For more information about the classroom, see The Nishihara Family Classroom information page on the library's website.

(Image on the left) An image of the Nishihara Family Crest with the text "The Nishihara Family Classroom"

(Image on the right) An image of the dedication text on the door: This room is named in honor of the Nishihara Family for their dedication to student learning and success. Several Nishihara siblings worked at the OSU Libraries as student workers and graduated from OSU. Janet Nishihara went on to become the Director of the OSU Educational Opportunities Program. "After all of this is over, all that will have really mattered is how we treated each other..." a belief that inspires Janet Nishihara's work

The Nishihara siblings are third generation Japanese-Americans, first generation college students, who grew up in Eastern Oregon. Several Nishihara siblings worked at the OSU Libraries as student workers and graduated from OSU. Janet Nishihara went on to become the Director of the OSU Educational Opportunities Program. The room is named in honor of the Nishihara Family for their dedication to student learning and success. The image on the left is the The Nishihara Family Crest.

Janet Nishihara: "[I worked] in the Materials Preparation department. That kind of saved me in some ways because, my first term and second term, I couldn't figure out how to manage my schedule very well. I felt like I had a lot more free time than in high school, and if I have a lot of free time I don't get stuff done – I just sort of dither and talk to people and stuff. Having a job made me be more thoughtful about planning things and getting my homework done and getting my reading done and things like that. Plus I met some pretty good people who still work at Oregon State who I still see every once in a while. And then my younger brother worked there, my younger sister worked there, so we kind of handed the job down from kid to kid in our family. It was fun. We were down on the very first floor, the basement of the library, mending books, sticking on what hey used to call C-line – we would type the call number and then iron it onto the spine of the books. So that was kind of fun to do that kind of stuff. And then deliver them upstairs and have them processed." ~ Janet Nishihara Oral History Interview, 2015

Dr. Janet Nishihara attended Oregon State University as an undergraduate, where she majored in English Education and completed her degree in 1978. She returned to OSU in 1980 as a master's degree student in the College Student Services Administration program, when she also became involved with the Educational Opportunities Program (EOP). She earned a Ph.D. specifically because she wanted to eventually lead the EOP program at OSU, whose mission is to provide support for the personal and academic development of traditionally underrepresented students at OSU. In 2009, Nishihara was promoted to director. Over the course of her career, Nishihara has played a central role in a wide variety of student support and diversity development initiatives on campus including the creation of the Difference, Power and Discrimination program, the Ethnic Studies department, and the Asian and Pacific Cultural Center. At the 2023 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Legacy Award Ceremony she was honored with the Frances Dancy Hooks Award. To learn more about Janet Nishihara, see the biographical note as part of her 2015 oral history interview.