesses could navigate the pandemic, however, demand increased, and Aldrich experienced the highest growth years in its history. The firm’s net promoter score doubled, and it brought in 100 new employees last year. This ethos of servant leadership was passed down from founder Kent Aldrich, who opened the firm in Salem, Oregon, in 1973. “He wanted to create something different, both in the way that clients were served as well as what the organization would mean in the lives of its people,” Lauseng says. Aldrich’s innovative strategy was to create industry niches within the firm to help clients achieve their goals and build relationships with tax professionals who have real knowledge of their industries. As the firm added industries, it also created new companies dedicated to wealth management, benefits, and transaction advisory services under the Aldrich Group umbrella. It’s a core company belief that this entrepreneurial spirit positioned Aldrich to be a long-lasting business — the firm celebrated its 50th anniversary this year — and they’re counting on the next generation to keep it alive. “We’ve succeeded by taking risks, investing in our future, and giving people early in their careers opportunities to launch new services or businesses,” Lauseng says. That investment starts with offering new graduates diverse experiences through Aldrich’s Promoting Opportunities and Outstanding Leaders (POOL) program. While new graduates in the profession typically start their careers by choosing between tax and audit, Aldrich gives them exposure to all types of services, industries, and teams before they decide where to focus. “We’re working hard to break the mold of a traditional career path,” Lauseng says. “We provide opportunities for people not just to pursue partner status, but to choose career paths that are more technical or more relational in nature, to create new businesses, to allow them to change their focus mid-career, and to flex up or down based on where they are in their lives.” Looking ahead to another 50 years, Lauseng wants to see the firm maintain its reputation and independence, as well as expand into new geographies and establish a succession plan. Aldrich is always looking for exceptional people to join their team, and to keep serving clients with integrity and innovation. n Aldrich is more than a CPA firm. See what services our firm offers at AldrichAdvisors.com. CEO John Lauseng Leading With Humanity Aldrich Advisors reflects on 50 years of servant leadership and success. PHOTOS: GAVIN BRITTON PRODUCED BY THE OREGON BUSINESS MARKETING DEPARTMENT
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⁄Profile⁄ BY SANDER GUSINOW AS ANN CUDD MADE THE JUMP from academia to university administration in 2008, she realized she was part of the problem. Cudd became the associate dean for humanities for the University of Kansas in 2008 after spending 27 years as a philosophy professor. She says seeing the university operating model from the other side of the desk brought her face to face with the reality that institutions of higher education widen the economic gaps in society. She says the experience lit a fire in her to make college more affordable. “I really felt a duty or a calling to work on affordability-access kinds of initiatives. Just helping students to afford an education was a great need,” says Cudd, who begins her first term as president of Portland State University this fall. “Many students are just not able to afford a great education, and yet a great education is really necessary for joining the middle class, or for coming up with the kind of innovative and creative ideas that our society really runs on.” Raised by librarian-rancher parents on a horse farm in Ohio, Cudd says her parents’ love of literature and philosophy guided her down the path toward academia. She obtained her doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh—where she would later return to become provost—studying economics and political philosophy, with a specialization in feminist thought and theory. As a philosopher, Cudd’s research focused on examining feminist concepts through rational choice theory—a decision-making school of thought pioneered by the capitalist philosopher-economist Adam Smith. Her first publications centered on how people, particularly women, make decisions rationally, strategically and collectively. She says her training as a philosopher helps her consider all the possible angles and outcomes of a decision while also considering the school’s moral and ethical responsibility. “I am, after all, trained as a decision theorist, getting the data and having a good sense of what are the likely outcomes of a decision, what are the possible outcomes and what are the probabilities of each of those happening,” says Cudd. “Then also considering very deeply a principle’s perspective; that includes serving the city, opening doors of opportunity, being equitable, and doing everything with ethics and integrity. That’s the overall philosophy of decision-making that I have.” At PSU Cudd will face falling enrollment; cuts to faculty and classes; and what the school’s own board chair describes as a bloated, decentralized administrative wing she is tasked with trimming. Cudd says her role as a president is to make decisions necessary to achieving her vision for the school: choices that emphasize affordability for students, foster a JASON E. KAPLAN Ann Cudd makes her debut this fall as Portland State’s president as the school faces the headwinds of declining enrollment, rising tuition and administrative bloat. She’s optimistic the school can persevere — and help revive Portland’s embattled downtown. Course Correction 18
