Graduating from college was on Joe Burton’s mind long before he came to Oregon State University.

A team captain on the Beavers basketball team, Burton said graduating was a point Coach Craig Robinson drove home even during the recruiting process. Burton said he appreciates Robinson’s concern for him and his teammates as young men, and not just basketball players.

“He wants to make us successful, and first and foremost, he wants us to graduate,” Burton said of Robinson. “When he sat down with my family for the first time he told them that I already have the gift of basketball, but he wants me to graduate.”

Burton will graduate this spring with a degree in Ethnic Studies, and he’s not only making his Coach proud. He has had his family as well as an entire community behind him since day one.

Burton is a member of the Soboba Band of Luiseno Indians, and grew up on a reservation in southern California where it’s becoming increasingly uncommon for young people to graduate high school, let alone college.

Burton’s grandfather, Charles Vaugh Silvasar isn’t surprised by Burton’s success. He thinks Burton’s future is bright.

“He’s wonderful with people and excellent with children,” Silvasar said. “I could see him getting into coaching or counseling.”

Silvasar has been at almost every Oregon State game – home and away – since Burton began his career four years ago, and plans to be in the crowd at commencement as well.

“I think my grandpa is going to cry the most,” Burton said. “He tries to be a tough guy, but he’s got a soft spot.”

Throughout his time at Oregon State, Burton realized he was becoming a role model for the Native American community. Proud of his background, Burton volunteered at the Native American Long House, and helped secure a bond between Oregon State and Nike’s N7 program, which encourages participation in sports for Native American communities across the country.

Back home, Burton’s entire extended family on the reservation will be cheering as well.

“People don’t care if I lose a basketball game,” Burton said. “Everyone wants to see me graduate and get an education. That’s what it all comes down to.”

Photo courtesy of OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center

The history is fuzzy (pun intended) surrounding when the beaver became known as “Benny,” but Austin has his own theory.

“In high school, I was Kenny Austin, and I think maybe after a few beers with Bill (Sundstrom), I might have said, ‘You know, why don’t we call him Benny because I was called Kenny?’’’ Austin said, laughing. “But, who knows.”

Students dressed up as a beaver before Austin, but were never sanctioned by the school, nor did they entertain during football games. That honor went to Kenny — or, Benny.

On the 50-yard-line of Reser Stadium, Ken Austin and Benny Beaver greet with a handshake. Naturally, the mascot pulls Austin in for the real thing: a hug.

Like any good mascot, Benny Beaver doesn’t speak. He uses hand gestures, leg kicks and random poses to communicate, but Benny and Austin appear to be best buddies. The two are meeting for a photo shoot. They stand arm in arm. Austin talks, Benny nods, wiggles and shakes.

“Thank you for being here, Benny,” Austin says. “Thanks a million.”

Austin interacts with Benny like most everyone does. He talks to the brown plushy as if he were real.

But Benny is real to Austin because Austin was Benny Beaver. The first Benny Beaver.

Sponge and shag carpet

It was the spring of 1952 when Ken Austin created the beaver mascot. Back then, Oregon State University was still Oregon State College (OSC), and cheerleaders were part of what was called a “rally squad”. When the athletic department held a tryout for Yell King — the leader of the rally squad — Austin’s fraternity brother, Bill Sundstrom, won.

“He said, ‘Do you know why I won?’” Austin remembers. “‘I proposed that we have a student mascot, and I’d like for you to be it.’”

Austin had no idea what a mascot was, let alone one operated by an actual human. At the time, California had Oski the Bear, and Stanford had a Native American mascot. That was all Austin knew.

With the OK from OSC, Austin made his Beaver costume from scratch. He bought the head of a costume at a costume shop and decorated it with shag rug. He made a tail out of a big piece of sponge rubber, slipped on football pants and a jersey.

Oregon State had its mascot.

Game time

The following football season, it was time to bring the mascot to life in front of thousands.

