On Jan. 11, Iron Gate Dam was blasted open, marking the first step in removing three reservoirs from the Klamath River. It was a moment that many wondered if they would ever witness. What seemed like an impossible mission was achieved through 30 years of collaboration between tribal members, scientists, engineers, and staff from government agencies and conservation groups. The biggest dam removal in the U.S. is more than a monumental engineering project. The hope is that it will restore some balance to a damaged ecological system.

Chances are high that you’re reading this on an iPhone — or at least that you have one in your back pocket. The iPhone is all in a day’s work for Neil Glover, senior engineering program manager on the iPhone System Hardware team at Apple Inc.

“What is the first thing someone touches in the morning? For hundreds of millions of people, that’s an iPhone. So, it is pretty crazy and pretty rewarding to work on something like that,” said Glover, B.S. electrical and computer engineering ’12, M.S. ’15.

Richard Wirz sometimes jokes that the word “aerospace” makes no sense.

“Aero means air, and space means the absence of air,” said Wirz, executive director for aerospace research programs and Boeing Professor of Mechanical Engineering Design at Oregon State University’s College of Engineering. “It’s like I study air and no air. Why are they even in the same category?”

As he was closing in on his Ph.D. and applying for academic positions, David Hurwitz received an offer from the College of Engineering at Oregon State University that was too good to pass up.

Alfiya Orman, a master’s student in civil engineering, sees lighting as a critical aspect of architectural design. In the College of Engineering’s recently constructed Lighting Lab, Orman had access to cutting-edge tools for manipulating different aspects of light to assess its impact on built environments.

In December 2022, Abi Whittle was holding down two jobs and taking a full load of classes in the College of Engineering at Oregon State University. Then she read about a scholarship, being offered for the first time at the college, intended specifically for students like her: computer science majors following the cybersecurity track. She applied and was selected from nearly 35 applicants as one of five students to join the university’s first cohort of Scholarship for Service recipients.

First-generation student Javier Garcia-Ramirez received a lot more from the Catalyst Scholars Program than he was expecting when he came to Oregon State University in 2020.

“I knew I’d be getting financial support, but the program offered opportunities beyond that, opportunities that helped me develop as a whole person,” said Garcia-Ramirez, a senior in computer science and member of the scholarship program’s inaugural cohort.

While working as a senior mechanical design engineer for a large tech company, Samantha Kang, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering, bristled at the thought of migrant workers on the manufacturing floor being paid less than $4 an hour, to make a product that sells for hundreds. This social inequity motivated Kang to leave the industry.