This is part of a weekly series introducing readers to individuals who are passionate about our Mid-Valley community.

Throughout the school year, University of Oregon students in more than 20 courses set their focus on a singular goal — solving problems in Salem.

Students and faculty in the Sustainable City Year Program visited and studied the city, talked with residents and city staff, and set their sights on proposing solutions on a variety of topics, including the role of AI in city government, safe bicycle infrastructure, housing, climate action plans, equity and parks management.

For south Salem resident and recent UO grad Sulwyn De Crozuc, the topic she tackled was personal. De Crozuc earned a degree in planning, public policy and management, and worked on a team led by co-founder and co-director of the Sustainable Cities Initiative Marc Schlossberg to improve the safety and usability of the bike corridor in Salem.

De Crozuc previously worked on the Sustainable City Year Program in Sisters and jumped at the chance to work on a project in her hometown.

She worked on a redesign of Front Street from Commercial Street to Union Street to north of Marion Square Park. The corridor, which passes along Riverfront Park and downtown, is a bustling spot for cyclists, pedestrians and vehicles.

“I grew up going to the park, and I grew up cycling to the park when I was a teenager,” she said. “At that time, I was really, really, really frustrated with just how hard it was to bike around Salem.”

The ride from Bush’s Pasture Park to Riverfront Park was frequently plagued by near misses with cars due to the design of the streets, she said.

De Crozuc said she wanted to work on Front Street because of her experiences and because she cares about safety and making the spaces able to accommodate people as little as a baby to as old as someone in a care home.

“Front Street currently does not do that, but with the design me and my team proposed, we at least made it so people could bike better and be more comfortable entering and exiting the park,” she said.

Proposals included widening bike lanes, installing bike foot rests at intersections and improving sidewalks near Riverfront Park.

Students get real-life experience, cities get ideas

De Crozuc and other students presented their projects to community leaders at the Center 50+ in June as part of the program’s end-of-year celebration.

The Sustainable City Year Program is in its 14th year in partnering with Oregon communities. Every year, 200 to 500 students focus on a different city or transit district, contributing more than 60,000 hours of work. The nationally recognized program has been adopted throughout the world by other universities.

Courtney Knox Busch, Salem’s chief strategy officer, said the program’s contributions to the city are massive.

“We were at a point where there was just so much that we wanted to get done, and we were really struggling with capacity,” she said. “Being able to invite the students in to help us further the council and the community goals was also a tremendous opportunity for this year.”

City staff and leaders can use the proposals and framework for city projects and initiatives. Knox Busch pointed to implementing a project to discourage vehicle idling as part of the city’s Climate Action Plan to reduce emissions. Students developed the low-cost idea of having elementary school students design stickers to spread awareness and post them near schools.

“It’s just this huge opportunity and we had never considered (it),” she said. “In 10 weeks, the students produced that for us and the budget. It made it so easy.”

Knox Busch also highlighted the bicycle corridor project as something to help further city goals.

“We’re in the throes of updating our transportation systems plan, and the bicycle planning course turned out to be a great way to move some of that thinking forward,” Knox Busch said.

Salem is the first city to participate twice in the program.

Students in the 2010-2011 school year provided input into the Minto-Brown Island Park Master Plan, proposing trail connections to Riverfront Park, crafting police facility designs, encouraging neighborhood associations to create social media pages to connect with residents and recommending projects to increase revenue and reuse at the city’s wastewater treatment facility.

Many of the impacts of those proposals can be seen today, Knox Busch said. Facebook pages have become major hubs for neighborhood engagement, new signs were added to Minto and the Pringle Creek path was undercover and restored and is on the way to becoming a connection to Riverfront Park.

After the 2010-2011 program, then-Salem City Manager Linda Norris said the project was successful beyond her wildest dreams.

“I know we will be using the work for years and years to come,” she said.

‘These are our future leaders’

This year’s participation was made possible through federal funding secured by U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, both Oregon Democrats.

Mayor Chris Hoy lauded the partnership and expressed gratitude for the students’ insights.

“The ideas and collaboration these students bring to the city are instrumental in helping us tackle a variety of local problems,” Hoy said.

Program leaders said the benefits are far from one-sided.

“What we found through the Sustainable City Year Program and our work with cities around Oregon is that students are just a lot more motivated when they’re working on a real project in a real city,” program director Megan Banks said.

Instead of a hypothetical question from their professor, students can tackle a real-life problem and see their ideas implemented, she said.

Knox Busch said many students can use her as a reference and put their experience on their resume.

De Crozuc said her experience gave her clarity and confidence about her post-grad plans. She wants to be a transportation planner, growing public transportation networks and pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure while working to solve climate change.

“The fact that all of these wonderful fresh ideas are being given to the like city officials and the city planners of Salem is just so rewarding,” she said. “It also makes me feel really confident as someone who’s going into the planning field to know that the cities in Oregon — where I’m from — want to seek out ideas to improve and better themselves.”

Banks said students don’t want to wait until they graduate to start real-life learning and make the world a better place to live.

“These are our future leaders,” she said. “We want them to be engaged with communities and think about how to make Oregon a better place to live, so we love that they’re doing that while they’re in school.”

If you have an idea for someone we should profile for this series, please email Statesman Journal executive editor Cherrill Crosby at crosbyc@statesmanjournal.com 

For questions, comments and news tips, email reporter Whitney Woodworth at wmwoodworth@statesmanjournal.com call 503-910-6616 or follow on X at @wmwoodworth.

This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Sulwyn De Crozuc passionate about solving Salem’s problems