“I think I was scared to death,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

Decked in his homemade suit, carrying a shiny 38-revolver — yes, a revolver  (shooting blanks, thankfully) — Austin brought the show to Beaver Nation.

“The ref threw down his hanky and I crawled out on the field like I was sneaking up on a skunk or something, and shot the hanky about three times,” Austin said of a game in Portland at Multnomah Stadium. “And the referee was laughing because he picked it up and it still had powder burns in it.”

The whole crowd was laughing along with the referee. Smoke bellowed from the penalty flag and the revolver.

When the Beavers played Stanford, Austin muscled his way up the goal post and took a seat on the crossbar during the game.

“Get off the goal post, you turkey!” the Stanford rooters screamed.

“I became known as a turkey when I came back to Oregon State that week,” Austin said.

By the end of the season, Austin was known for being funny, brave and outrageous. He was an entertainer, the spirit of Oregon State.

“You just kind of roll with the crowd,” he said. “I’m kind of a spontaneous guy.”

He got his wild ideas from the St. Paul Rodeo, close to where he grew up in Newberg, Ore.

“I went to every rodeo show and watched the clown and I did things like the clowns did, and one of those things was the clown carried a pistol,” he said.

So that’s where the revolver thing came from. But those were different times. The school had OK’d it and nobody was in danger. “It was all fun and games,” Austin said.

At the end of the football season, The Daily Barometer, the student newspaper, published an article that asked, “Who is this student dressed like a beaver that acts like a jackass?”

Well, that was Austin.

Giving back

Last fall, Benny Beaver, who has become a staple in the university’s identity, was recognized on his 60^th birthday. A season ticket holder, Austin was there. He remembers the feeling.

“I had no idea any of this would ever come to something like it has,” he said. “I had no idea anybody would even pay attention to it.”

Austin, along with his wife, Joan D., founded and owns Austin Dental Equipment Company (A-dec), a booming business. They are one of the university’s biggest donors, and most recently gave $10 million to help erect a brand new business building, Austin Hall, which will be completed in fall 2014.

Austin’s passion for making Oregon State better may very well have originated with his first creation: Benny.

“I have no idea what my life would be like if I hadn’t been Benny Beaver,” an emotional Austin said. “I didn’t do it for the recognition, nobody knew who I was. It gave me self-confidence. It’s through all of these experiences that I had that has made it possible for Joan and I to give to Oregon State. The school has done wonderful things for me.”

Kenny and Benny

The photo shoot is nearly over. Austin and Benny are posing like superstars. They have held “Go Beavs” signs, reenacted an old photo and performed multiple fist pumps together.

Austin steps aside briefly to talk about life and what it’s like to be the man who created Benny Beaver. He says most fans ask him what it was like being the first Benny Beaver.

“It has become something very special to me because I’m proud of creating the first Benny, and I’m also proud of Benny’s reputation all these years,” Austin says. “It’s so wonderful and so touching when I see Benny down on his haunches or knees, talking to a child, and how much the children love Benny and how much Benny loves the children,”

Austin says he feels a great deal of pride any time he visits Oregon State’s campus or talks about his alma mater.

“I’m awfully proud of my school and I’m proud to have been part of the traditions,” he says.

As if on cue, Benny joins the group of people. His arms are open — one more hug for Austin.

As the two embrace, Austin mutters into the side of the plushy soft head, no longer the shag carpet that started everything.

“I love you, Benny.”

Moms and Family Weekend is one of the biggest annual events at Oregon State and within the Corvallis community. Its student organizers, Mackenzie Hoy, Sarah Lowe and Trisha Kooba say this years event, scheduled for May 3-5, could bring in as much as $3-4 million throughout the city after mothers purchase gas, hotel rooms, tickets to events, dinners out and of course, t-shirts.
“They love buying t-shirts,” Hoy says.

MUPC ORGANIZES MOMS WEEKEND

In fact, working the merchandise table is one of Hoy’s favorite jobs during Moms Weekend because of all the feedback she hears.

