On Tuesday I walked two areas where I once worked – the 137 acre campus of Lewis&Clark College where I taught Experimental Psychology for 15 years and Portland State University where I did the occasional replacement gig for colleagues who went on Sabbatical.

L&C is located 6 miles South of downtown, PSU, on the other hand, is situated smack in an urban area in the SW quadrant of the city. One school is private, the other a state school. Tuition for the small liberal arts college is $45.000 per year of a 4-year degree. In- state tuition for PSU is an annual $8000, double that if you need room and board. The private college houses 2.200 students, compared to 27.000 who attend PSU. The age range is small (and young) for L&C students, the range at PSU is huge, with many adults who work full time while also trying to get a college degree. The acceptance rate for both schools is about 60% of all applicants (first rate programs are half that, or less.)

Sports are serious business at L&C.

The Hoffman Art Gallery is actually quite good.

 

Reflecting pool in the garden….

Dove Cove and Theater facilities

 

The L&C campus nestles around a manor house that was built by one of the scions of a Jewish merchant family, the Franks. They dominated the market together with their partners, the Meiers, with department stores. Housing laws were not kind to Jews in this city, and so Frank, or so the rumors have it, moved South of the city to have his own estate. After 10 years of living there it was sold to the college. The gardens are well preserved, the whole campus breathes upper middle class and then some. Student housing is first rate.

The surrounding homes in the immediate neighborhood are yet a step above that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Luckily the moles disregard class boundaries…

 

The classroom behind this door, shut off from any natural light/windows, was the place where I thought students had finally given up on me and started to move furniture around in protest of the difficulty of the materials (at the time the majority of psych students was certainly interested in the softer ends of the field and not the hard science corner.) Turned out to be a serious enough earthquake to displace the tables….

 

 

Downtown, on the other hand, offers a different picture. Much recent building activity is trying to improve the campus, which is stuck with old buildings, not the best facilities, and a general lack of funding given how many state universities in Oregon try to compete for a limited amount of money. Housing leaves much to be desired.

Yet the faculty is first rate, and honestly the education as far as I could see, did not differ in quality other than overcrowded classrooms, and more work for professors given the enormous variability in background knowledge and skills brought to the place by a wonderfully diverse student body. Students were applying themselves with an intensity generated by knowing what improvement a degree would bring to their lives; that could not be said as a whole for all of the L&C students, who chose the school often for its proximity to recreational activities that OR mountains and beaches offer: skying, surfing, hiking. The majority also had parents who footed the bill. Of course this might have changed in the decade since I retired.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Community gardens stocking the food pantry are right on the urban campus.

My favorite place at PSU is a little plaza that commemorates the achievements of women – The Walk of the Heroines – .

(Kamala Harris would know….)

 My favorite experience at PSU is the proximity to those who you would never meet in Dunthorpe, so that things are kept in perspective.

My Street Roots Vendor when walking down 6th Ave – the only paper newspaper I still buy….