creative, team-centered learning environment, and bring in outside partners from the public and private sectors together to solve the city’s most persistent problems. AN ACTIVE HIKER, BIKER and runner, Cudd says she was drawn to PSU in part because of the opportunities for outdoor recreation in the area. She also admired the school’s mission of serving the city of Portland. “It’s a creative, innovative city. I was a big fan of Portlandia, of course,” says Cudd. “And Portland State is so entwined in the whole culture and ethos of Portland.” Cudd was also impressed by PSU’s affordability mission. Starting in the fall of 2023, PSU streamlined two of its financial aid packages to create a tuition-free degree program for students qualifying for the Federal Pell Grant. The PSU initiative is referred to as a “last dollar” program, meaning the school provides enough funds to ensure that the student does not have to pay tuition for their classes after a student’s federal and state financial aid is applied, rather than the school’s financial aid being applied first in the process. Cudd says the PSU program goes even further than the Pell-matching measures she helped institute at Pittsburgh, which reduced the average debt burden of Pell-eligible students by $4,000 and grew headcount 4% one year. Full-time enrollment at PSU dropped 11% between 2019 and 2021, costing the university $18 million. The decline in enrollment is part of a national trend — college headcount declined 8% nationally between 2019 and 2023, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Enrollment at PSU dropped by 3.7% during the 2022-2023 academic year, according to university data. PSU tuition also rose by 3.5% in 2023, compared to the average national increase of 1.8% during the 2022-2023 academic year. In June PSU’s Board of Trustees dipped into its reserves for $20 million to fund the school through the upcoming year and cut spending by 1.3% by reducing personnel costs by $14.8 million. The school commissioned an operational review by Hillsboro-based Huron Consulting Group in 2021, which found the school functioned on a fragmented operating model. The report also found a fractured student-services department reporting to five separate vice presidents; minimal career growth opportunities for PSU students; and outsized administrative spending that “outweighs all student services, enrollment, and academic program support combined.” Cudd says PSU’s tuition raises are part of a continuing decline after the college rates peaked during the Great Recession in 2011, and that the college is still affordable. When it comes to streamlining and consolidating functions at PSU, Cudd says she will be consulting the school’s departments and will study the culture, but that ultimately her decisions will be guided by the data collected by the Huron report — decisions that PSU board chair Benjamin Berry says have been kicked down the road by her predecessors. Berry, who is in his first year as chair of the Board of Trustees, says Cudd will be expected to streamline the school’s administrative arm, which has become bloated over decades of indecision by former leadership. “The reason we’re so decentralized at PSU is because various colleges and groups decided, ‘Well, we’re not getting it done through our administration. Let’s go ahead and hire these other people internal to the college, and then they’ll get it done,’” says Berry. “But by doing that, we are actually spending more money versus trying to standardize and consolidate.” While Berry is optimistic about Cudd’s ability to lead the school, the decision to hire her also came amid increased tension between faculty unions and the Board of Trustees. In May the PSU chapter of the American Association of University Professors published a blog post highlighting the impact of budget cuts on students and faculty, and mentioning a slide from an April budget committee meeting that proposed allocating a maximum of $10 million of its $20 million dip into its reserve funds to allow for flexibility to new university leadership — what the union described as a “startup fund” for Cudd. Emily Ford, president of AAUP’s PSU chapter, says the proposal, which the union’s blog post said was an example of “moral bankruptcy” on the part of the board, caused an outcry because of the pain faculty and staff are experiencing due to budget cuts. The school released an official response to questions about how it allocated finances, detailing its spending and ensuring trustees did not vote on the topic of a discretionary fund for President Cudd, nor was any such fund earmarked or established. Ford says even though that proposal didn’t advance, faculty and staff haven’t seen more funding. She expressed concerns about disciplines and majors being trimmed down by the college, including the world languages department, which saw its Chinese major eliminated in 2021. This year students in the school’s political science department launched a petition to save the job of a political science professor. “Because we spoke up clearly and loudly, I think the board responded, and one of their responses was to just eliminate any mention of flexibility or discretionary money. Unfortunately, people are still not able to graduate, classes are canceled and jobs are cut,” says Ford, who adds that the school’s cost-saving measures should focus on the bloat in upper management identified in the Huron report rather than the faculty and staff. According to Ford, academic advisors at the School of Business Pathways have reported caseloads three times the national average, while advisors in engineering, computer science, and math manage loads five times the national average — all while one-third of managers at PSU oversee fewer than three direct reports, according to the Huron data. Erica Thomas, an adjunct art