The positive reactions from happy moms and students is well deserved. The organizers at the Memorial Union Program Council start planning Moms and Family Weekend about 20 weeks before the event, as soon as Dads and Family Weekend wraps up in the fall.

The organizers, along with their advisers, look at data from last year’s Moms and Family Weekend to determine what kind of events, services and vendors to offer, and set out to make it happen.

And even though it’s a lot of work, all three organizers agree they love their job.
“I think it’s the best job on campus,” Lowe says.

HISTORY OF MOMS ON OSU’S CAMPUS

Moms Weekend started unofficially in the spring of 1924 when women on campus invited their mothers to come to campus for a day to see what kind of opportunities their daughters had at school.

Due to its popularity, soon men began inviting their mothers, and a meal was offered to everyone in attendance.

Through the years, Moms and Family Weekend has evolved into an entire weekend of fun events for the whole family.

This year’s events include the usual comedy show, fashion show and art show. Massages and photos will be offered as well. MUPC has partnered for the first time this year with the Asian and Pacific Cultural Center to host a tea for mothers and their students.

Hoy, Low and Kooba agree that the weekend offers events families don’t take part in every day.

“How often are you walking down the street and say, ‘Hey, let’s go to a comedy show tonight?’” Kooba says.

MOM’S WEEKEND ATTENDEES

Oregon State Parent and Alum Becky Pershing will attend Moms and Family Weekend this year with her daughter Kaycee.

Due to obligations back home in the Portland area, Becky hasn’t always been able to make it to Moms Weekend in the past.

“This year I have the whole weekend free, and Kaycee has to work both days,” Becky says.

But Becky is still making plans to tag along to work with Kaycee and attend some of the evening events.

Becky says she’s lucky to have experienced Moms and Family Weekend from both perspectives. As a student on campus in the ‘80s, she remembers roller skating through campus with her mother.

“We have always had so much fun at Moms Weekend,” Becky says.

And that’s all the organizers can hope for.

“Everyone has really great time,” Hoy says. “They have nothing but great things to say.”

Future Oregon State Freshman Emma Miller was nervous about leaving home and finding her place on campus until the Oregon State University Facebook Application calmed her fears.

Future students are scattered around the state, nation and world. Last year, Oregon State launched this online community to give students the opportunity to meet new friends and prepare to begin their college experience. The application, which is reserved exclusively for Oregon State students and new admits, is designed to help students connect based on their majors, activities and interests. It also offers students the ability to keep their personal Facebook profiles private while interacting with future classmates.

As soon as she was admitted Miller made a profile and began connecting with students who would be joining her on campus. She used the app to meet her roommate, find her fellow Sackett Hall residents and meet students who shared her academic and personal interests.

Like Miller, many app users also find roommates through UHDS’s Roommate Matching Network. They then utilize the app to start conversations and get to know each other. Junior transfer students Nicolas Castaneda used the app for this purpose. It helped him connect to another transfer student looking to find off-campus housing.

“We knew we would get along because the app discovered that we had several matching traits and characteristics,” Castaneda said. “We met once and agreed to be roommates. So far, everything is working out great!”

Building these peer connections is a crucial component of student success in college. According to Dr. Susie Brubaker-Cole, Associate Provost for Academic Success and Engagement, research done both nationally and at Oregon State is “unambiguous that developing a sense of belonging and connectedness within the new campus community is one of the most important factors in long-term student success in college.”

It is important to take these relationships offline as well. After students connect on the application, they often meet in person to get to know each other better. Students accomplish this by establishing “meetups” on the application that allows others to be aware of possible opportunities to meet fellow students. Last spring, students from the Portland area met at the Saturday market; students from California carpooled to their START orientations and others met over coffee or lunch during Open Houses to get to know one another better.

Once on campus, students also have the opportunity to meet up.

“The campus residences are an obvious way for students who’ve connected online to continue to develop in-person friendships,” Brubaker-Cole said. “I also know that many students who connect online over mutual interests or hobbies meet up in person in one of the many student clubs and organizations.”

