Portland State University
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40 free Portland State University trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Portland State University began in 1946 as a makeshift extension center for returning World War II veterans, lost its first campus to a flood two years later, and refused to close. Today it fills a stretch of downtown Portland, and its story is packed with the kind of fun facts that surprise even people who walk past it every day. This quiz turns those facts into 40 questions. They cover the school's early years at Vanport, the buildings and landmarks of the downtown campus, its motto, mascot and school colors, and the musicians, artists, entrepreneurs, politicians and athletes who studied here before they were famous. It is written for students, alumni, staff, prospective applicants and curious Portlanders. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will finish with a few stories worth repeating on a campus tour.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Portland State design student Carolyn Davidson was paid $35 in 1971 to draw which company's logo?
Nike
Nike co-founder Phil Knight, who was teaching accounting at Portland State, hired her after overhearing that she could not afford oil painting supplies.
Q 02Jack Ely, who attended Portland State while playing in the Kingsmen, sang lead on which garbled 1963 hit?
Louie Louie
Louie Louie came out slurred partly because Ely was wearing braces and shouting to be heard over the instruments in a rudimentary studio.
Q 03Larry Harvey, who attended Portland State, co-founded which festival that began on a San Francisco beach?
Burning Man
Burning Man started in 1986 when Harvey and a friend burned a wooden figure on Baker Beach; it moved to Nevada's Black Rock Desert in 1990.
Q 04Portland State's student union honors Michael J. Smith, a star of its unbeaten 1965 team on which TV quiz show?
College Bowl
College Bowl aired nationally on NBC, and Portland State won five straight weeks to retire as champions with a record points total.
Q 05Portland State founder Stephen Epler invented which scaled-down sport for small Nebraska high schools in 1934?
Six-man football
Six-man football let Depression-era schools too small for a standard eleven-player squad field a team; the first game drew a crowd of almost 1,000.
Q 06Which grunge-era singer and Golden Globe-nominated actress briefly studied English and philosophy at Portland State?
Courtney Love
Courtney Love went on to form the alternative rock band Hole in Los Angeles in 1989.
Q 07Which item did Portland State's early bookstore stock for the families of its student veterans?
Baby food
Baby food was on the shelves because the first students were returning World War II servicemen, many with young families; by 1956 their numbers had dwindled.
Q 08Guitarist Nancy Wilson transferred to Portland State before joining her older sister Ann in which rock band?
Heart
Heart had hits with Magic Man, Crazy on You and Barracuda, and Wilson entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the group in 2013.
Q 09Which nickname do Portland State University's athletic teams share with an NFL franchise?
Vikings
Vikings teams are cheered on by a costumed mascot whose name is a pun on a winning result: Victor E. Viking.
Q 10Portland State art graduate Mike Richardson founded which comics publisher, the home of Hellboy and Sin City?
Dark Horse
Dark Horse started in 1986 in Milwaukie, Oregon, and donates a copy of everything it publishes to Portland State's library, where students can borrow the comics.
Q 11Which river burst through a railroad embankment in 1948 and destroyed Portland State's first campus at Vanport?
Columbia
Columbia floodwater killed 15 people and erased what had been Oregon's second-largest city, yet the school reopened that summer in a borrowed Portland high school.
Q 12Portland State opened in 1946 to teach World War II veterans whose tuition was paid under which federal law?
G.I. Bill
G.I. Bill benefits brought 221 students to the first summer session in a junior high school, and more than 1,400 registered that fall.
Q 13Which pair of school colors do Portland State University's athletic teams wear on the field and court?
Green and white
Q 21Katie Harman, later a Portland State graduate, won which pageant crown for 2002 while representing Oregon?
Miss America
Miss America had never gone to a contestant from the Pacific Northwest before Harman, who was chosen on the Saturday after the September 11 attacks.
Q 22Which kind of rail vehicle runs straight through the Urban Center plaza on the Portland State campus?
