Dr. Mary Cullinan

In Fall 2013, over 700 resident SOU students will move into beautiful new rooms. The huge residence hall and dining commons project is now officially underway. On this golden spring morning (April 27), we officially broke ground for the North Campus Village. It will be the largest construction project ever in Ashland.

The groundbreaking ceremony brought together SOU faculty, staff, and students as well as many of the folks who have made this public-private partnership come together—representatives from the Collegiate Housing Foundation, American Campus Communities, and Adroit Construction.  David West of our Native American Studies program provided a blessing.

Dignitaries included Ashland Mayor John Stromberg and Jackson County Commissioner Don Skundrick. We all donned hard hats and lifted golden shovels for the ceremonial breaking of ground.

The North Campus Village will be an extraordinary addition to our beautiful campus. Students are already asking if they can reserve rooms for Fall 2013!

Two excellent events today (April 26) highlighted student achievements—and the folks who help provide support.

At lunch in the Plunkett Center, we celebrated students who have received scholarships from the Patricia D. and William B. Smullin Foundation.

Patsy Smullin was there to meet our Smullin Scholars: Torrey Johnson (Outdoor Adventure Leadership), Morgan Lycett (Business), Anastasiya Andreyeva (Education), and Chas Barnard (Music). Smullin Scholars are chosen because they’re successful, dedicated, ambitious, and hard working. These students were also filled with stories of travel and plans for the future. Each of them is going to make a difference in the world!

In the afternoon, I visited the annual Alternative Spring Break Sharing Session. At this event, students speak about the work they did on their ASB trips and thank the folks who provide financial support for the trip. ASB is a significant annual experience for SOU: it embodies our commitment to civic engagement and to helping our students become productive global citizens. This spring students traveled to Gold Beach, Sacramento, and Guatemala. Pastor Tim Cartwright (pictured here) from Grace Lutheran Church is always a great supporter of ASB.

With help from community members such as Tim and from philanthropic organizations such as the Smullin Foundation, SOU students are able to achieve amazing dreams.

Dr. Robert Harrison and President Cullinan at Dr. Harrison's presentation.

On Monday evening (February 13), Dr. Robert Harrison packed Hannon Library’s Meese Room for the Winter Term Distinguished Lecture. Faculty, staff, students, and community members filled the chairs, perched on window sills, and leaned against the walls as Dr. Harrison walked us through centuries of history in a clear, succinct, and captivating manner.

The Distinguished Lecture Series was established in academic year 2010-2011 to celebrate the tremendous work of SOU faculty. Very often even our own campus community members don’t know what is being done outside their own department and throughout the campus.

Now many more people know about the work Dr. Harrison has been doing at SOU since 1990—and, before that, at Biola University and as a Fulbright Scholar in Egypt. He spoke without notes—but with the assistance of a few useful maps—as he traced the roots of the Arab Spring back over a thousand years and through multiple invasions and wars.

In one brief foray into European and U.S. history, he sketched the slow and painful emergence of democracy through the Magna Carta in AD 1215 and the French and American Revolutions and 20^th Century voting rights to illustrate the complexity and painful slowness of change. Change is happening in the Middle East, but he stressed that major cultural and political transformation can’t happen overnight.

Kudos to Dr. Harrison for providing an illuminating and exhilarating tour of a part of the world that is confusing and mysterious to many of us.

We will have another Distinguished Lecture in spring term with Dr. Mark Tveskov.  Mark your calendar for April 18!

Photo by RWBalzer

This past weekend (January 14-15) I had the opportunity to see our students perform brilliantly in athletics and in the arts.

On Saturday night, I attended a wrestling match between SOU and Pacific University in the Bob Riehm Arena. I admit to knowing very little about wrestling—I was glad the program included rules and scoring as well as stats—but it was easy to see how athletic and proficient the SOU wrestlers are. From light to heavyweight, SOU dominated.

SOU’s rivalry with Pacific goes back over fifty years; this was our eighteenth consecutive victory (an impressive 41-3). Bob Riehm was there in person (as he often is), so it was particularly exciting that our wrestling stars were so successful.

On Sunday afternoon I enjoyed stars of another kind in the Music Recital Hall. The concert highlighted three students who have been supported by scholarships donated through Chamber Music Concerts. Mitchell Hansen (horn), Lisa Nichols (flute) , and Jamie Krull (saxophone), accompanied by Jodi French on piano, showed professional aplomb as well as technical expertise and emotional nuance in works by Beethoven, Paul Taffanel, and Paule Maurice. Even though the wintry weather was a bit daunting, a good crowd gathered to enjoy our students’ performances.

At both events, it was inspiring and heartening to see faculty, staff, and students as well as community members coming out to support and applaud our students’ talent and hard work.

Welcome to Winter 2012! I hope your holidays were happy and restful.

Once Thanksgiving came along, the President’s Blog took some time off from updating events at SOU. There was too much going on! The following are just a very few highlights from past weeks.

