Fr. Tom Oddo, CSC served as the 17th president of the University of Portland until his death in a traffic accident, twenty-five years ago on October 29, 1989. He was forty-five at the time of his death; a dynamic leader and in love with the University. Four years previous, at the end of the fall semester sending the students home for Christmas vacation, he wrote of himself and the University.
On October 26, 1936 the University paid a sum of $600 to Mr. Mark Paulson for relinquishing his rights and claims to the name, “University of Portland”.
This year marks the University of Portland’s first fifty years in Salzburg, Austria. On August 30, 1964 the University sent its pioneer group of 30 students and director, Fr. Ambrose Wheeler, C.S.C., to enter a two-semester European adventure. Beginning the University’s oldest and most popular overseas study program.
Since that beginning, between 30-40 undergraduate students pursue their Portland degree each year through classroom study, cultural excursions, and individual travel in Europe. According to student and alumni reports, there is no down-side.
At the all-alumni reunion in June 2014, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the University’s 50 years in Salzburg, friends in Salzburg presented this gift of a statue of St. Ambrose, a pillar of Western learning and patron of our founding director, to reside at the home campus in the Clark Library. With summer sessions also hosted in the Merianstrasse site since the 1990s, nearly 2000 University of Portland alumni can claim the City of Mozart as part of their college curriculum.
For more Salzburg study abroad photos from the University Archives and Museum, click on this link:
https://sites.up.edu/museum/salzburg-trips/
On July 22, 1901 the campus property of the old Portland University became the property of the Archdiocese of Oregon City under the title of Columbia University. That is, transferring West Hall and some few adjacent yards of orphaned land. The Archdiocese later ceded the same property to the Indiana Province of the Congregation of Holy Cross. Since 1902, the Congregation of Holy Cross has been the bedrock of the ever expanding University, beginning with the first Holy Cross priest-president, Fr. Michael Quinlan to its twentieth President, Fr. Mark Poorman, and the hundreds of Holy Cross Fathers and Brothers who have served the student community in classrooms and residence halls, entered student lives, and rejoiced in the strength, faith, and friendship of the University of Portland community.
And yes, the campus has also expanded geographically since 1901, but that is the less important factor.
The University honored the men of Holy Cross in a proclamation issued by the Board of Regents in 2000; giving thanks for a century of commitment by the priests and brothers of the Congregation of Holy Cross at the University of the Portland. A framed list of Holy Cross members who have served at the University since its founding is on display in Holy Cross Lounge on the third floor of Franz Hall and is also available here: Holy Cross at UP list, 2013
On July 20, 1901, Alexander Christie, Archbishop of Oregon City, entered into an agreement to purchase from the University Land Co. a building and twenty-eight acres of land on Waud’s Bluff under the conditions that “a school be conducted and a major building erected within ten years” (James Covert, Point of Pride, p. 33).
The original purchase brought us what is now Waldschmidt Hall, built in 1891. Entrance to the university was via a simple dirt drive which skirted along the top of the bluff. Both the 1891 building and that back access road, since paved, are still in use; fixed features of the University of Portland campus since the very first. In a hurry to comply with the purchase agreement, classes began September 5, 1901 but the ‘new’ building was not to arrive until 1911, when Christie Hall was constructed and named to honor the archbishop’s initiative in founding the University.
The familiar Willamette main entrance and circular campus drive belong to the 1960s. Major reconstruction of the entrance began in June, 2014.
The University finally, after many years of pondering the matter, is building a new front entrance to campus – a vast project which will be finished in August, just before the biggest freshman class in 113 years arrives. It will be glorious, the new front drive. It will be impressive, as befits a fine university grown greatly in confidence and renown. It will be more welcoming, much clearer signage-wise, much more of a statement, even a marketing endeavor. It makes sense, and things like campus entryways must change and morph and mature, like any other entity; so that while alumni of a certain age still mourn the little stone bus-shelter that once crouched at one side of the front gate, and younger alumni still remember with affection the day the front sign read UNIVESITY OF PORTLAND after an R seceded overnight, some older members of the staff and faculty will remember an oddly persistent dip in the road, just as you drove your wheezing vehicle onto campus: the famous, or infamous, Schulte Lake, a remarkable space on this earth that instantly filled with six inches of water in any rain whatsoever, from the merest drizzle to the usual steady weeping of winter. For nearly fifty years the powers-that-be on The Bluff fought Schulte Lake, filling it in, paving it over, paving it a tenth and twentieth time, but never would it surrender, not even to the express command and herculean efforts of the legendary Arthur Schulte, long the vice president in charge of pretty much everything at the University. Again and again and again Art sent his agents against Schulte Lake, and they returned triumphant to report its demise, and as soon as the sky glowered and a mist arose the lake filled again, and cars and small dogs were lost in its depths; but come this August we can only assume the lake is gone at last, and while that will be an excellent state of affairs for cars and small dogs, and for the startled passersby who were again and again caught by waves of splashage from cars gunning desperately for the other shore, a small subtle piece of the University’s past will be gone too, receding gently like the lake did under the occasional sunburst; so let us pause a moment this morning, and remember that insistent water, and the dedicated man for whom it was named, and all those little stories that make up the University’s long and colorful tale, long may it wag.
