Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Coca-Cola honors PCC scholars

Photos and story by James Hill

PORTLAND, Ore. – Three PCC students have each been awarded a $1,000 scholarship from the Coca-Cola Two-Year Colleges Scholarship Foundation for the 2003-04 school year. The students are Andrea Trambley, Loretta Huscher and Laura Mickel.The Two-Year Colleges Scholarship Program is part of the Coca-Cola Foundation’s Scholar’s Program, which awards more than $1.8 million annually in college scholarships. All recipients demonstrate academic success and complete 100 hours of community service within the past 12 months. All three showcase the diversity in ages and interests that are trademarks of PCC’s student body.Huscher, 43, is a mother of three from Lake Oswego who decided to enter the Cascade Campus Criminal Justice program in 2001 after numerous careers that include data processing, sales management with AT&T, assisting the financial minister of Algeria and managing real estate. Because her property management work involved investigation of tenants, she naturally gravitated to the Criminal Justice program. Huscher, who volunteers for the Oregon Food Bank, American Cancer Society and a cat shelter in Sherwood, liked the real-world instruction she got from instructors Ken Moore (retired from the FBI) and Dave Benson (Portland Police Bureau). "This was real life and not just out of a book," she says. "The flexibility of classes was great for me."Mickel, a southwest Portland resident, is majoring in Spanish as she heads into her second year at PCC. The 20-year-old Central Catholic High School graduate is an AmeriCorps volunteer and a part-time nanny. She spent five weeks on disaster relief duty in Louisiana in September of 2002 where she performed damage assessment and wrote Red Cross vouchers. "PCC is really convenient, thanks to the night classes,"says Mickel. "The language programs have been really beneficial to what I want to accomplish."She attends classes on the Sylvania Campus in southwest Portland.Trambley, 24, is a welding student at PCC’s Rock Creek Campus, but plans to switch to Spanish instruction to eventually become a school teacher. She helps out with AmeriCorps, Red Cross and local libraries and non-profits, amassing more than 1,800 hours of volunteer service work. Originally from Garibaldi on the Oregon Coast but now a southeast Portland resident, Trambley said that starting as a welding student was an excellent way to transition back to school. "I’m very excited, and was surprised when they called and told me I was a recipient,"said Trambley, who returned to college this last year after taking six years off from school. "I like welding because there’s quite a bit of diversity in the gender and ethnic backgrounds of my classmates."