alumni

Jesse Rodríguez had already mapped out his future while in high school: After earning an engineering degree, he would join his father’s construction company in Salem, Oregon.

The National Science Foundation has awarded four recent graduates from Oregon State University’s College of Engineering the 2024 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. This five-year fellowship provides three years of financial support inclusive of an annual stipend of $37,000 and a $16,000 allowance for tuition and fees.

Fellows are recognized as outstanding students who demonstrate the potential to become knowledge experts in their fields, contributing significantly to research, teaching, and innovation throughout their careers.

On June 1, Knife River President and CEO Brian Gray rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange to celebrate the company’s first day as an independent, publicly traded business.

“It was exhilarating, one of the most exciting moments of my life,” said Gray, B.S. civil engineering ’93. “My wife and family were there to share the moment. It was special for that reason and because I was able to represent the 6,000 men and women at Knife River whose work made this possible.”

Emma Knight finished her mechanical engineering bachelor’s degree in 2016, but she keeps coming back to Oregon State. 

Her first job after graduating was as a mechanical designer with Systems West Engineers, in Springfield. That brought her back to the Corvallis campus to conduct pre-analysis for what would become the four-year, $159 million Cordley Hall renewal project, scheduled for completion in 2024.

“Being back at Oregon State was quite a full-circle moment,” Knight said. 

By now, most diehard Beavers fans know that Mike Hass, B.S. civil engineering ’06, was recently inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame — one of only three Oregon State players who have earned the high honor. The path he took to get there could have gone straight through Hollywood. 

Open with a scene of Mike and his wife, Rebecca, on their honeymoon in Jamaica, relaxing after dinner and gazing out over the Caribbean. That’s when Scott Barnes, Oregon State’s athletic director, called to tell them about the hall of fame. 

Every engineer spends countless hours learning their field inside and out, but only a relative few ever launch a company to bring their inventions to the world. Luckily, the Oregon State University Advantage Accelerator helps faculty, staff, students, and alumni take that critical step by shepherding new companies through all phases of the startup process.

In the fall of 2019, during the recently completed Merryfield Hall renovations, a plumber descended into a crawl space beneath the building to tap a water line for a new drinking fountain. He also found an odd bit of construction: a dozen concrete-filled barrels, aligned in two parallel rows, supporting a significant chunk of the building. The barrels, it turns out, had also been observed during a 2014 remodel of one of Merryfield’s labs. Who knows when anyone had seen them before that?

Mike and Barb Schmierer created a student success endowment in their name and have been loyal annual donors to the College of Engineering for more than 20 years.

Although neither is an engineer or an Oregon State alum, their family formed strong connections to the college and university through their son, Paul, who graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in 2005. Shortly after finishing college, Paul landed a job in research and development at Sage Fly Fishing, a maker of high-end fishing rods and reels based in Washington.