Portland State University history

Following the May 30 Vanport Flood of 1948, the college became known as "the college that wouldn't die" for refusing to close after the flood.

On April 15, 1949, Governor Douglas McKay authorized $875,000 to purchase the former Lincoln High School building on the Park Blocks as a permanent home for the Portland State Extension Center.

As a result, teacher education students provided a majority of the first graduating class of 1956.

A team from Portland State entered and won the 1965 General Electric College Bowl the nationally televised quiz show that pitted teams of college students from across the country against each other.

In 1993, PSU did away with the traditional undergraduate distribution system and adopted a new interdisciplinary general education program known as University Studies.

United States News & World Report has on multiple occasions listed University Studies as a "Program to Look For". In 1995, two years before his death, the university honored Stephen Epler for his contributions to the university's origins.

In 2004 Fariborz Maseeh, an alumnus of the university, donated, through The Massiah Foundation, $8 million to the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

In 2006, Portland State was declared to be the nation's first Salmon Safe University by the nonprofit organization Salmon Safe.

On June 3, 2008, the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Partner Foundation announced Portland State as the recipient of The Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Partnership Award for Campus-Community Collaboration for their Watershed Stewardship Program.

by Ryan Wisnor :: September 2018 marks the twentieth anniversary of the beginning of the Powell’s Books union campaign and the subsequent formation of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 5.