a year for enduring mission & bold vision
In a year of rapid change across higher education, one thing remains clear: Portland State matters—to hardworking students pursuing opportunity, to a city shaped by innovation and to the donors and partners whose generosity keeps access to education strong. In Fiscal Year 2025, your support powered scholarships and student services, advanced faculty and program excellence and fueled research that pushes our region forward.
Your giving also reinforced PSU’s role as a vital anchor for Portland—physically, culturally and economically. By investing in the people, ideas and neighborhoods that surround us, you helped ensure that PSU continues to open doors, strengthen communities and deliver on its mission of access and impact.
Thank you for believing in PSU and in the future we are building together.
A YEAR OF IMPACT
Here's what your collective impact looked like
Fiscal Year 2025 is defined as July 1, 2024 - June 30, 2025
$47.3M
RAISED FOR STUDENTS, FACULTY AND CAMPUS
1,368
FIRST-TIME DONORS JOINED OUR COMMUNITY
4,202
DONORS SUPPORTED PSU
80%
OF DONORS GAVE $1,000 OR LESS
22%
OF DONORS GAVE MULTIPLE TIMES
Stepping up for students
PSU students reflect the richness of our communities. They bring talent and tenacity to campus—and often the joy of being the first in their families to attend college. Thanks to donor contributions, more students are finding their place, accessing the aid they need, and preparing for purpose-driven careers.
Donor support enabled me to progress through my program with a reduced burden and stress. I am now working toward my dream of becoming a CPA and supporting my family.
Tasneem Anjary '26
2025-26 Pathways to the Future Scholarship Recipient
Featured Gift
Damian Lillard Builds Bridges for Students
This year Portland Trailblazer and NBA All Star Damian Lillard launched a scholarship program recognizing the academic success of students graduating from nine East Bay California high schools. Scholars receive $25,000 per year, significantly reducing the costs associated with out-of-state tuition.
Selected scholars will also receive support to cover such expenses as food, housing, clothing, textbooks and transportation. Additional donors from the Portland community have augmented Lillard’s generous lead gift to cover students’ unanticipated financial needs.
“I’m so happy this scholarship has come to fruition,” said Lillard, a graduate of Oakland High School. “Students from my community in the East Bay now have an opportunity to pursue a college education in my adopted community of Portland without financial burdens. My hope is that this scholarship becomes a stepping stone to a bright and promising future for students.”
Receiving the Lillard Scholarship means so much to me because it takes away the financial stress from my mom, and it reminds me that everything we’ve been through was worth it.
Kayla Sisavat
2025-26 Lillard Scholarship Recipient
The Faculty Factor
Behind every transformative student experience is a faculty member who inspires, challenges and leads with purpose. From support for endowed positions to program and research funding, gifts made this year supporting faculty helped attract and retain the teachers, researchers and mentors whose efforts shaped classrooms, communities and fields of study.
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Featured Gift
LAIKA Animates Faculty Fellows
This year PSU and award-winning Portland-based animation studio LAIKA announced a partnership to develop a pilot cohort of LAIKA student scholars and faculty fellows. This pioneering collaboration promises to help shape the future of the creative industry in Portland.
The collaboration gives standout students and faculty in the College of the Arts the opportunity to connect with LAIKA experts, and to expand their strategies to better prepare students for careers in creative industries.
The inaugural LAIKA faculty fellows include PSU professors Alison Heryer, known for her multidisciplinary design work in performance, fashion and art practice; Stephen Lee, who is deeply experienced working with brand, motion and interactive design; and J.J. Vazquez, an award-winning independent film director with a passion for building industry-relevant curriculum.
The Power of Place
At an urban university, place matters. It’s not just about buildings, it’s about shaping a campus that reflects the energy of the city it serves and the people who bring it to life. By supporting extraordinary new facilities and compelling outdoor spaces, donors are transforming where learning happens and how people feel when they visit a downtown campus.
Making PSU a place
The university has launched a long-term project to enhance its 44-acre campus, creating beautiful and inspiring spaces to serve students and faculty, and to attract visitors and partners to a vibrant downtown. Unfolding over a decade, the effort will be funded largely by philanthropy.
Renowned urban planners Walker Macy Collaborative have outlined a first project phase to include new campus gateways, branded banners and signage, a reimagined street corridor and green spaces, and distinctive murals across campus. This year donors including Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle contributed $600,000 to help move forward these exciting efforts.
portland's bold arts + culture vision
PSU and the City of Portland are together working on a once-in-a-generation vision to spark arts and culture in Oregon— and a downtown resurgence—by bringing an extraordinary complex to the southern edge of the Portland State campus.
Set to open in 2030, the Performing Arts + Culture Center will include a Broadway theater owned by the City of Portland, and a privately-owned hotel and conference center. It will also include a community theater and additional academic spaces—all to be owned by PSU.
The center will help turn south downtown into one of Oregon’s premier cultural destinations, support and expand PSU’s renowned arts programs, make possible new workforce programs, and give our region’s fragile arts and culture ecosystem a huge jolt of energy.
In 2025, multiple gifts were pledged by donors to support the center, and $135 million was committed in bond financing by the State of Oregon to jumpstart planning for this landmark effort.
Vernier Science Center Inspires
One year after opening its doors, the true impact of the donor-supported Vernier Science Center (VSC) is being felt in powerful, everyday ways. Designed through a nationally distinct process to center student voices, the VSC has become an expression of belonging, identity and purpose. It is also making a meaningful difference in how faculty approach their work and serve students.
The new Vernier Science Center is like night and day – literally. I saw many connections last year that were created just out of proximity.
Patti Cabrera-Perez
Program Coordinator for LSAMP