The research and student experiences all point to the same conclusion: Getting connected as soon as possible helps student find their place at the university and begin developing the cohort of peers that will join them on their collegiate journey. The application provides a great venue to begin building these connections making the transition to Corvallis that much smoother.

Current and recently admitted students can also log on to social.oregonstate.edu to set up an account and start meeting new peers and friends.

By Colin Huber

When current Director of Equipment Operations Steve McCoy was hired by Oregon State Athletics in 1998, the Beavers weren’t a Nike school. At least not by today’s definition.

“It was a handshake agreement; that was it. It was very minimal,” said McCoy, laughing. “I think we had a shoe program, a buy two, get one free thing. It’s not like that anymore.”

It’s not even close.

That was 15 years ago, before Facebooking and Tweeting and worldwide live-streaming. The world has changed. Children born in 1998 are now high school students, preparing for college. They enjoy different stuff: styles, looks, flash and a thing called “swag”.

The same changes have affected Oregon State. Since McCoy walked through the doors of the university, the brand has evolved, and so has the relationship with Nike.

In 1999, Dennis Erickson replaced Head Football Coach Mike Riley, who left for the NFL. Erickson brought a fresh, modern outlook with him.

“He had an existing relationship with Nike, so he picked up the phone, made some calls and slowly we got more involved,” McCoy said.

The partnership continued to grow during the 2000-2001 football season. That season, the Beavers won the Fiesta Bowl, launching the university into a national spotlight.

“That’s when we established ourselves as a reputable group,” McCoy said. “Then, in 2002, (newly appointed Athletic Director) Bob De Carolis came to me and asked, ‘What’s it going to take to get better?’ We had to keep building that relationship with Nike.”

From there, the tie grew stronger each year, and in 2009, with the help of back-to-back baseball national championships, Oregon State became a “Tier-1” program with Nike. At the time, the Beavers were one of just a handful schools that enjoyed Nike’s exclusive perks including the widest range of products, design, gear, programs and product testing.

This brings us to 2013. This year the university teamed up with the sports marketing giant in an athletic rebranding effort.

A new brand

Oregon State began its rebranding process just 18 months ago, but the idea has been around much longer.

“This has been a long time coming,” McCoy said.

Finally, the department found reason to change its look — uniforms, lettering, a logo — Benny’s outfit.

“We had to ask ourselves, ‘What does Oregon State University need to advance the athletic brand? What will help us recruit prospective students and student-athletes?” Senior Associate Athletic Director John Rizzardini said. “We needed distinctive. We needed contemporary.”

Rizzardini joined the Beavers shortly after pushing the Seattle Seahawks through their own rebrand with Nike in early 2012. He knew he was jumping into a big task on the fly. Rebranding projects, especially at institutions rich with tradition, have to be done delicately. Oregon State’s process started with homework, involving as many people as possible, Rizzardini said.

“We (Oregon State and Nike officials) had to listen, talk with young people, talk with administration, talk with student-athletes,” he said.

The rebranding process at Oregon State included a broad scope of leaders. In addition to the Athletics Department, the university’s central marketing team, headed by Steve Clark, Vice President for University Relations and Marketing, was included throughout. Coaches weighed in. Student-athletes had a part as well, offering advice about what potential recruits might want to see. All were answering the same question: How should the school be represented?

“Nike came to campus and did interviews with administrators and students-athletes,” said Melody Oldfield, Director of University Marketing. “They wanted to get a feel for what Oregon State was about.”

Recruiting talented student athletes, becoming even more nationally recognized and the desire to connect with fans are all factors that drove Oregon State’s rebrand.

“We wanted to make an intimate relationship between fans and this university,” Rizzardini said.

Together, the university and Nike put together a string of words — or themes — that best represented Oregon State as a whole:

Heritage. Strong. Victorious. United. Innovative. Tenacious. Dedicated. Integrity.

From there, it was time to create.

Nike’s design

After a concept was constructed, it was a no-brainer to hand the design reins over to Nike. After all, the relationships were already in place.

