Oregon Graduate Institute records

The Oregon Graduate Institute was originally chartered in 1963 by the Oregon Legislature to provide graduate-level training and expertise to the state's rapidly expanding high-tech industry, including so-called "Silicon Forest" companies. Under its original name, the Oregon Graduate Center for Study and Research ( OGC), the institution was incorporated in 1963, hired its first staff and faculty in 1966, and admitted its first students in 1969. The first master's degree was awarded in 1971 and the first Ph.D. in 1973. In 1989, it formally adopted the name of Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology (OGI) to more appropriately represent the nature of the institution.

Tektronix co-founder Howard Vollum helped fund OGC in 1965 with a $2 million grant, and upon his death in 1986, $14.8 million was bequeathed to the Center as an endowment. The school was originally located on Barnes Road. In 1968, the school purchased 74 acres on Walker Road near 185th Avenue in an unincorporated section of Washington County for a new campus. That campus opened on August 15, 1969, complete with a dedication by Senator Mark Hatfield.

In 1988, the state recruited OGC to teach some classes for the Oregon Center for Advanced Technology Education (OCATE). During the 1990s the school (now OGI) awarded over one thousand graduate degrees, offered hundreds of continuing education seminars and workshops, and secured more than $100 million in largely federally-funded research. In 2001, OGI merged with Oregon Health Sciences University, with OGI becoming the School of Science and Engineering and OHSU changing its name to become Oregon Health & Science University. In 2006, the school began a seven-year process of relocating to OHSU's South Waterfront campus in Portland and sold part of the OGI Hillsboro campus.

OGI operated four departments and had approximately 330 students. In 2008, the school's name was changed to the Department of Science and Engineering and, by 2010, the department was dissolved and the academic programs and research were disseminated to other OHSU institutes and departments. The Division of Biomedical Engineering became the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Division of Biomedical Computer Science became the Center for Spoken Language Understanding within the new Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Division of Environmental and Biomolecular Systems formed an alliance with the Center for Coastal Margin and Observation Prediction (CMOP) to form a new Institute of Environmental Health.