STATE
MyEagleNews.com
Wednesday, November 17, 2021
OSU-Cascades grows, despite pandemic
By NICOLE BALES
The Bulletin
BEND — The number of stu-
dents pursuing degrees at Oregon
State University-Cascades has con-
tinued to grow despite the impact
the coronavirus pandemic has had
on enrollment at colleges and uni-
versities nationwide.
Students seeking degrees at the
Bend campus increased 2% this fall
over fall 2020, and students are tak-
ing signifi cantly more courses. Of
the 1,247 students enrolled, 1,043
are undergraduates and 204 are
graduate students, according to the
university.
Jane Reynolds, the university’s
executive director of enrollment
management, said growth has been
in graduate students, particularly for
the new doctorate of physical ther-
apy program, which has a cohort of
45 students.
While the university saw a big
jump last year in freshmen under-
graduate students, the number
stayed about the same this year,
with nine fewer students, or 1% less
than in fall 2020.
“We feel lucky that we’re very
close to the same in undergraduate
students,” Reynolds said. “Many
schools are down. But I think there’s
students who are super excited to
be back on campus and there were
some who are concerned about their
safety or meeting in person. There
are masks in the classroom, but for
some students that felt risky, and so
I think they made other choices.”
Ryan Brennecke/The Bulletin
Salma Parnell, left, and Deyva Chaney study together in the recently
completed Edward J. Ray Hall at Oregon State University-Cascades.
She said some students opted
to join Oregon State University’s
online Ecampus program, which
saw enrollment spike by 14%.
While undergraduate enrollment
at the university has not been hit as
hard as other universities, its gradu-
ate enrollment trends seem to match
trends nationwide.
As of late September, fall 2021
enrollment data from the National
Student Clearinghouse Research
Center, an education nonprofi t ,
showed no signs of recovery from
last year’s declines.
Undergraduate enrollment is
down 3.2% from a year ago, and a
total of 6.5% from two years ago,
according to the organization. First-
year student numbers declined by
3.1% overall. Meanwhile, gradu-
ate enrollment has grown by 2.1%
from last fall, and a total of 5.3%
over two years.
Enrollment at private nonprofi t
four-year schools fared better than
other higher education institutions,
and community colleges have con-
tinued to be the most adversely
aff ected.
Reynolds said the university
saw a gap in the number of trans-
fer students. She said that because
fewer students started at commu-
nity colleges last year, fewer stu-
dents transferred.
Of the 541 transfer students at
OSU-Cascades, 69% are from Cen-
tral Oregon, and 57% transferred
from Central Oregon Community
College.
COCC, which has seen overall
enrollment drop over the years, saw
an increase in fall enrollment by
2.5% compared to fall 2020.
Fifty-one percent of OSU-Cas-
cades students this fall are from
Central Oregon, and 81.8% are
from Oregon. Students from out-of-
state increased 4.7%, and fi ve other
countries are represented within the
student body.
Of the students enrolled at
OSU-Cascades, 20% are students
of color and 25% are fi rst-genera-
tion undergraduate students.
Most fi rst-year students live in
the on-campus residence hall, and
Reynolds said that the return of
in-person instruction has brought
new energy back to the campus.
“It was so quiet last year,” she
said. “The energy just feels so great
this year. It’s a huge diff erence and
we’re really excited to see that.”
Samara Shinholster, a fi rst-year
student from Albany, said that after
having her junior and senior year
of high school disrupted by the
pandemic, she was ready to go off
to college and back to in-person
instruction.
She said that while the last two
years of high school are notori-
ously stressful, she enjoyed having
a lighter load as a result of the pan-
demic. But she said the lighter load
also had ramifi cations on her aca-
demic performance at the start of
the school year. She said students
were also eager to socialize.
“It was a hard adjustment
because you just want to hang out
with people and you want to catch
up on what you’ve missed out on
the last two years, but you can’t for-
get what you’re here for and that’s
school,” Shinholster said. “And
that’s been a hard adjustment that
we’re all getting used to, I think.”
Supply-chain issues roil crop inputs
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
SALEM — As producers plan
for the next growing season, chaos
in the supply chain has them con-
cerned about the cost and avail-
ability of crop inputs.