Streetcar
Streetcar tracks cut right across the plaza, and Portland State has been praised for how much its campus leans on light rail, streetcars and buses.
Q 23Portland State graduate Travis Knight directed Kubo and the Two Strings for which stop-motion studio?
Laika
Laika grew out of Will Vinton Studios, the Portland animation house that took Knight on as an intern after he graduated.
Green and white set Portland State apart from its bigger in-state neighbors: Oregon plays in green and yellow, Oregon State in orange and black.
Q 14Portland State's motto, displayed on a skybridge over Broadway, says to let what serve the city?
Knowledge
Knowledge serving the city is the school's motto in Latin too, Doctrina urbi serviat, a nod to a campus set in the middle of downtown Portland.
Q 15Vanport, the wartime housing project where Portland State began, was built for workers in which industry?
Shipbuilding
Shipbuilding at the Kaiser yards drew so many workers that Vanport housed 40,000 people, making it the largest public housing project in the nation.
Q 16Which jazz bassist entered Portland State's music program at 16 and later won the Best New Artist Grammy?
Esperanza Spalding
Esperanza Spalding remembers being the youngest bass player in the program, which she joined on a scholarship after leaving high school early and earning a GED.
Q 17Steven Smith, who attended Portland State, founded which tea brand in 1994 that Starbucks later bought?
Tazo
Tazo was Smith's second act: he had co-founded Stash Tea in 1972, and he later launched a third brand, Steven Smith Teamaker, in Portland.
Q 18Which former Portland State forward coached the Boston Celtics to the 2022 NBA Finals in his first season?
Ime Udoka
Ime Udoka reached Portland State after spells at two other colleges, and spent nine years as an NBA assistant coach before Boston hired him.
Q 19Which Saturday event sets up among the trees of the South Park Blocks on the Portland State campus?
Farmers market
Farmers market stalls came to the South Park Blocks in 1998, when the Portland Farmers Market lost its first lot by the river and moved onto campus.
Q 20Portland State has played Division I sports in which conference, alongside schools from Montana and Idaho, since 1996?
Big Sky
Big Sky membership in 1996 brought men's basketball back to Portland State after the program had sat idle for 15 years.
Q 24On which American holiday in 1948 did a flood wipe out Vanport, the first home of Portland State?
Memorial Day
Memorial Day began with officials assuring residents the dikes were safe; after the berm failed, the school was dubbed the college that wouldn't die.
Q 25Portland State's Rick Sanders won Olympic silver medals in 1968 and 1972 competing in which sport?
Wrestling
Wrestling made Sanders a world champion in 1969; he was killed in a car accident in Yugoslavia while traveling after the 1972 Games.
Q 26Charles Moose, who earned a doctorate at Portland State, led which 2002 manhunt as a Maryland police chief?
D.C. snipers
D.C. snipers struck around Washington in October 2002; Moose had earlier been police chief of Portland, where he also taught at Portland State.
Q 27Which star of the reality series The Girls Next Door studied theater and psychology at Portland State?
Holly Madison
Holly Madison was born in Astoria, Oregon, and helped pay her college tuition by modeling for Hawaiian Tropic and waiting tables.
Q 28Which offensive system did coach Mouse Davis make famous at Portland State between 1975 and 1980?
Run and shoot
Run and shoot football under Davis set 20 NCAA Division II offensive records, and he is widely regarded as the godfather of the scheme.
Q 29Portland State's school of government is named for which Oregon governor who then spent 30 years as a US senator?
Mark Hatfield
Mark Hatfield had a personal tie to the campus: in 1958 he married Antoinette Kuzmanich, a counselor at what was then Portland State College.
Q 30Which Portland State alumna became the first woman elected governor of Oregon, taking office in 1991?
Barbara Roberts
Barbara Roberts studied at Portland State from 1961 to 1964 and came to public life as an advocate for special-needs children after her older son's diagnosis.