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PORTLAND, Ore. - The Oregon State University Foundation's Portland presence is growing, with five staff members hired in recent months at its office in the OSU Portland Center - including a new associate vice president and development officers in business, engineering and gift planning.

The Portland Metro region is home to more than 47,000 graduates of Oregon State University, and the OSU Foundation is committed to helping strengthen the university's ties with these alumni and other partners, officials say.

"A high percentage of our most involved alumni and friends hail from the Portland metro area, as do many of our key corporate and community partners," said Mike Goodwin, the foundation's president and CEO. "There is great potential to engage even more of these constituents to advance OSU's mission, and to that end we will continue on an ambitious path to grow the university's presence in Portland."

Kristin Watkins became the head of OSU Portland Center in September, following 15 years of development work in the area. Most recently she was associate vice president for advancement at Portland Community College and executive officer of the PCC Foundation.

The most recent additions to the OSU Portland Center staff are Kim Kono, director of development for the College of Engineering, and Joanna Ehlers, director of development for the College of Business.

Kono served as a major gift officer and director of development at the Portland Community College Foundation since 2007. She previously worked in fundraising at Portland's Lan Su Chinese Garden, the Catlin Gabel School, Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and the Multnomah Education Service District Foundation. Ehlers most recently worked as a development professional for Mary's Woods at Marylhurst retirement community and for St. Andrew Nativity School. She was also the executive director for Providence St. Vincent Medical Foundation and prior to that worked at the University of Oklahoma.

Additional strategic staffing investments in Portland complement the OSU Foundation's expansion of its gift planning team, led by national expert Jeff Comfort. Stephen Brier, who previously served as head of gift planning at Willamette University in Salem for 13 years, joined the OSU Foundation's Portland Office along with Ryan Egge, who came to the OSU Foundation's gift planning office from Worcester Polytechnic University. The foundation now has seven staff members dedicated to gift planning.

The OSU Foundation concluded Oregon State's first comprehensive fundraising campaign on Dec. 31 with gifts exceeding $1.14 billion to support university priorities. Approximately one-third of funds raised came from Metro area donors. The philanthropic support provided by alumni, parents, corporate partners and other friends in the Portland region has been critical to the growth in university enrollment, research and economic development activity.

"The foundation's intentional investment in Portland and in our gift planning staff will allow us to continue the tremendous momentum we have built coming out of the campaign," said Shawn Scoville, executive vice president of the foundation. "These areas are vital to our future fundraising efforts and these talented Portland-based staff members will play a significant role in helping us meet the strategic fundraising needs of the university going forward."

Gifts from Portland donors have helped to fuel OSU's status as the top research university in the state as well as the largest.  The university enrolls approximately 30,000 students and provides unprecedented college access to high-achieving and diverse Oregonians with more undergraduate grant and scholarship funding than any other institution in the state.

"As we saw in The Campaign for OSU, continuing to develop even closer connections between OSU's Portland supporters and the university creates tangible benefits for the Metro area," Watkins said. "When we expand educational opportunities for Oregon residents, we're developing a talented workforce for our employers as well as solutions to the problems that trouble our region and beyond."

The OSU Portland Center has been in existence for almost two decades and is located in the heart of downtown Portland on the fifth floor of the Union Bank Building on Broadway between Washington and Stark. In addition to 14 foundation personnel, the center includes staff from the OSU Alumni Association, OSU Athletics, the College of Business and other university programs.