Think Out Loud

During the pandemic, schools from elementary to college took classes online by necessity. But 5 years later, a number of college students are still taking at least some of their classes remotely, even when they have an in-person choice. Online learning can take many forms, and include both synchronous and asynchronous formats. Some Oregon universities offer some degrees entirely online. At community colleges around the country, more than 40% of classes are offered online.   We talk with students and professors at two different Oregon universities about why online classes are still popular and the role they play in the overall educational system. Audrey Carlson attends Portland State University, and Kayla Ramirez is student body president at Oregon State University. Sebastian Heiduschke is a professor of German at OSU, and Bill Knight represents the faculty union at PSU, where he is a professor of English.  

The Pacific Northwest had a thriving punk rock scene in the 90s with bands like The Wipers, Dead Moon and Bikini Kill. One of the pioneering bands of that time is Team Dresch, which had its roots in the queercore movement. This year the band has been on a 30 year anniversary tour. Band members Donna Dresch, Kaia Wilson, Jody Bleyle and Marcéo Martinez join us to play some songs and talk about their legacy.

More than 100 Oregon students with both vision and hearing impairments are anticipating a decline in services in schools, as the federal government has suddenly cut a five-year grant for the Oregon DeafBlind Project. The program serves DeafBlind Oregonians from birth up until the age of 21 at no cost to families or school districts. The goal of the program is to provide training to local teachers and school staff to support students with DeafBlindness. Lisa McConachie is the director of the project. She joins us to share more on what these cuts will mean for students.  

As first reported by Oregon ArtsWatch, a new education pavilion is opening on Sep. 20 at Tryon Creek State Natural Area located in Southwest Portland, near Lake Oswego. The new education center allows the nonprofit Friends of Tryon Creek to hold community events and educational programming year-round for students to gather for classes, day camps and field trips inside the roughly 660-acre day-use area.   Friends of Tryon Creek is also leading the fundraising and construction of the $2.6 million education pavilion, which was built on the forest floor and features a design based on traditional plankhouses used by Indigenous Northwest tribes as communal gathering spaces for ceremonies, potlatches and other events. Four Indigenous Northwest artists have also been commissioned to create artwork that will be put on permanent display inside the pavilion. Six western red cedar lodgepoles were sustainably harvested from local forests and used for the new construction, along with bluestone that was used for the interior hallway to represent Columbia River basalt preserved in the landscape.    Friends of Tryon Creek executive director Gabe Sheoships is Cayuse and Walla Walla and a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Artist Shirod Younker is Coos, Miluk, Umpqua and a citizen of the Coquille Indian Tribe. They join us to share how they hope the new education pavilion will help students and visitors appreciate the pre-colonial history of Tryon Creek and the surrounding region.  

Earlier this month, the governors of Oregon, Washington and California announced they are forming a partnership called the West Coast Health Alliance. The goal of this new partnership is aimed at preserving access to vaccines and will also develop its own immunization guidelines. This comes after the the Trump administration fired the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and several scientists resigned from the agency. Now the group is sharing its guidelines recommending that everyone over 6 months of age should have access to the COVID-19 vaccine and that the vaccine should be accessible to “all who choose protection.” Dean Sidelinger is the state epidemiologist for the Oregon Health Authority and joins us to share more on this new partnership and their recommendations.

Oregon’s Tribal Early Learning Hub has faced a number of challenges since its creation. But this summer, state lawmakers passed HB 2815, which would invest more in early learning for Oregon's nine federally recognized tribes. As the school year begins, we hear from Jory Spencer, the early childhood service program manager for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. We also hear from Jennifer Reid, education director for Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians. They both join us to share more about their programs and what these new investments mean for them.

Movies like “The Goonies,” “Animal House” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” are among the most famous of those filmed in Oregon, and they're points of pride for Oregon film buffs. Television shows like “Grimm” and “Portlandia” and animation studios like Laika and ShadowMachine burnish the state’s production portfolio.   While newer projects continue to shoot in Oregon, the industry was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, a lengthy writers and actors strike and an industry-wide shift to overseas production. Tim Williams is the executive director of Oregon Film, a semi-independent state agency that promotes movie and TV production in Oregon. He joins us to talk about how the industry is faring in Oregon.

Last year, there were 36 whales entangled with commercial fishing gear off the coasts of Oregon, Washington and California, or found entangled with West Coast fishing gear off the coasts of other countries. That’s the highest number of whale entanglements in the West Coast region since 2018, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.    More than eight years ago, scientists at Oregon State University began collaborating with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the commercial Dungeness crab fishery and environmental nonprofits to reduce entanglements of endangered humpback, fin and blue whales off the Oregon Coast. OSU scientists boarded research vessels and U.S. Coast Guard helicopters for surveys at sea and air to map the distribution of whales and their overlap with Dungeness crab fishing locations.      The scientists found that the risk of entanglement in fishing gear is greatest for whales in April when they gather near shore to feed off the Oregon Coast, and the crab fishing season is still underway. That observation and discussions with stakeholders led to best practices and regulations adopted by ODFW to limit the risk of entanglement by, for example, reducing crab pot limits at the end of the season.   Today, OSU scientists are expanding this work to include the risk of entanglement from other commercial fisheries, including rockfish and sablefish. They’ve also been analyzing scars on humpback whales’ tails and fins to better estimate how many whales are getting wrapped up in nets, lines, pots and buoys. Leigh Torres is an associate professor in the department of fisheries, wildlife and conservation sciences and Oregon Sea Grant Extension at Oregon State University. She joins us to share the latest with this award-winning effort to reduce whale entanglements off the Oregon Coast and beyond.

As Western Oregon faces drier and hotter summers, researchers at Oregon State University Extension are investigating crops that can withstand drought and require less irrigation. Shayan Ghajar is an organic pasture and forages specialist at OSU Extension. He has been researching grasses and legumes that can resist Oregon’s drying climate and still feed people and livestock. Ghajar joins us with details of his research and what it could mean for Oregon farmers.

To say spotted ratfish are unusual is an understatement. Related to sharks, they abound in the inky, dark depths of the Puget Sound. Armed with a venomous fin, they swim gracefully  along the sea floor trailing a long, pointed tail half the length of their bodies, with green, glowing eyes hunting for mates or prey to crack open with their beak-like mouths. And if all that wasn’t weird enough, they are now the first animal documented to have teeth growing outside of the jaw, according to new research led by a team of scientists at the University of Washington.    Scientists have known for some time that male spotted ratfish have a club-like, barbed structure between their foreheads they use during mating to grasp females and intimidate reproductive rivals. But they didn’t know if the sharp barbs that ring this structure were actually teeth or denticles, tiny, rough projections that cover sharks’ skin. So they caught hundreds of specimens to study them at various stages of development, from embryos to adulthood and used 3D X-ray imaging to solve this mystery.  Karly Cohen is a post-doctoral researcher at Friday Harbor Labs at the University of Washington and lead author of the recently published paper documenting this research. She joins us to share her findings and how they might expand our understanding of the evolution of teeth, and their purpose, to not only feed but to mate.