By and large, producers —
other than fruit and vegetable
growers — didn’t face the struc-
tural shifts in the supply-chain
when COVID-19 hit in the spring
of 2020 because they were already
in the middle of production, said
Allan Gray, director of the Center
for Food and Agribusiness at Pur-
due University.
He doesn’t think producers
faced the supply-chain fallout this
year, either, because agrochemical
suppliers had inventories on hand.
“What’s happening now is
there’s no adjustment left in the
system; the inventories are gone,”
he said during the latest “Farm
Country Update” podcast, pre-
sented by Farm Journal.
It’s important to realize the
supply-chain problems are a con-
fl uence of several factors, not just
one or two things, he said.
“The reality is it’s a very, very
complicated set of factors from
geopolitics to weather conditions
to structural issues,” he said.
One thing that struck him is
he hadn’t understood until this
summer how short the U.S. is on
active ingredients for crop protec-
tion chemicals and the diffi culties
of getting active ingredients into
production plants, he said.
That’s really a leading indicator
not just for the year coming up but
for the year after that even, he said.
“These chains take a long time
to reset, and we’re going to have
to be prepared for this for a period
of time to come,” he said.
Jeff Tarsi, senior vice presi-
dent of North America retail for
Nutrien Ag Solutions, said his
company had indications in the
fall of 2020 things could possibly
get tight.
A lot of people don’t realize
it but 70% to75% of the active
ingredients that make up crop
protection chemicals come from
China, which had been experienc-
ing shutdowns and lockdowns.
An arctic freeze in Texas in Feb-
ruary, which took refi neries and
petrochemical plants offl ine for a
month or more, was another big
impact, he said.
His company managed through
the year pretty well but started
getting fi rst-hand knowledge this
summer that 2022 might be a big-
ger challenge, he said.
A9
Judge weighs
wolf protections
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
SALEM — The West’s tug-of-war over
wolves went via Zoom to a federal judge in Oak-
land on Friday, Nov. 12, as environmental groups
asked U.S. District Judge Jeff rey White to restore
federal protection to wolves along the West Coast,
and in the central Rockies and Great Lakes states.
Attorney Kristen Boyles said the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service was abandoning gray wolves
outside the Northern Rockies.
Justice Department attorney Michael Eitel
said state boundaries shouldn’t dictate how the
agency carries out the Endangered Species Act.
“This is not a case where Fish and Wildlife is
trying to skirt its obligations under the ESA,” he
said.
The lawsuits before White challenge the
Trump administration’s decision to take gray
wolves throughout the Lower 48 off the federal
list of endangered species.
Wolves in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and
the eastern one-third of Oregon and Washington
were already de-listed and are not addressed in
the suits.
The Biden administration has defended the
Trump rule, arguing that gray wolves aren’t
threatened in the U.S. because wolves are estab-
lished in the Northern Rockies, as well as the
western Great Lakes.
Ironically, however, the Biden administration
is also reviewing the ESA status of wolves in the
Northern Rockies because of wolf hunts in Idaho
and Montana.
Meanwhile, lawsuits led by Defenders of
Wildlife, WildEarth Guardians and the Natu-
ral Resources Defense Council seek to immedi-
ately repeal the Trump rule. The three suits were
merged into one hearing Friday.
Earlier in the week, White notifi ed lawyers
that he didn’t want to hear written arguments
rehashed. He posed several questions about
whether the USFWS correctly applied the ESA.
Wolf advocates argue USFWS gave too lit-
tle consideration to wolves in Pacifi c Coast states
and the central Rocky Mountain states of Utah
and Colorado.
USFWS said wolves in those regions are not
distinct populations and therefore not eligible for
ESA protection.
Utah has had nine confi rmed wolves, but it
anticipates more and intervened in the lawsuit,
arguing the state and not the federal government
should manage wolves.
The Washington Department of Fish and
Wildlife in 2020 counted 30 wolves in the newly
delisted area. If the Trump rule stays in place, Fish
and Wildlife could resort to killing wolves to stop
attacks on livestock. Under the ESA, lethal con-
trol is not an option.
The hearing lasted one hour. White said he
will make a written ruling.
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