professor at PSU and political action chair of the Portland State University Faculty Association, which represents adjunct faculty at PSU, describes the cuts as a disinvestment in the school. “If you cancel a class and a student has to go somewhere else to take it, or if you raise the class sizes and give them a poorer-quality education, that’s probably the worst possible way you could respond to a slight enrollment dip,” Thomas tells Oregon Business. As a former professor herself, Cudd says she understands the squeeze facing faculty. She’s also agreed to quarterly meeting with union representatives to maintain dialogue on issues facing the school. Ford says quarterly meetings with the president were already the norm and that she is hoping to add more frequent meetings to the president’s schedule. Cudd says the trend toward increased adjunct workloads is not necessarily a great thing, but that adjuncts who also work in their fields of study can provide students with an insider perspective. She says one role of her administration will be to bring the private sector into the classroom to create research partnerships. She says these arrangements “Many students are just not able to afford a great education, and yet a great education is really necessary for joining the middle class, or for coming up with the kind of innovative and creative ideas that our society really runs on.” DR. ANN CUDD, PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT 19
Our Business is Yours Kristin Van Buskirk, Owner of Woonwinkel Your success is our success—and the success of our entire region! Our mission and purpose is clear: We support businesses of all types and sizes in succeeding and thriving throughout our region. are especially motivating for students, as it can prepare them to hit the ground running toward a career upon graduation, sometimes with intellectual property all their own. “This was something that happened at Pittsburgh, especially in computer science,” Cudd says. “Sometimes it would be a small startup company, but sometimes it was Google. ey would agree to set up here and say, ‘Here are a bunch of challenges we have right now that seem to connect with your course. Can you have your students work on these things?’ en you have some kind of agreement about how you’re going to share the intellectual property, because you want the students to own their intellectual property if it’s successful.” Cudd says programs that give students a familiarity with data science — as well as programs that emphasize collaboration and team-building in a multicultural setting — will be important pillars of the PSU experience precisely because they relate to the needs of the private sector. She also emphasizes the importance of PSU’s arts programs, saying she expects the College of Arts to play a key role in building up the arts and entertainment sector, with the hopes of revitalizing Portland’s struggling downtown, where PSU is situated. She also says the school’s Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative — which has already collaborated with Health Share of Oregon and Oregon Health & Science University to generate funded homelessness research — should work alongside the city to generate better, evidence-based homelessness responses. It’s a vision that plays to PSU’s strengths: e school produces of the state’s licensed social workers, according to state licensure data, and Oregon is among the leading states showing an increased demand for social workers, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, which estimates a growth in social work positions in the state by . Cudd also plans for the PSU School of Public Health to continue to collaborate with Oregon Health & Science University on programming, and wants to ensure the semiconductor industry continues to build in Portland, citing the . billion available in direct federal funding from the CHIPS and Science Act. “I think our angle will be urban research and it will be community-engaged research. We have one of the only urban engineering schools in the state. One of the things that we’re good at is smart grids, and that’s a really critical need to creating smart cities and solving the grand challenge of faster computing,” she says. Through her rise through the ranks of university administration, Cudd says she still thinks of herself as a professor and academic rst. She says she has a personal interest in making PSU a place where students and sta get the most out of their time at the college. And she says she has a vested interest in keeping the liberal arts alive at the school. “I certainly hope that one day I can retire from the presidency when Portland State is ourishing, and I can come back and be a philosophy professor again,” says Cudd. JASON E. KAPLAN 20
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BY AMY MILSHTEIN BECOMING A NURSE WAS A DREAM for Cesa Summer. At 46 years old, she was excited to be heading down a proven career path that promised variety, personal fulfillment and finally some financial stability. “I got tired of being poor,” she says with a laugh. Though she was highly motivated, Summer’s dream nearly derailed at the last minute. It wasn’t failing grades, illness or outside pressures that put her graduation from Portland Community College’s rigorous two-year nursing program in jeopardy. The threat to Summer’s diploma was coming from inside the house. In April 2023, shortly before Summer was set to graduate, Lisa Sanchez-Navarro—the director of Portland Community College’s ⁄Spotlight⁄ Nursing School Blues The nursing-educator shortage is an old story with growing consequences. Can Oregon’s colleges and lawmakers finally solve the problem? program — resigned her position. That started the clock ticking: Administrators