Benefits of living in a college town

In any town with a university, there are bound to be too many fake-and-bake tanning places and several drunken idiot situations, such as frat parties spilling over into neighbors' yards, but the benefits outweigh the drawbacks most of the time. In Corvallis, Oregon State University brings a lot of good to the town, including an educated populace (puts us far ahead of Albany, nyah), diversity (at least as far as whitebread Oregon is concerned), a vibrant arts scene, actual sporting events (no, Little League doesn't count), better restaurant choices and even tangibles such as grants to help local elementary schools fund their physical education programs.

I'm bringing this up now because I want to mention the Saturday Academy run by the College of Engineering at OSU. It's a nonprofit, extracurricular program emphasizing math, science and technology in classes geared toward middle school and high school students. The classes cost between $20 and $85 each and are held at various locations, including the campus, Hewlett-Packard, Good Samaritan Hospital and the Hatfield Marine Science Center at the coast. Kids can do everything from building robots to extracting DNA from genetically-modified foods to dissecting squid and practicing phlebotomy on mannequin arms. There is tuition assistance available for families who can't afford the basic fees. This is an amazing opportunity for local kids to get some real hands-on experience and information about potential college majors.