Since 2007, IBPI has supported the next generation of bicycle and pedestrian professionals through two scholarships for PSU students who go above and beyond to advance active transportation design, programs, and community engagement practices: IBPI Active Transportation Scholarship and the IBPI Excellence in Active Transportation. All 34 of our past IBPI scholars have professions in active transportation, building the healthy, safe, and active future that we want to see.

The Innovation in Active Transportation Endowed Scholarship was begun through the generous donation of a local philanthropist and several local firms, and you can help us fund the future of active transportation with your donation!

We support people at every stage in their transportation education pursuits. Through our PSU faculty, partners, and TREC program staff we offer skills and knowledge for a career-ready transportation workforce and community partnerships.

Lifelong Learning

We host in-person and online events, largely free to the public, to educate current transportation professionals and community members:

• Professional development events: Since 2000 we have invited the public to join us at PSU for our Friday Transportation Seminar series featuring local and visiting transportation experts. We also host monthly webinars on research from our U.S. DOT funded NITC program, a transportation data webinar series, bicycle and pedestrian design training, annual summit, workshops, and active transportation lecture series.
• PSU Graduate Certificate in Transportation: Through the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science and College of Urban and Public Affairs, Portland State offers a 21 credit transportation graduate certificate program.
• Portland Traffic and Transportation Class at PSU: Designed for community members seeking empowerment in transportation concepts and language to better advocate for the change they want to see. Held in partnership between PSU and the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) since 1991, this fall class is open to PSU students as well as for free for the general public.

University Students

Our students conduct cutting-edge research under the guidance of the world’s foremost transportation research faculty in planning and engineering. With an emphasis on learning by doing, students work on real transportation system projects with partners in our community. These partnerships lead to internships and rewarding careers after graduation. 

Outside of the classroom, we also support programming and funding for the STEP transportation student group, annual scholarships, and our summer TURF undergraduate research program. Learn more about studying transportation at PSU.

K-12 Students

Sparking an interest in transportation can start early, and we are always looking for ways to engage students in transportation before they reach college. Through nationally-funded research, we support new STEM curriculum and programs that introduce middle- and high-school students to transportation concepts and careers. We're best known for our annual summer transportation camp offered for free to Oregon high schoolers. Learn more about the summer camp.

Better Block PSU is a partnership program between the volunteer-led group Better Block PDX and PSU - encouraging everyone to imagine what spaces could be when they are designed for people. Every year local community partners and advocates submit their project ideas to be considered for the university pathway program. These projects promote equitable placemaking, community building and empowerment, and active transportation advocacy. 

Integrated into PSU planning and engineering classes, PSU students support community members with the technical aspects of infrastructure improvements–elevating and materializing their ideas by developing plans, designs, and engineering concepts. It’s a shift from the status quo with a ground-up approach, and their transportation expertise can help community members in navigating the permit process or proposing informed solutions to the city.

The Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI) program advances active transportation research and design for professionals, educators, and university students through training, curriculum development and scholarships. 

Founded in 2007, we work closely with PSU faculty in urban studies and planning and civil engineering to conduct interdisciplinary research and integrate bicycle and pedestrian topics into our university courses and support the next generation of professionals. Our location in Portland, Oregon – a national leader in multimodal travel – provides the ideal environment to teach safe, convenient and accessible active transportation and promote a culture of walking and biking.

Data-driven policy and strategy are critical to meeting transportation goals. To that end, we’ve focused our research efforts on filling gaps in data and education. In addition to hosting transportation data webinars, we house two national data clearinghouses – PORTAL and BikePed Portal – aimed at making transportation data more easily accessible to researchers and practitioners.

PORTAL

PORTAL provides a centralized, electronic database that facilitates the collection, archiving, and sharing of transportation data and information for public agencies. The data stored in PORTAL includes 20-second granularity loop detector data from freeways in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan region, arterial signal data, travel time data, weather data, incident data, VAS/VMS message data, truck volumes, transit data, and arterial signal data.

BikePed Portal

BikePed Portal, a national non-motorized count data archive, provides a centralized standard count database for public agencies, researchers, educators, and other curious members of the public to view and download bicycle and pedestrian count data. It includes automated and manual counts from across the country, and supports screenline and turning movement counts.

Matthew Cramer

Advisor: John MacArthur

LinkedIn

Matthew is master's student in Urban & Regional Planning at the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning. He worked with John MacArthur and Dr. Aaron Golub to research the impact automated fare payments may have on vulnerable community members as transit agencies modernize their fare payment systems.

Minju Kim

Advisor: John MacArthur

LinkedIn

Minju Kim is a PhD student in Urban Studies from the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning with a specialization in transportation and gerontology, and candidates graduate certificate program in the Institute of Aging. She received a Master's degree in Transportation Studies from Seoul National University and studied in Urban Planning for Bachelor from Chung-Ang University from South Korea. Her current research interest focuses on transportation for older people, and she would like to research the differences in preference and trends of older adults. She worked on a TREC project about the impacts of shared E-scooter operations during the 2019-2020 Portland Pilot Program with John MacArthur and Jennifer Dill. In order to improve the accessibility and sustainability of micromobility systems to the citizens of Portland, this research focuses on the impacts of scooter operations on VMT, including scooter deployment, rebalancing, and charging.

