OSU'S 2003 ALUMNI FELLOWS
Explorers, Visionaries, Alumni Extraordinaire

By Patricia Filip

Their careers have propelled them into almost unimaginable realms — out through space and back again, inside the deepest recesses of the brain, and into the hearts of moviegoers nationwide.

In recognition of their remarkable achievements, astronaut Donald Pettit, Prozac co-discoverer David Wong and screenwriter Michael Rich have been honored as 2003 Alumni Fellows by the OSU Alumni Association.

"A university’s reputation is represented by its graduates and the value added they provide by their life work," said OSU President Edward Ray inhonoring this year’s alumni fellows. "Our graduates do go out in the world and make a profound difference."

He commended Pettit for making a difference as a scientist on the ground and in space and for his courage in the wake of the space shuttle disaster. He lauded Rich for telling stories on screen that not only entertain, but touch humanity and "make us better people." And he applauded Wong for a discovery that saved lives and deepened understanding of mental illness.The alumni fellows returned to campus during Homecoming to share their experiences. They made public presentations, led student seminars, were introduced to football fans at Reser Stadium and received commemorative silver bowls from the Alumni Association at a recognition ceremony.

The Stater shares profiles of these extraordinary Oregon Staters and highlights from their campus presentations.

After the crash of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the grounding of the American shuttle fleet, astronaut Donald Pettit was forced to extend his four-month stay on the International Space Station an additional two months. He returned to Earth aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, a trip he equated to flying coach after a planned "business class" shuttle return.

"Not only did the crew have to actually fly the spacecraft, but leg room was limited and there was a big thump at the end," said Pettit. A technical glitch on the return trip forced the crew to perform a "ballistic entry" through the earth’s atmosphere.

"We came in like a meteor, 470 miles short of target," he said.

It took the ground crew more than five hours to find them, and the rescue helicopters had to travel so far searching that they ran out of gas, giving the space crew time to demonstrate that six months without gravity had not turned them into sacks of jelly. By extricating themselves from the craft and performing tasks immediately upon landing, crew members were able to prove that humans could endure long periods in space without becoming so weak they could not function.

"We demonstrated there aren’t any barriers to humans landing on Mars," said Pettit.

Ironically, the space shuttle tragedy, the forced extended stay and the landing-gone-awry, have done little to dampen Pettit’s enthusiasm for space travel.

In fact, he said he would go up again in a heartbeat. What's more, he wished his return had been delayed another few months so he could have had more time in space.

What does he miss now that he has returned to earth?

"What you can’t do on earth is fly," he said.

Pettit, a native of Silverton, received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from OSU in 1978 and a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Arizona in 1983.

In characterizing his collegiate persona, he calls himself a "techno-geeky-nerdy type." He was known in his Finley Hall dorm as "The Professor" and raised insectivores (insect-eating plants) in his dorm room to sell to earn money for school expenses.

"It’s the geeky guys who have nice jobs and the financial reserves to enjoy life," he told students during his OSU visit. "Education is the key to doing everything cool in life. It gives you access to so many wonderful places."

As a staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1984 to 1996, Pettit was a member of the Space Station Freedom Redesign Team and also the Synthesis Group, which assembled the technology to return to the moon and explore Mars.

He was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 1996. Initially a backup crew member, he was tapped for the space flight last fall when another crew member was medically disqualified. While aboard the International Space Station, Pettit performed two space walks, something he had not expected to do.

He served as the flight engineer and science officer of the three-man Expedition-6 crew, which included another American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut.

"As a science officer, I managed the space station as an orbital laboratory that was commensurate with how we do science on the ground," he said.

In his first public appearances at Oregon State since returning from space, Pettit showed slides of what he calls "Saturday morning science" and discussed dissolving Alka Seltzer tablets, rotating eggs, and playing CDs under zero gravity conditions. As he displayed pictures of himself eating tea with chopsticks, he joked, "In space you can play with food and call it science."

He shared slides he took from 240 miles above the earth, pointing out an eclipse, the Southern lights, the pyramids of Egypt and glittering cities — from Tokyo to Long Island to the brightest spot in the world, Las Vegas.