“I think we already had a very special relationship, different from a lot of schools,” McCoy said. “Former Beavers work there (a large number of alumni). If I have a problem with equipment, I’m on the phone and they’re there. They have the same dedication and desire we do.”

“They understand athletic performance at the top tier,” Rizzardini said. “They’re right in our backyard (Beaverton, Ore.). They come to games. They visit with coaches. They’re not just a group that flies in every once in a while.”

The team at Nike dedicated months constructing art, focusing on a logo.

“The design team at Nike, it’s amazing to see how bright, detailed and innovative they are,” Rizzardini said, mentioning that part of the planning was to incorporate attributes of a Beaver, the animal, into the brand.

After months of work, Nike came back to Oregon State with a pitch.

The University had a look in mind, and officials weren’t just going to take the first thing they saw. They wanted something that was perfect for the school. It wasn’t about slapping a logo onto a table and saying “That’s it.” Oregon State was part of the process.

“We were given every opportunity to agree or disagree,” McCoy said.

That’s how things went. Nike showed the designs. Oregon State critiqued. Nike went back and adjusted, over and over for 18 months to get it just right.

A signature mark

The process of finding the perfect logo hinged really on one thing: identity. What is Oregon State’s — and only Oregon State’s — identity? That answer came from within.

“We didn’t look at other schools,” McCoy said. “We’re not trying to be like other schools. We’re trying to be like Oregon State. We’re our own personality.”

The new logo might not last forever, but it will be around for awhile — as long as the Oregon State brand remains contemporary, unique and recognizable.

“We want people from all across the nation to see our logo and know, ‘That’s Oregon State,’” McCoy said.

That was the goal from the beginning. For Oregon State and Nike, the target was university-wide representation — something everybody could relate to.

“This represents the whole school. Logos, color combos, everything,” McCoy said. “We don’t want the team to look good. We want the university to look good. We want our students to represent it and walk proud.”

“It’s a big change. It’s what we were missing here.”

Yes, a big change indeed. A long way from the days of 2-for-1 Nike shoes.

The launch will be highlighted by student-athletes, who will model the new look and style of Beaver Nation. Special guests are on the list of attendance, and Benny is set make his first appearance in his new gear.

All Beaver fans, students, faculty, staff, donors and alumni are welcome, free of charge, to the exclusive first-look.

Doors open at 5:30 p.m.
Event begins at 6:30 p.m.

If you are not in the area or unable to attend, the unveiling will be available worldwide via livestream.

Go Beavers.

A visit to Oregon State University changed Ibrahim Keita’s life, helping him find a path to college.

Some may have said college wasn’t in the cards for Ibrahim Keita. Growing up in a low-income neighborhood in southeast Portland, Ore., Keita admits he was more focused on playing basketball and getting into trouble than on schoolwork or preparing for college.

“I wasn’t thinking about the future,” Keita says. “I was just thinking, ‘I’m going to have fun right here, right now.’”

When he was expelled from his middle school in seventh grade, Keita’s fate might have been sealed. But then a visit to Oregon State University changed everything. After entering a new school for his eighth grade year, Keita was part of a small group of African American young men who took an overnight trip to Oregon State in 2009 through a new initiative called Project HARVEST.

Accompanied by their principal, Karl Newsome, the students met with members of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, participated in a chemistry experiment and met one of Oregon State’s most celebrated alumni, astronaut Don Pettit. After playing games in the MU Basement and Dixon Recreation Center, they spent the night in a residence hall and attended a basketball game at Gill Coliseum the next day.

“I never did think about college before that,” Keita says. “It made me realize how fun college is and how many opportunities there are at Oregon State.”

An uphill struggle

After the Project HARVEST trip, Keita decided he was going to college — and going to Oregon State. But a complete reversal of habits wouldn’t happen overnight. During his freshman year at Marshall High School, Keita continued to focus on sports and hanging out and found himself with a low GPA that could keep him out of Oregon State if he didn’t improve his grades.

