Today my PSU colleagues and I bid farewell to Chris Broderick, our associate vice president of University Communications, on the occasion of his retirement from Portland State University.

As is a University Communications tradition, we presented Chris with his own custom issue of the Portland State Magazine, complete with a few tongue in cheek stories appropriate to his tenure. My contributions to that issue follow.

The gilded age of Shoureshi

The tenure of Portland State University’s ninth president was, you might say, gilded. Perhaps it was his demand for custom-ordered gold-plated business cards or his made-to-measure suits and over the top cufflinks. Throughout it all, Associate Vice President of University Communications Chris Broderick encouraged President Rahmat Shoureshi to look at things differently: Perhaps he might actually be able to find a serviceable condo in Portland’s Pearl District for a measly $6,000 a month. Maybe he could skip commissioning the redesign of the PSU presidential mansion in Dunthorpe to his personal tastes. Could it be that using PSU resources for his wearable-shoe invention might not pass the state’s ethics standards? As much as Chris worked to align Shoureshi to PSU’s more grounded and scrappy culture, ultimately it was not a match made to last. The president quit under fire after barely two years on the job and was later found to have violated multiple state ethics laws.

The $100 million gift that wasn’t

A swashbuckling tech entrepreneur. Top secret meetings at an undisclosed location. Impenetrable multimillion dollar Bitcoin accounts. Plot ingredients for the latest Law and Order franchise? No, just a day in the life of Chris Broderick, associate vice president of University Communications, as he worked to salvage PSU’s credibility during the great $100 million donation débâcle of 2015. The notion that such a large anonymous gift would come to Portland State out of the blue was encouraging, but also implausible. His finely tuned journalistic chops on high alert, Broderick was skeptical, and became the voice of reason as the entire U Comm team was spun up to celebrate the forthcoming gift. And that they did, until the entire house of cards crumbled and the “gift that never was” vanished faster than pot stickers at a Simon Benson House reception.

Reproduced with permission.

Written by Kurt Bedell
Photo courtesy of Portland State University
Illustration by Brett Forman