had just 15 days to find a new director and have them approved by the Oregon State Board of Nursing (OSBN) — or shutter the program. After a lot of shuffling and searching, and an extra 15-day extension, PCC administrators hired Cynthia Backer as interim program Dean of Nursing. With an approved director in place, Summer and her cohort of new nurses could get their diplomas and start their nursing careers. “The Oregon State Board of Nursing works closely with all of the colleges,” says Janeen Hull, PCC’s dean of academic & career pathways for healthcare & emergency professions. “They would never leave students hanging.” Yet nursing students, nursing educators, hospitals and ultimately everyone seeking health care in Oregon are all in danger of being left hanging. Nurses are in desperately short supply, but fully qualified nurse educators are really hard to find. In fact, though her résumé is long, even Backer does not meet the full qualifications set by OSBN to become a permanent hire. Finding a permanent candidate to meet those full standards will be challenging. “The pool of qualified nurses who want to work in education is small,” Hull admits. The nursing shortage, nursing-educator shortage and connection between the two is old news. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) has been highlighting the issue for over two decades, according to an article in American Nurse. Written by Susan Bakewell-Sachs, OHSU School of Nursing dean, along with two other contributors, the article calls the problem behind the nurse-faculty shortage a “matter of great and growing concern.” A sticky web of interconnected issues — burnout, lack of clinical and lab space, uncompetitive pay for nurse educators, and a fair dose of institutional misogyny—drives this crisis. The COVID pandemic accelerated the pace. And while this is a nationwide problem, Oregon has been hit particularly hard. The state produces the third-fewest nursing school graduates per capita as compared to the rest of the country, according to a study by the Oregon Longitudinal Data Collaborative (OLDC). Statewide, stakeholders hunt for coordinated solutions, but the prognosis is unknown. The nursing and nursing-educator crisis has festered for a long time. Can this finally be the moment of change? IT IS NOT THAT PEOPLE DO NOT WANT to become nurses. Just like Summer, plenty of good candidates dream of starting down this path. For this year’s fall class, Portland Community College alone had 400 well-qualified applicants to their program, according to Hull. The program, however, could only accommodate 32 of them — that is, 8% of total applicants. Numbers across the state are a little better, but not much. The OLDC study found that 6,800 qualified people applied to programs in 2020, but only 23% were accepted. On the national level, there were 91,038 qualified nursing applications left on the table in 2021. The fact that most registered nursing programs in Oregon have enough qualified applications and regional jobs to double Recent nursing- program graduate Cesa Summer PHOTOS BY JASON E. KAPLAN 22
enrollment is heartening, even as the profession evolves into something more complex. The job has certainly changed from when Backer was in school: “We were trained to give back rubs, help people eat and do bed baths,” she says. “People go into nursing for heartfelt reasons, but there has definitely been a change in expectations.” Expectations for nurse educators have shifted as well. The job demands they keep up with an ever-expanding body of health care knowledge, even as textbooks lag behind. “You can’t just teach to the book,” says Backer. “Teachers need the most current, online resources and access to real world examples.” They also need to know how to teach. That means successfully communicating information to a diverse set of students with different learning styles. (Nursing students often need a fair bit of hand holding, Summer says. “We were neurotic,” she says, “and in a state of panic all the time!”) But anxious students and high expectations are just add-ons to the root causes of the nurse/nursing educator shortage. The biggest problems are a lack of clinical space where students practice and a huge disparity in the pay a teacher can make as compared to a nurse working in the field. The situation is no better at private colleges and universities. “We absolutely do not have enough nurse educators,” Dean Casey Shillam, School of Nursing & Health Innovations, University of Portland, says. Even if there were an abundance of educators, the lack of clinical space squeezes the nursing pipeline to a drip. These clinical placements are required for all students. To get them, the schools must foster individual relationships with healthcare placement sites. This forces a competition between the programs where the students are the losers. The longitudinal study found that 95 percent of nursing programs had an individual or cohort denied placement from 2016 to 2020. Securing clinical space has always been difficult. The pandemic made it worse. “Placements in off-campus professional practice, hospitals, and community-based, long-term care has all diminished because the health systems are not functioning,” says Shillam. “They have no capacity to take students.” But perhaps the biggest barrier to becoming a nurse educator is money. Low nursing educator pay is the standard across the nation. According to the latest Nurse Salary Research Report issued by Nurse. “You can’t just teach to the book. Teachers need the most current, online resources and access to real- world examples.” CYNTHIA BACKER, INTERIM PROGRAM DEAN OF NURSING, PCC SYLVANIA Cynthia Backer, interim dean of nursing at PCC 23
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