Michael McQueen

Advisor: John MacArthur

LinkedIn

Mike McQueen is a master's student who worked with John MacArthur of TREC and Kelly Clifton of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Mike is researched e-bike travel behavior and micromobility as an Eisenhower Fellow. In the past he has studied e-bike purchase incentive programs, potential positive environmental impact of e-bikes in Portland, BIKETOWN, and the demographics of zero car households.

Max Nonnamaker

Advisor: Jennifer Dill

LinkedIn

Max is a master's student in Urban & Regional Planning and Public Health. Coming from Milwaukee, WI, most of Max's previous work has been in the public health and social sectors with a focus on advocacy and community engagement. Max graduated from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in 2014 with a BS in Kinesiology and a certificate in African Studies and shortly after began working as a Community Health Advisor with the Peace Corps in Madagascar from 2015 - 2017. At TREC, Max worked with Dr. Jennifer Dill and Metro/ODOT on the Region Mobility Policy Update by conducting background research on existing and new mobility measures and approaches to be recommended for implementation in the next Regional Transportation Plan update.

Nicholas Puczkowskyj

Advisor: John MacArthur

LinkedIn

Nick Puczkowskyj is an Urban Studies PhD student at the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning. He worked with Prof. Dill and John MacArthur to examine the impacts of e-scooter operations on VMTs in Portland, OR. His dissertation research seeks to challenge the binary approaches to transportation research by using feminist, queer, and travel behavior theory to address the noticeable gap of transgender/genderqueer data and research in the transportation field. Nick hopes to use this research to expand and redefine inclusive transportation policy and practices. Nick's other research interests include: mobility justice, active transportation, micromobility, and transit.

Aman Singh Solanki

Advisor: Hau Hagedorn

LinkedIn

Aman is a versatile, results-driven software engineer who loves to solve real-world problems by writing software. When he is not doing that, he loves to be outdoors and hang out with friends and try new food carts. He worked as a research assistant with TREC, particularly on the BikePed Portal project. He created a filter application to help users easily view all the transportation research work in one place. He is also helping to design UI for some awesome applications being made here at TREC. To learn more, check out his portfolio.

  Jai Daniels

Advisor: John MacArthur

LinkedIn

Jai Daniels is a first-year Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) student at PSU, currently working with John MacArthur on a Transportation Recovery Plan for the Regional Disaster Preparedness Organization (RPDO). Read more about Jai in this March 2021 Student Spotlight interview. She is interested in urban livability, bicycle and pedestrian planning, transit planning, and the intersection between urban planning and the environment.

Kyuri Kim

Advisor: Jennifer Dill

Kyu Ri is a second-year Ph.D. student in urban planning at the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning. She is currently supporting Jennifer Dill and Nathan McNeil on the Research Roadmap for the AASHTO Council on Active Transportation. In the recent past, she supported Dr. Dill and Hau Hagedorn in transportation data analysis and visualization (including BikePed Portal and OHSU Census data) and other transportation research.

Rebeca Petean

Advisor: John MacArthur and Marisa Zapata

Rebeca Petean is a second-year Sociology Ph.D. student. Currently, she has taken on the role of Graduate Research Assistant for PSU’s Homelessness Research Action Collaborative (HRAC) joint venture with TREC on the project TCRP J-11/Task 40: Homelessness: A Guide for Public Transportation. She has also served as an Adjunct Instructor teaching Research Methods for Dominican University. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Criminology and Criminal Justice, 2011, Masters of Science in Criminology and Criminal Justice, 2015, and Graduate Certification in Teaching Adult Learners from PSU, 2015. Her research interests include School-to-Prison Pipeline, Criminal Justice Decision-making, Police-Community Interactions, Developmental/Life Course Theory, Transportation Equity, and Justice.

Nora Stoelting

Transportation Education Program Coordinator

Advisor: Hau Hagedorn

LinkedIn

Nora integrates tactical urbanism projects into PSU classes via the PSU Better Block PSU pathway program, and also designs the curriculum for TREC's transportation summer camp for Oregon high school students. She is pursuing a dual master's in Leadership for Sustainability Education and Urban and Regional Planning, and is excited about the ways these two programs intersect in building a more dynamic, connected, and sustainable world. Though she loves exploring outdoor recreation in the great state of Oregon, she is originally from the concrete jungle of Brooklyn, NY. She believes strongly in the power of collaborative, holistic, experiential teaching and learning to transform ourselves and the world. Outside of school and work, Nora likes to search for new trail races to run, plan outdoor adventures, answer people's questions about recycling, and go for long walks while listening to podcasts. Learn more about Nora in our Sept. 2020 Student Spotlight interview.