This day, June 12, 1949, marks the sixty-fifth anniversary of the dedication of the Engineering building. Built for $500,000, the 45,000 square foot, three-story building for Engineering and Physics was furnished with equipment purchased through war surplus, acquired by donations, or built-to-spec by our own faculty. As a basement was not part of the original building plan (or covered by budget), Brother Godfrey Vassallo, C.S.C., other faculty, and dedicated students dug out the basement themselves using hand tools. This new structure was not without its faults — though some claim that insufficient lighting and a noisy heating system added character to the building.
Spring forward to the 21st century to a thriving School of Engineering in need of classrooms and space to house the equipment and technology needed for teaching the rapidly growing number of students enrolled in multiple engineering programs. In 2008, with lead gifts from distinguished alumni and benefactors, Darlene and Donald ’51 Shiley and Sharon and Ed ’56 Sweo, the Engineering building underwent a complete remodel and expansion, nearly doubling in size and providing a state-of-the-art facility. From the darkness of the basement labs, the School is newly re-housed within its old home, renamed Donald P. Shiley Hall, where light streams through expansive glass windows. This year the Shiley School of Engineering conferred over 120 Bachelor of Science degrees in Mechanical, Electrical, and Civil Engineering and in the field of Computer Science on May 4, 2014 as part of the University of Portland Commencement Exercises.
This aerial view (below) of the central campus is from 1962. Notice how familiar and yet how far campus geography is from the characteristic University of Portland academic quadrangle. Buckley Center was added in 1969, with the Chapel of Christ the Teacher in 1986, Franz Hall in 1995 closing the ends of the modern quad.
http://up.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15458coll2/id/16/rec/1 ]
In 1962 the four corners of the quad are Science Hall (Romanaggi) at the bottom left, and then the pre-renovation Commons and Shiley Hall along the top, with half of the present Library bottom center. 1969 saw a redesign of the center of campus. Also pictured here beside Science Hall are Science Annex and the Steam Plant (with smoke stack), which were taken down to make space for the construction of Buckley Center and Buckley Auditorium. And then fire removed Education Hall and Music Hall (the two complexes at the right side of the photo) on April 18, 1969.
On this date in 1969 a fire, which broke out in the early hours of the morning, destroyed Education Hall and damaged other nearby wooden structures. Education Hall had served not only as an assembly space for the University but for many years had also been the theatre. The fire destroyed not only the facility itself but most of the equipment used in theatrical productions including a large stock of costumes. Students helped to move pianos from attached structures that had housed the music department and its practice facilities. The wooden buildings stood along the western side of the main parking lot in and near the area that now is occupied by Mago Hunt Center, which replaced the old hall and some of its attached facilities. The buildings had been transported to the University in 1945 in an effort to accommodate quickly the expansion of enrollment that came following the Second World War. Classes for the Columbia Preparatory School were held in these buildings until the removal of the high school to the former Wilcox Estate in the West Hills. Several University departments had their offices and classes in these buildings before the opening of Buckley Center in February of 1969. With the expansion of the library in 1978 some of the buildings that remained were moved to the western side of the main quadrangle. The larger of these buildings, known as Columbia Hall, served as a center for continuing education on the campus before being razed at the time of the construction of Franz Hall. The last building standing on its original site, known as the Student Communications Building in its final days, was razed also for the construction of Franz. The last of the wooden structures on the campus, Chemistry Annex, stood at the northwest end of Engineering Hall and was razed after the construction of Swindells Hall.
