Yvonne Norman

Yvonne Norman is the recipient of the 2008 Oregon Campus Compact Faith Gabelnick Student Leadership Award.

Yvonne is currently a student at Portland Community College's Rock Creek campus in the hope of someday becoming an elementary school teacher.

Yvonne has accomplished much during her time at PCC. Yvonne provided 900 hours of service through AmeriCorps as a Resource Conservation Specialist on campus. She is also heading up the lichen research project for the campus that involves a small group of students who are identifying the lichen species in Rock Creek’s west side forest. The highlight of this experience has been identifying a keystone species. This is an important finding, as it will allow the college to have a layer of governmental protection over this emerging old-growth forest.

Yvonne is currently serving a second year in the student government as the Director of Sustainability. In that role she organized an environmental sustainability conference for Oregon college students, however her biggest accomplishment was the coordination of the January 31, 2008 Focus the Nation teach-in on the PCC Rock Creek campus. This event involved students, faculty, staff, and community from a broad cross-section of disciplines and departments.

Focus the Nation was a national event; PCC was one of over a thousand colleges participating in a day of dialog on climate change. The faculty and administration have stated that the event brought them closer together and at the same time added variety to their jobs. Students have expressed that it was a valuable day in their education. As a result of the feedback from the event, Yvonne is now exploring the possibility of doing this kind of event quarterly.