ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOE MCKENDRY 28 OregonStater.org C U LT UR E A RECIPE FOR CONNECTION How one professor’s baking turned into a community-building tradition. BY > CORA LASSEN “HE KNEW IT WOULD BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER — ANYBODY WILL GO ANYWHERE IF THERE’S TREATS.” Every Friday morning, the smell of coffee and baked treats wafts from a first-floor office in Nash Hall. Inside, there’s the murmur of voices and the unmistakable sound of laughter. Members of the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences gather around a large conference table, with taxidermied animal heads looking on. They nibble on cookies or muffins, pour coffee from insulated pitchers into ceramic mugs and chat about research, weekend plans or sports. What might not occur to a new visitor, soaking in the atmosphere of comfortable camaraderie, is that the founder of this cozy tradition is missing from the frame: David L.G. Noakes, late professor at Oregon State University. As a researcher, Noakes received the American Fisheries Society Award of Excellence — one of the top prizes in fisheries — for his work at the Oregon Hatchery Research Center, where he led groundbreaking studies into many local Oregon species including lamprey and Chinook salmon. But his legacy has another, very human component: When people talk about him, their faces light up. “David was a major connector,” said Michelle Scanlan, ’05, ’12, M.S. ’15. Noakes was her master’s thesis advisor, and she’s still working in the department as a faculty research assistant today. “He would make it a point to introduce people and connect them if he thought they had some sort of common ground. And he would use Coffee Club especially to do that.” Noakes started his first Coffee Club at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada — his own spin on Canada’s teatime tradition. When he came to work at Oregon State in 2005, Coffee Club came with him. The club met once a week, a casual in-and-out department meetup with coffee and conversation, and always with fresh goodies baked by Noakes himself. “Other people would bake sometimes, but it was usually him,” said Rachel Crowhurst, M.S. ’12, an-
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