News, Media and Stories | Pacific History

AAPI Month graphic
Pacific University, the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, and the Student Multicultural Center in collaboration with university partners, proudly celebrate Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May.
jefferson hall exterior
We celebrate 75 years of Optometry at Pacific University with a look back through the years.
exhibit from the Contact lens Museum showing colored lenses in a red velvet lined box
The earliest contact lenses were made of glass and could be worn only for a few hours at a time. Today’s contact lenses are engineering marvels, and Pacific’s College of Optometry is at the vanguard of contact lens research and design.
women getting eyes screened
The optometry program launched at Pacific in 1945 as a result of a combination of postwar challenges and unexpected opportunities. The needs of a small, temporarily shuttered optometry college in Northeast Portland helped meet the demands of a university that had limped through the war years. The outcome was the beginning of Pacific’s focus on the health professions.
Red, Orange, Yellow and Green Crayons
August is National Crayon Collection Month, and Pacific is proud to celebrate its connection to the roots of Crayola.
Collage of historic photographs of Pacific women
In some important ways, Pacific University was ahead of its time when it came to educating women. But in other ways, women who lived, learned and taught here had to blaze their own trails. We take a look at some of the important women who shaped Pacific in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
Anna Berliner
One of the most insightful thinkers and teachers ever to be employed at Pacific was Anna Berliner, a psychologist by title, but also an anthropologist, sociologist, optometrist and visual researcher.
Martha Rampton
When Dr. Martha Rampton arrived on Pacific’s campus as a history professor in 1994, female professors still were sometimes treated like secretaries, being asked, for example, to fetch coffee for their male colleagues.A year later, Pacific had its first Feminist Studies program.
Andrewa Noble
Andrewa Noble was mathematics pioneer, attending Pacific in the 1920s and earning a PhD in mathematics in 1936. She was a a professor and chair of the Pacific University Math Department before her retirement in 1965. She was also chair of the chemistry, physics and math section of the Northwest Scientific Association.
Mary Frances Farnham
Mary Frances Farnham was an important bridge from Tualatin Academy, the original educational institution in Forest Grove, to Pacific University, which educated scholars of both genders from around the world.

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