On this day in 1935 University officials announced the adoption of the nickname “The Pilots” for the athletic teams of the newly renamed University of Portland. Prior to 1935, teams had been called, variously “The Irish” and “The Cliffdwellers”.
The Columbiad was a student authored and edited publication published monthly. In that respect, it was not an organ of news and current events. The War in Europe began for Europe in 1914; the United States remaining outside the Great War until 1917, and even then the arguments and issues of America’s entry into the War were cast in a world, or global political context.
When the United States entered the war in April of 1917, the Columbiad editorializes for the support of the war and also reports that already 18 students have enlisted alongside 6 alumni recruits. By June, and high school commencement, the war is the significant reference for the graduation ceremony, and in the graduation issue the Columbiad prints an article of valedictory in which a remaining student combines in friendship and service those left behind as also taking part with their classmates who have volunteered, united together in the forward adventure of war service and the battle for freedom.
Worth David Clark graduates from the high school division of Columbia University in 1918, editor of the Columbiad and valedictorian in a class of 17 people.
Of those mentioned in Mr. Clark’s June 1917 article, Gerald Malarkey was one of only three sons of Columbia who died in war service; in total, Columbia contributed some 180 men and boys who enlisted as part of the war effort.
On this date in 1806 Captain William Clark and a party of scouts from his expedition investigated the lower Willamette River near the present site of the University.
The bench at the designated smoking area behind Swindell’s Hall is turned inward to campus. This spot on the Bluff used to be a look-out point, indeed notably as far back as 1806, eighty years before the University was even conceived. This is duly observed in the February 1944 issue of The University of Portland Bookman, a journal for the Friends of the Library. In M. Leona Nichols’ article, “Captain Clark Discovers Waud’s Bluff Site of the University” (a review of the explorers’ journals), Ms. Nichols writes,
Captain Lewis says that “… The most important spot is Wappatoo Island, a large extent of country lying between the Multnomah and an arm of the Columbia, which we have called Wappatoo Inlet … which at a distance of seven miles up the Multnomah connects that river with the inlet … ”
(History of the Expedition under Lewis and Clark, ed. by Elliott Coues, v. III, p. 928-929).
A note on the history of the expedition by Dr. Elliott Coues says that “The locality which Clark makes ten miles up river is certainly not so far, probably about St. John(s). The two miles further he goes … would bring him to Waud’s Bluff and Swan Island whence it is still three or four miles to Portland (p. 924)”.
Captain Lewis and party came to the Bluff on April 3, 1806 on the expedition’s return from the coast, and the University campus is an official landmark stop on the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail (designated by the National Park Service in 1988).
There are three different monuments on the University campus which memorialize this event.
On October 10, 1945 the ‘Clark’s Point’ stone marker was dedicated by the mayor and members of The Oregon Trails Association; one of a series of markers tracing the Lewis and Clark route from St. Louis, Missouri to Astoria, Oregon. A five and a half ton boulder, the first marker stands at the then far edge of campus, a location that is now the exit where Willamette Boulevard curves toward the city. The plaque reads: “Clark’s Point / Furthest point up the Willamette explored by William Clark and six men of the Lewis and Clark expedition / April 3, 1806”.
A second, larger monument was established in 1948. The new location, deeper into the campus proper, better approximates details found in the scouting report preserved in expedition journals. The new monument, beyond Swindell’s Hall, is an eight ton boulder obtained by Brother Godfrey Vassallo, C.S.C., bearing a plaque designed by Brother Pius Liesing, C.S.C. and fabricated by student Joe Goehler ’48, featuring portrait reliefs of the two explorers, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. From this spot, on a very clear day, it is still possible to credit the words of Clark’s journal, “I can plainly see Mt. Jefferson”; which stands 100 miles away to the SE.
The third monument, sculpted by University of Portland art professor Michael Dente and dedicated December 11, 1988, is three seven-foot bronze statues mounted on a four-foot platform.
University Archives: Sources and Holdings Consulted:
The Beacon, The University of Portland BOOKMAN, The Log, The Columbiad, The University of Portland Alumni Bulletin, The Oregonian, The Washington County Times, Portland: Greater Portland Commerce, The Captain William Clark Monument Brochure; and correspondence from Oregon Lewis & Clark Trail Heritage Foundation Committee, Oregon Historical Society, Rev. Thomas Oddo, C.S.C., University of Portland president, Office of University Relations.