"Cities around the world have different colors at night," he said, "But in the daytime cities look like a gray smudge, greasy fingerprints on the edge of continents, left over from the last time Atlas held the world in his hand."

After a public presentation on campus, children lined up to ask him questions, including what did he eat (6-12 month old freeze dried food and military style meal packets) and how do astronauts go to the bathroom (with the help of vacuum tubes and fans to counter effects of zero gravity). He also discussed sleeping, which is done standing up or floating in a space smaller than a phone booth.

Pettit told a gathering of Honors College students that although the idea of space as a place for peace would be nice in a utopian world, he doubts that this would be consistent with how humans have traditionally behaved.

"As soon as we find something of value on the moon, there will be conflict over it," he said. He predicts the first lunar war will be over water, which he said would be worth more than gold or diamonds because it can be used to make rocket fuel.

"You folks sitting there are the ones that control these issues," he told students. "Your generation can go either way."

While in space, Pettit didn’t forget his ties to the engineering education he received at OSU. He requested a long-distance live video link with his former chemical engineering professors Octave Levenspiel and Goran Jovanovic. He brought Levenspiel’s book, Understanding Engineering Thermodynamics, with him to the space station, but regrets he had to leave it in orbit.

In addition to the Alumni Fellows award, Pettit was presented OSU’s Distinguished Service Award.

SCREENWRITER MIKE RICH

When Mike Rich returned to OSU as one of three alumni fellows, he told audiences, "I make feel-good movies, David Wong makes feel-good drugs and then there’s Donald Pettit.

"Rich, a full time news director at KINK radio in Portland until several years ago, has written screenplays for three "feel-good movies": "FindingForrester," "The Rookie" and "Radio."

"I never refer to what I do as work," he said. "It’s such a privilege to get to do what I get to do. I recognize there are countless people out there who have written screenplays just as good as mine, but who didn’t get the breaks." He said that last year 40,000 freelance scripts were registered by the Writers Guild of America, but only two were made into movies.

Until he entered a screenwriting contest in 1998, Rich was one of those countless people who sent screenplays out, but found they always came back unopened.His first big break came when his screenplay, "Forrester," won the annual Nicholl Fellowship competition, sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. His script was selected as one of five winners from among 4,500 entries.

"I still recall the day I got a letter back from the academy. I thought it would be a form letter, but instead it announced that I was a quarterfinalist, one of 220," he said. "To this day, in spite of everything that’s happened, that’s the best day. "

The day before he received the phone call telling he was one of five winners, he said there were zero messages on his answering machine. The next day there were 80.

In rapid succession, he signed on with a United Talent agency to represent him, Columbia Pictures purchased the screenplay, and Sean Connery was hired as executive producer and lead star for the film "Finding Forrester."

After he finished a sixth rewrite of "Finding Forrester," he said Sean Connery began offering him scotch after every shooting.

"Here I was … in my heart a kid from Enterprise, talking about James Bond movies with James Bond."

Although Rich was born in Los Angeles, he moved to Enterprise as a young boy. He said he tries to pay tribute to that Eastern Oregon community by including hometown settings, such as the barbershop and clothing store in "Radio," in his screenplays. He credits his Enterprise High School English teacher, Sharon DeYoung Forster, (also an OSU alumnus, class of 1967) with instilling in him a passion for writing.

"Writing’s hard work, but great work. There’s no more frightening, terrifying or exhilarating feeling than when you open the computer and page one stares you in the face. That’s when the journey begins," he said.

Rich’s second screenplay, "The Rookie," was a baseball story based on Jim Morris, a pitcher for Tampa Bay, who had been a high school science teacher and baseball coach in Texas.

"Radio," released this November, is a true story of a high school football coach and his relationship with a mentally disabled man.

Rich also was one of the screenwriters for "Miracle," a soon-to-be released film about the 1980 gold medal-winning U.S. hockey team.

When asked why his screenplays have been about sports, he said that as a sports fan he feels comfortable writing about that arena. He added that Hollywood now associates him with sports films, and "any idea the industry has with a ball in it is sent to me."

He is deviating from the sports theme with his current script for Disney about the search for John Wilkes Booth after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

Before his screenwriting success, Rich had spent most of his career in radio. He is still a part-time commentator for KINK.

