Helen Berg

Education and academic career Berg studied at Wellesley College before completing a bachelor's degree in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1953. She moved to Corvallis in 1957 and began working as a statistician at Oregon State University in 1963, and became the director of the Survey Research Center at Oregon State.

Her research, published in many journal papers both as Helen M. Lowry and as Helen M. Berg, concerned feminist economics and "the statistical differences of social opportunity by gender". with whom she published well-cited work on factors affecting male versus female graduate student success, and on gender pay gaps.

Political career Berg served on the Corvallis city council, representing Ward 7, for two consecutive terms from 1991 until 1994. Her work as councillor included sponsoring a 1991 city ordinance against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Later, she had to handle large budget cuts caused by the stock market downturn of 2002.

Under Berg's three-term tenure, four new fire stations were constructed. The city's largest public works project in its history, the $30 million sewer overflow remediation project, was completed, which stopped sewage and storm runoff from being dumped into the Willamette River. The city completed a long term development plan called the Corvallis 2020 Vision Statesmen. Berg oversaw the planning and construction of the Howland Plaza at Riverfront Commemorative Park, which opened in May 2004. The Corvallis Police Department was also accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, a distinction shared by only 2% of American police departments at the time. her mother also had bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics. She moved to multiple parts of the US as a child, eventually finishing high school in Madison, Wisconsin.

She interrupted her undergraduate studies to marry Norman Ward in 1952; they filed for divorce in 1976. In 1983, Berg married her third husband, Alan Berg. He was a forestry professor at Oregon State who had served on the Corvallis city council from 1973 to 1978 and served as mayor from 1979 to 1986; he died in 1989.

Berg moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2007 soon after leaving office to be closer to her family. She died on August 13, 2010, in Portland, of the asbestos-related disease peritoneal mesothelioma at the age of 78. Her papers are kept in the special collections of the Oregon State University library.