“My dad asked me, ‘What hurts more, the pain of hard work and sacrifice or the pain of failure and regret?’” Keita says. “I didn’t want to look back on my life wishing I’d focused in high school.”

So Keita transferred to Grant High School, where he could take college-credit courses, and began the work of raising his GPA. Inspired by his father’s words and the goal of reaching Oregon State, he took on college-level classes that demanded more from him academically than he thought he had to give.

“There were so many times last year when I was thinking, ‘I overloaded myself, I’m going to drop some of these classes, I’m going to take it easy and go to community college,’” Keita says. “But I kept at it.”

And the reward, when it finally came, was well worth it. When Keita learned he’d been accepted to Oregon State University, he says he thought of his eighth-grade trip to the campus, and knew that this was what made the hard work and sacrifice his father had described worthwhile.

“I felt joy,” Keita says. “I realized how awesome college is and how grateful I am to attend Oregon State. But I know I still have more work to do. I still have years and years to come. It’s exciting.”

Reaping the benefits

Keita’s turnaround effort to improve his grades and gain admittance to Oregon State is one of the first tangible payoffs of Project HARVEST, a program developed to encourage more African American young men to pursue higher education. Founded by a group of Portland-area educators, Project HARVEST (Helping Adolescents Reach Viable Educational Strengths for Tomorrow) was created to address the low number of African American young men attending college in the United States.

Now in its fifth year, the program began with the small group of students that included Keita visiting campus in February 2009. Oregon State’s Educational Opportunities Program helps arrange the visits and provides activities to give the students a sense of college life and the opportunities available with a college education. EOP Director Janet Nishihara says program coordinators aim to help them see attending college as an attainable goal.

“Some of the students have so many barriers to overcome that it’s part of our obligation to show them ways to overcome them and that there are people around to help them do it,” Nishihara says. “This is an exciting example of what good can come out of people really being committed to seeing that a certain group of students have access to college, in terms of being able to see themselves here.”

For Keita, the effects of the program have already been life changing.

“Now I get to go to college instead of where I was headed,” Keita says. “If it wasn’t for Project HARVEST, I don’t know where I would have went.”

Keita plans to study electrical and computer engineering when he enrolls at Oregon State this fall, and has goals of developing software and starting his own company. He hopes to serve as a role model for his younger brother the way his father did for him. In an environment where there are more opportunities to misbehave than to better yourself, Keita says family can be a major factor in helping young men choose another path.

“A lot of my friends don’t have family,” Keita says. “I know for a fact I wouldn’t be going to school if I didn’t have my dad. I am that good example for my little brother. I want him to go to Oregon State.”

Project HARVEST continues to bring African American youth to Oregon State, with this year’s visit at the end of February. In recent years, the program has increased the number of students attending in an effort give more young men a chance to find the motivation to pursue a better future, the way Keita did.

“I think everyone should have that opportunity,” Keita says. “If you really want to be successful in life, you have to learn a skill in college. It’s easy to just chill on the street corner but it’s not easy to go hard in the classroom — but it all pays off.”

© Michael Nichols/National Geographic; from the December issue of National Geographic magazine.

Forest scientist and Oregon State University alumnus Steve Sillett studies and climbs the largest trees in the world. Since 1987, he’s climbed more than 1,000 trees, many of which reached heights greater than 200 feet tall and diameters upwards of 20 feet. Sillett’s study of old-growth forests and in particular redwood forest canopies has led him to some of the oldest and largest trees in existence, and what he’s learned about them has changed the way scientists view aged trees.

Sillett holds the Kenneth L. Fisher Chair in Redwood Forest Ecology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif., where he spends time both teaching and researching. His arboreal research has been featured in National Geographic six times since 1997. He last appeared in the December 2012 issue of the magazine, in which he discussed climbing the second-largest tree in the world in the Sierra Nevada. Recently, Sillett answered some of our questions about his research and what it’s like to climb and see trees more than 3,000 years old in ways they’ve never been experienced before.