We had a lovely President’s Holiday Reception at Plunkett on December 4. The reception gave us a festive opportunity to launch our celebration of SOU’s 140th birthday. Our institution was first founded as Ashland Academy in 1872 and has gone through myriad names and transformations since then. The early December party got everyone in the holiday spirit.

In December, also, our wonderful, talented students Mandee Light and Beatriz Abella performed at Carnegie Hall (pictured above). SOU faculty members Donna Lane and Dennis Slattery (along with Dennis’s spouse Sandra) were in the audience and celebrated their success with them.

Over the break, I spent a few days at Timberline Lodge near Mount Hood, which had more snow than just about anywhere else in Oregon.

And now we’ve started a new year and a new term. Classes have started. Men’s and women’s basketball as well as wrestling are well underway. Campuses in Ashland and Medford are humming with activity.

The coming weeks will be exciting, challenging, and action-packed. Stay tuned for updates!

The annual Raider Auction is one of SOU’s most inspiring and delightful events. On Wednesday night (November 16), the Riehm Arena was transformed into a moveable feast as folks from on and off campus gathered in support of SOU Athletics. While dining on delicacies from Beasey’s caterers, attendees wandered among tables lined with sports memorabilia, holiday gift baskets, and other silent auction items.

The out-loud auction offered getaways such as fishing and ski trips, a year’s worth of movie tickets, a hot air balloon ride, and the ever-popular President’s Skybox for watching home football games. Supporting student scholarships was an especially popular auction choice.

With so many SOU athletic teams excelling this fall, the Raider spirit was particularly strong. A good time was had by all—and our student athletes will benefit from this community’s generous support.

All photos by RW Balzer

Julie French receives the Swampy Award

The all-campus breakfast this morning (June 8) brought faculty and staff together to share a meal, celebrate key achievements, and recognize the creative work going on across campus.

Provost Klein congratulated faculty who had been promoted, tenured, and granted sabbaticals. Students, faculty, and staff spoke briefly about creative activities: our new electric truck, our planned recycling program, our campus theme, and two films created by students in Emerging Media and Digital Arts.

I summarized some of the initiatives and achievements of the year and also named this year’s recipient of the miniature Swampy Award. Swampy is given each year to someone who has exemplified creativity and commitment to SOU. She’s displayed in the work area of the recipient for the next year and then is returned to me in the spring to be given to the following year’s recipient.

Last year Brett Ainsworth was the first person to receive Swampy. This year Swampy went to Julie French, our Civic Engagement Coordinator. Her winning idea is to create an interactive wall, cube, rock, or other object—probably in the Stevenson Union or the SU courtyard—that campus community members can use to write on, mark important dates, ask questions, and contribute thoughts or pictures. (If you go to the traditions portions of the website for Roanoke College, you can see a sample communication rock—with examples of the work that has appeared on it.)

We’ll create a process for designing our unique SOU communication medium—and hopefully see it installed some time next year.

We’re all a bit tired—but breakfast reminded us again of the great work being done at SOU.

Last Monday (February 28) we kicked off our new Distinguished Lecture Series with huge energy and enthusiasm. Dr. Terry Longshore’s (below, left)  musical lecture and performance took us through a whirlwind tour of modern percussion—along with the beautiful and dynamic ways in which composers capture their music visually for the musicians who play it.

In “Seeing is Hearing: Degrees of Interpretation in Rendering Modern Percussion,” Dr. Longshore set the bar high for the Distinguished Lecture Series, which highlights the work of SOU faculty. He was supported wonderfully by his students in the SOU Percussion Ensemble as they made remarkable music from found objects (shoes? an electric train?) and brought physics to life with music and strings (you really had to see as well as hear it).

Our next Distinguished Lecture will take place on April 21 in the Meese Auditorium when Dr. John Roden will provide insights into global climate change—and why there are still skeptics. Join us!

Will more SOU students want to live on campus? Will they want to live in single rooms, suites, or clusters of rooms? Will they want to spend more to have amenities—or will they prefer to save their dollars and live more economically?

What will students want in 2015? What about 2025? 2045?

These are some of the questions SOU administrators discussed yesterday (February 2) in an afternoon retreat on student housing. Our discussion was led by folks from Brailsford and Dunlavey, facilities planners assisting us as we plan for student housing and residential life at SOU over the coming decades.

We were talking primarily about public-private partnerships, collaborative efforts that would enable us to improve and expand our residence halls without incurring too much risk or debt. We wanted to learn about campus public-private partnerships that have worked—and ones that have been less successful. We discussed the mix of future SOU students—how many might be Freshmen? Upper-division students? International students?

We discussed living-learning communities, residence halls focused on majors such as the sciences or arts, and amenities such as a health and wellness center.

Lots of ideas! The retreat was part of a larger conversation as we plan the future of SOU. The basic question we must ask is “How can SOU best serve the students of today while becoming ready to serve the students of tomorrow?”

