Oregon State University's TRACE initiative, which helped communities across Oregon respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, has been selected for preservation in the Library of Congress through StoryCorps' American History Project.
As part of the project, StoryCorps is recording and archiving stories about public health communities' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic from across the United States. Oregon State's TRACE initiative is among the efforts included in the collection.
TRACE was co-founded by Distinguished Professor Jane Lubchenco and Associate Professor Ben Dalziel of the College of Science, along with then-College of Science Dean and current Provost Roy Haggerty. The initiative quickly grew into a statewide effort involving faculty, students and staff from five Oregon State colleges, bringing together expertise in biology, statistics, epidemiology, engineering and public health to help communities better understand the spread of COVID-19 and inform public health decisions.
StoryCorps initially invited Lubchenco and Dalziel to record a conversation about TRACE's origins, goals and impact. After hearing that interview, StoryCorps invited additional TRACE researchers to document the project's innovations in statistical modeling and wastewater surveillance.
In all, six Oregon State faculty and staff members participated in four recorded conversations. Alongside Lubchenco and Dalziel, Associate Professor Jeff Bethel of the College of Health and Associate Professor Katie McLaughlin of the College of Science discussed the innovative sampling design and statistical methods developed through TRACE. Professor Tyler Radniecki and Christine Kelly of the College of Engineering shared how wastewater surveillance provided timely information about the spread of the virus in residence halls and communities.
Together, the conversations document how researchers from the colleges of Science, Health, Engineering, Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine worked alongside students, staff, funders and public health officials to rapidly build new collaborations in response to the pandemic. TRACE became a trusted partner for Oregon State, communities across the state and public health agencies by reporting findings quickly and in understandable ways to help inform public health decisions.
The recordings preserve the story of Oregon State's collaborative response to one of the most significant public health crises in recent history and will become part of the permanent collections of the Library of Congress.
Listen to the StoryCorps conversations
The interviews are part of StoryCorps' Special Feature on Public Health Community Responses to COVID-19, a project of the Library of Congress American History Project.
- Jane Lubchenco and Ben Dalziel (recorded Feb. 20): https://archive.storycorps.org/interviews/jane-lubchenco-and-benjamin-dalziel/
- Katie McLaughlin and Jeff Bethel (recorded May 15): https://archive.storycorps.org/interviews/katherine-mclaughlin-and-jeff-bethel/
- Christine Kelly and Tyler Radniecki (recorded May 15): https://archive.storycorps.org/interviews/christine-kelly-and-tyler-radniecki/