He got his start in radio while working part time at Corvallis’ KFLY while attending OSU from 1978 to 1982. He said he majored in business so he would have a business background in the volatile and fragile creative professions of broadcasting and writing.

After attending OSU, he accepted a job with KREM radio in Spokane and worked there for three years before moving to Portland and working for KGW and finally KINK radio.

For his work on "Finding Forrester," he was presented the 2003 Christopher for creative contribution focusing on human achievement. "The Rookie" received the 2002 ESPY Award for outstanding sports film and the 2003 Movie Guide Award for best 2002 film for families.

It was an inauspicious start for a drug that by the year 2000 would be prescribed to more than 38 million patients worldwide.

Back in 1974, when David Wong asked the staff at Eli Lilly about the marketability of a new drug to treat depression, he was told that psychiatrists were happy with their current medications. The marketers didn’t think Lilly would be able to provide $300 million for a clinical trial for the new drug, and they were unsure of its market potential

The researchers found similar roadblocks when they submitted an article about the new pharmaceutical product, fluoxetine, and its use in treating depression to the journal Science. The editor rejected the paper, saying there was no general interest in the topic.

But Wong and his colleagues persevered.

Although they had begun work in 1972 on development of fluoxetine, later to be brand named Prozac, it was not until 1987 that the drug received FDA approval. Prozac sales soared from $350 million in 1988 when first launched in the United States, to more than $2 billion in 1995, when it had become the third largest-selling pharmaceutical product in the nation. In 1990, it made the cover of Newsweek and in 1999 was named one of the "Products of the Century" by Fortune magazine. By 2001, when Lilly’s exclusive rights to the drug expired in the United States, accumulated revenues from Prozac had reached $22 billion.

When Wong began research on Prozac in the early 1970s, he never dreamed it would become a breakthrough drug.

"I thought a molecule like Prozac should be useful as an anti-depressant, but I had no idea it would become such a widely used medication," he said.

In 1993, he and the two other co-discoverers of Prozac were awarded the Discoverers Award by the U.S. Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association.

Wong was born in Hong Kong and majored in chemistry at National Taiwan University. He realized the importance of medications as a child, when he watched his aunt, a nurse, give his grandmother insulin. "It was my first exposure to use of Western medicine," he said.

Wong left Hong Kong to study at Seattle Pacific University, from which he received a bachelor’s degree in 1962. He went on to earn a master’s degree in biochemistry from Oregon State in 1964 and a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Oregon Medical School in 1966.

When he returned to campus for the Alumni Fellows Award presentations, he acknowledged the people who had helped him at Oregon State: a local family from Albany who took him in, supportive professors, and Bert Christensen, chair of the department of chemistry.

"I always thought OSU was the place that started my scientific career. Without Dr. Christensen’s faith in a young man from Hong Kong, I wouldn’t be here," he said. "OSU changed the direction of my life. I originally planned to go back to Hong Kong and work as a technician in a clinical lab. After attending OSU I decided I wanted to be a researcher. Also, OSU changed the direction of my life as a family man. It was here that I met my wife of 40 years, Christina."

Wong worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the Johnson Research Foundation at University of Pennsylvania before accepting a position as senior biochemist at the Lilly Research Laboratories, Eli Lilly and Company in 1968. He retired from Lilly as a research fellow in 1999, but continues to work as a consultant for pharmaceutical companies and as an adjunct professor of neurobiology at the Indiana University Medical School.

Although best known for his research on the development of Prozac, Wong worked on many projects at Lilly during his 30-year career, including development of other drugs to treat depression, attention deficit disorder and Parkinson’s disease. His laboratory was involved in the discovery of Strattera, launched in the United States in 2003 as the first non-stimulant medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. He also has contributed to development of a new anti-depressant, now in clinical trials, which he says works more effectively than Prozac.

Wong said that one of his greatest satisfactions is to have someone tell him that one of the drugs he developed was of help either personally or to a family member.

He has published more than 200 articles in scientific journals and books and is credited as the inventor or co-inventor for 35 U.S. patents.

Among the many awards he has received are the first Cornerstone Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in the Health Sciences from the American Drugstore Museum and the 1998 Seattle Pacific Alumnus of the Year Award. OSU

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