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CORVALLIS - Oregon State University's 2005 Women of Achievement will be honored at a public reception from 3:30 to 5 p.m. on Friday, April 29, at the campus Women's Center.

The OSU Women's Center is recognizing five women this year, including Joanne Apter of Linn-Benton Community College; Michelle Bothwell, Marie Harvey and Mehra Shirazi, all of OSU; and Nancy O'Mara of Corvallis' Center Against Rape and Domestic Violence.

The OSU Women's Center presents the annual awards to honor the contributions and commitment of women whose work has benefited the women of OSU, the local community, and Oregon.

Apter is an instructor in the Turning Point Program at Linn-Benton Community College. The program provides skills to help displaced homemakers return to school or work. She also serves in the American Association of Women in Community Colleges, national and Oregon groups of the Women Work! Association, FISH Guest House for pregnant teens, Milestones Women's program for women recovering from addiction, and a Latina mothers' group at a local school.

Bothwell, an OSU associate professor of chemical engineering, was cited by the Women's Center advisory board for working to improve the status of women in a male-dominated field and bringing diversity to recruiting, retention, teaching and advising efforts.

Her course, "Social Ethics in Engineering," which is required for bioengineering students, examines how oppression and power are maintained in society. Bothwell encourages high school women to explore engineering.

Harvey, chair of the Department of Public Health at OSU, was cited for dedicating teaching, research and life activities to advance knowledge about women's health issues. Her work centers on the social, psychological, and cultural aspects of contraception, sex behavior, and abortion and on the prevention of AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases.

She is co-founder and co-director of the Pacific Institute for Women's Health, served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Association of Lane County, and heads the research program on Women's Health at the Center for the Study of Women in Society at the University of Oregon.

O'Mara, executive director of Corvallis' Center Against Rape and Domestic Violence, started in 1981 as a crisis line advocate in Renton, Wash. She became executive director of the Tundra Women's Coalition in rural Alaska in 1997 and moved to Corvallis in 2001.

O'Mara incorporated "Plain Talk" - an effort to teach elementary students how to keep themselves safe - into CARDV, created a curriculum for teens on sexual assault and was instrumental in forming the Sexual Assault Awareness Team in Linn and Benton Counties.

Shirazi is only the second student to be awarded the Woman of Achievement Award. She is pursuing her doctorate in the Department of Public Health at OSU; examining barriers and attitudes that Iranian immigrant women have with respect to mammography and breast exams.

Shirazi works as the external coordinator of the Women's Center and to reach minority students on campus through programs that work to dispel stereotypes against Muslim women, prevent discrimination and hate crimes, and focus on difficulties faced by women of color in academia.