You were the first scientist to enter the old-growth redwood forest canopy — what first inspired you to leave the ground and take measurements of all parts of the tree?

I was first inspired to reach the canopy because I could not see what was going on high above the ground in tall forests. Arriving there revealed a world of unknowns, which required careful measurements. During the first four years of scientific exploration in the redwood canopy, I found a new phenomenon just about every time I climbed!

What is it like to climb such large trees?

Each large tree is unique structurally and requires many hours to explore. For example, my team spent a total of 320 hours mapping the President tree for National Geographic, and I never even saw about a third of its crown! The main trunk is like a wall blocking your view of the other side, so you have to go up, over, and around just to see what’s going on over there. In redwood rain forests, it’s even more complicated because there are so many juicy microhabitats tucked away in hard-to-reach places.

What do you learn about the trees through direct contact, observing every inch of them, that can’t be learned from the ground?

You cannot see the vast majority of a giant tree’s surface from the ground, so climbing and directly measuring each appendage is really the only way to get accurate numbers for important quantities like bark, wood and leaves at the whole-tree level. New methods like light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and motion capture now permit better quantification of tree structure than ever before, but much of a large tree’s crown is still invisible to these methods.

You discovered that older, larger trees actually create wood at a faster rate than they do when they’re younger — an idea that goes against previous assumptions. How significant is this to the way old trees are viewed and valued?

Well, it has long been understood that larger, older trees produce more wood than smaller, younger trees. What has been misunderstood is the effect of old age on a tree’s rate of wood production. Of course, like all earthlings, every tree eventually dies, but in long-lived species like Sequoia sempervirens and Sequoiadendron giganteum, a tree’s annual rate of wood production continues to increase for a very long time. For example, a 2000-year-old Sequoiadendron tree is growing faster than ever!

© Michael Nichols/National Geographic; from the December issue of National Geographic magazine.

What impact could cultivating large, old trees have on human communities, animal habitats and the environment?

Even in the most massive old-growth forests, a few large trees per hectare harbor the bulk of arboreal biodiversity (e.g., epiphytes). They also do much of the forest’s work in the form of carbon sequestration, transpiration, nutrient cycling and moisture interception, so large trees have value to humans apart from wood production and aesthetics. Getting large trees back into our forested landscapes will require a long-term commitment to uneven-age management.

When you started out as a biology student, what led you to focus on trees as the organism you wanted to learn about most?

I became obsessed with tree climbing in college as a way to relieve the stress of laboratory work, and I soon became captivated by the organisms growing on tree surfaces, especially lichens and bryophytes. The more I studied these epiphytes, the more I wondered about the tree itself. Eventually my scientific interests shifted to trees entirely.

What role has your background and education at Oregon State played in the work that you do now?

My training at Oregon State and other universities has been critical to my success as a scientist. At Oregon State I had ample opportunities to work independently, make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. I was encouraged every step of the way by a great set of professors, especially Bill Denison, Bruce McCune, Pat Muir, Mark Wilson and Don Zobel. 

What do you hope to see your work accomplish?

I hope to inspire a deeper understanding of trees and forests that will enable our society to better protect and utilize forest resources. Forestry has largely ignored the capabilities of large, old trees, viewing them more as commodities than as critical parts of a functioning ecosystem. The notion that old-growth forests are decadent and barely growing anymore is utterly false! The battle to save old growth from clearcutting has already been fought and mostly lost, and we now have only small remnants to remind us of these once vast forests. Instead of admitting defeat and suffering the permanent loss of forest giants and the excellent heartwood and ecosystem services they provide, however, we can rebuild great forests through careful management.

- Kayla Harr

© Michael Nichols/National Geographic; from the December issue of National Geographic magazine.

Learn more…

•  Read the full article in National Geographic
• Oregon State College of Forestry
• Department of Botany and Plant Pathology
• Speaking for the Big Trees - a Powered by Orange story from Steve Sillette’s previous NG cover experience

Learn more about the story of how Cascade changed the industry: