education and workforce development | Transportation Research and Education Center

Winter 2023 Graduate Courses in Transportation at Portland State

Nov 22, 2022

The winter term at Portland State University starts January 9, and registration opens December 19 for non-degree students. (Students who are already enrolled in a PSU degree program can register online now.) Lifelong learning is a guiding principle of PSU, and anyone interested can take transportation courses through the non-degree application process or as a post-baccalaureate student. Taking a course can be a good way to see if one of our graduate degree programs is right for you. Check out the course offerings below to see what's available this coming term.

See PSU’s COVID-19 Student Resources for the latest info on campus health and safety for students and staff. The course delivery methods for each course are listed below (e.g. in-person, hybrid, or attend anywhere).

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Wasatch Transportation Academy: Piloting an Investment in Community Capital

Sep 13, 2022

How can community members become more engaged in transportation decision making?

Individuals and groups can learn to effect powerful change, but success requires some familiarity with how civic processes work. Community Transportation Academies, or CTAs, provide a basic technical understanding of how a city or region’s transportation system operates, along with the decision makers and decision-making processes that determine how the system is shaped.

Supported by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the new Wasatch Transportation Academy (WTA) at the University of Utah was piloted in 2022 in the Salt Lake City region. The research team developed a course vision, topics, and logistics for the WTA by interviewing stakeholders in the Utah Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget, the Utah Department of Transportation, the Utah Transit Authority, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City, and the Wasatch Front Regional Council. Led by Nathan McNeil of Portland State University and Keith Bartholomew of the University of Utah, the WTA used the established Portland Traffic and Transportation class in Portland, Oregon as a framework.

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Launching the Wasatch Transportation Academy in Utah: A Community-Building Learning Model

Apr 15, 2022

How could a free transportation class for people living in the Salt Lake City region strengthen community conversations and advocacy around local priorities in transportation policy? Researchers at Portland State University (PSU) and University of Utah (UU) explored that question by bringing a well-known learning model from Portland, Oregon to SLC.

For over 25 years, the Portland Bureau of Transportation has partnered with PSU to offer the Portland Traffic and Transportation Course – a free 10-week course designed to provide local community members the skills and knowledge to participate in transportation decisions affecting their neighborhoods. This model has proven to be a success story in public agency-university partnership in community education. Building upon a 2015 project that documented the Portland course and developed a curriculum handbook, the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) has provided more funding for a pilot community transportation class–the Wasatch Transportation Academy– in Salt Lake, City Utah. Their first class was held on January 24, 2022 (view class recordings here) and ran through...

Better Block PSU: Unlock the Potential of Your Public Space in Oregon

Mar 03, 2022

The Better Block PSU program at Portland State University (PSU) has opened the annual call for community organizations to reimagine their streets and underused public spaces in a way to bring people together and reclaim it for their community’s future.

A partnership between the public spaces advocacy nonprofit Better Block PDX and the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at PSU, students in the Better Block PSU program have developed plans and designs for many community-driven projects that promote equitable placemaking, community building, and active transportation–including the well-known Better Naito project. What began as a PSU student-led initiative for safer and higher capacity bicycle and pedestrian facilities along the Waterfront Park, has gained so much public support that it was permanently implemented by the City of Portland.

Integrated into PSU planning and engineering...

Spring 2022 Graduate Courses in Transportation at Portland State

Feb 16, 2022

The Spring term at Portland State University starts March 28, 2022, and registration opens March 7 for non-degree students. (Students who are already enrolled in a PSU degree program can register online now.) Lifelong learning is a guiding principle of PSU, and anyone interested can take transportation courses through the non-degree application process or as a post-baccalaureate student. Taking a course can be a good way to see if one of our graduate degree programs is right for you.

See PSU’s COVID-19 Student Resources for the latest information regarding the return to campus and PSU's ongoing response to the pandemic.

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Non-degree or non-...

Winter 2022 Graduate Courses in Transportation at Portland State University

Dec 14, 2021

The winter term at Portland State University starts January 3, 2022, and registration opens December 13 for non-degree students. Students enrolled in a PSU degree program can register online now. Lifelong learning is a guiding principle of PSU, and anyone interested can take transportation courses through the non-degree application process or as a post-baccalaureate student. Taking a course can be a good way to see if one of our graduate degree programs is right for you.

See PSU’s COVID-19 Student Resources for the latest info on our campus vaccination requirement for students and...

New Transportation Curriculum for High School Students

Mar 18, 2021

We've just published a brand new set of four "How Walkable is Your Neighborhood?" education modules for high school students (download here)!

The modules, which can be taught in sequence or as standalone lessons, provide students with creative ways of observing transportation systems in their neighborhoods through collecting pedestrian data, critically evaluating accessibility, and learning about livable communities. Students will gain a deeper understanding of how people move through their community, and whether the transportation in their community is designed with the needs of all people in mind.

This curriculum was originally developed for the National Summer Transportation Institute (NSTI) - a STEM-focused transportation summer camp for high school students. In 2020, when the camps were converted to a virtual format for the first time, new tools had to be developed for student engagement and learning. These walkability modules were completed during the virtual camps, but are not dependent on a...

Screenshot from a Zoom session of the 2020 summer camp, showing the faces of participating students in a grid layout.

Teaching the Next Generation: Choosing Transportation as Your Path

Sep 21, 2020

On March 23, 2020, Oregon — like many other U.S. states — was placed under a stay-at-home order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. At Portland State, we were faced with a decision: What to do about our 2020 transportation summer camps for Oregon high schoolers?

Our camps, up to this year, have been defined by the in-person, on-campus experience. Previous cohorts toured Portland's bikeways, saw the inside of Multnomah County's bridges, and sat down with professional engineers and planners to talk about tricky traffic problems. Would the program survive the transition to a virtual format?

We had already received 52 applications from promising Oregon high schoolers, and decided the camp was too important to cancel. With the financial support of the Oregon Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration, we were able to shift to a virtual camp and still fulfill our objectives:

Introduce high school students to professionals in transportation
Teach them about the broad range of transportation careers and sectors
Present the social justice and equity issues within transportation and how they relate to students, their families and their neighborhoods
Introduce students to transportation systems in Portland
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Text reads: TREC student spotlight, Nora Stoelting. Image is of Nora (right) with an aquamarine sleeveless shirt, and a photo (left) of summer camp students touring a bridge.

TREC Student Spotlight: Nora Stoelting, Portland State University

Sep 17, 2020

Nora Stoelting is pursuing a dual master's degree in Leadership for Sustainability Education and Urban and Regional Planning at Portland State University. She is excited about the ways these two programs intersect in building a more dynamic, connected, and sustainable world. Nora's background is in garden education and environmental advocacy, and she most recently worked in waste minimization with airport businesses at PDX. Nora is thrilled to join TREC to work on education programming through integrating tactical urbanism projects into PSU classes via Better Block PSU and designing TREC's free summer camp for high school students. She believes strongly in the power of collaborative, holistic, experiential teaching and learning to transform ourselves and the world.

Tell us about yourself?

I am a cis, female, white, 27 year old graduate student living in NE Portland. I am currently pursuing a double masters in Leadership for Sustainability Education and Urban and Regional Planning. I am passionate about such a wide, interconnected array of topics that it was impossible to pick one program! Lately I have been really interested in envisioning a libertory future (within myself and the world). I...

TREC Director Jennifer Dill speaks to TURF fellows

Introducing the 2019 TURF Undergraduate Research Fellows

Jun 13, 2019

Our Transportation Undergraduate Research Fellowship (TURF) program is in its third year, and we're excited to introduce our 2019 cohort. The TURF program advances critical thinking and research skills under the guidance of a PSU transportation faculty mentor. This year's fellows are working on various research initiatives at TREC, including e-scooters, bicycle and pedestrian count data, multimodal trip generation, pedestrian safety and equitable transit.

TURF is funded by an education grant through our U.S. DOT funded program the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC). Students were selected through a competitive application process; we had 103 applications from 23 U.S. states and 4 countries.

The TURF fellows will spend six weeks during the summer of 2019 at Portland State University, tackling transportation engineering and planning research questions.

MEET THE 2019 TURF FELLOWS

Anaisabel Crespo - Leiva, SUNY...

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Civil and Environmental Engineering

MEET THE 2019 TURF FELLOWS

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