Our current campus and curriculum evolved from decisions made throughout the 20^th Century. The decisions we make now will also resonate for generations.

On Thursday evening (October 21), student government president Stephen Land and I tried something new: Dinner with the Presidents.

For several years now I’ve done quarterly Pizza with the President events. We invite students for free pizza, and they get an opportunity to ask questions or make comments, passing a mic around in an open forum.

This fall, ASSOU president Stephen Land and I decided to take a similar concept to the Cascade Dining Hall—and encourage students to ask questions of both of us.

The dining hall was busy at 5 PM, but students at first seemed shy about asking questions. As they warmed up, they asked about new leadership in the dining services, about working for Campus Public Safety, about participating in get- out-the-vote activities. Stephen made a plug for Homecoming events. Paul Adalian updated us on activities in the library.

Jonathan Eldridge talked about improvements in residence life. When Sylvia Kelley asked how many students were here on scholarships, lots of hands went up. She asked students to contact her with their stories.

Craig Morris answered a question about getting jobs on campus.

One student asked Stephen and me what we liked and didn’t like about our jobs. Another asked about our campus theme “On being Human,” so Jim Klein spoke about the Humanities Council and how the theme was chosen.

Everyone seemed to have a good time. However, Dinner with the Presidents doesn’t actually give the presidents time to eat anything.

I went home afterwards to have dinner.

Fall term is speeding by us. Today I overheard a student talking about midterms. SO—mark your calendars for upcoming events before they’re in your rear view mirror. Here’s a sampling.

October 20.  Enrique Morones, founder of Border Angels, a non-profit organization attempting to prevent migrants from dying as they cross the U.S.-Mexican border, will speak at Southern Oregon University next week. He’ll appear at 7:00 PM in the Rogue River Room of the Stevenson Union. His talk is part of Hispanic Heritage Month activities and this year’s campus theme “On Being Human.”

October 28. State of the University. At 4:30 PM in the SU Arena, I’ll update the campus on where we are in this new academic year—and then we’ll have time to socialize at the reception afterwards.

October 29. Science Friday will feature Dr. John Roden (3 PM in Science 118).  And, in the evening, we’ll host the Art Affair—the annual gala event to support the Schneider Museum of Art.

October 30. HOMECOMING. The schedule is packed. Come to the game!

November 2. The HEC is hosting a summit of The Classroom Law Project, a non-profit organization with a mission to teach students to become active citizens in our democracy. The summit will focus on the upcoming gubernatorial and Senate races with a special emphasis on the concept of civic virtue, both of elected officials and of citizens.

November 17. The Raider Auction will be held in McNeal Pavilion to support Raider athletics. The silent auction starts at 5:30 PM.

These are only a few highlights—there’s a whole lot more happening in the coming weeks. Keep an eye on your calendars–we’re moving fast!

Although the Konaway Program started over ten years ago, it has always faced financial issues due to the ups and downs of grant funding. This year SOU made a financial commitment to the program that will ensure its continuation. I am very grateful to the support of the Cow Creek Umpqua Indian Foundation and other groups that contribute significantly to making this extraordinary program possible.

One of the most compelling aspects of the program is that former Konaway students come back as staff and show the students what it looks like to be successful in college, in law school, and in doctoral programs. The Konaway Program brings folks together in a way that makes a tremendous difference to generations of students and their families.

As we stood out on the bricks before Throne of Blood, I had a fascinating conversation with SOU graduate Douglas Worley, who is working on his doctorate at UC Davis. His path through higher education wasn’t easy. He started at SOU but dropped out of school. Then, after six months on the Pow Wow trail with his parents in California, he became committed to finishing college and went to RCC. With an Associate’s degree in hand, he returned to SOU and worked with Kemble Yates, Dee Southard, and others as a math major and McNair Scholar.

Now he’s working hard as a doctoral candidate—but finding time to mentor other young people in the Konaway Program.

Douglas Worley is truly committed to making a difference for young Native American students—just as his SOU mentors were committed to him.

One very special highlight of this summer was the return of SOU’s Konaway Nike Tillicum, the week-long program for middle- and high-school Native American students. With power-packed classes and an array of activities, the Konaway Program inspires kids to realize their potential as future university students.

I had the opportunity to meet many of the students one evening when we all attended OSF’s powerful Throne of Blood—and then again at the graduation ceremony in Meese Auditorium. Some students had come from as far away as Alaska to participate in our prestigious and highly effective program. They were all excited to be here at SOU and said they were learning a lot.

I am so grateful to the many SOU folks who taught classes and worked to make the program such a success—from David West and Brent Florendo to Dean Alissa Arp, D.L. Richardson, Alma Rosa Alvarez, and many others. Many SOU faculty and staff came to the Konaway graduation on a Saturday morning—demonstrating our whole campus support for the success of these students.