Local Eighth Graders Pledge to Work Hard, Attend SOU After High School

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(Ashland, Ore.) — The room was packed at Talent Middle School on Thursday evening as students and their families came to learn about “Pirates to Raiders,” a new partnership designed to open doors for Hispanic students.
The program forms an alliance with eighth-grade students, their families, the Phoenix-Talent School District and Southern Oregon University. Each member of the partnership agrees to participate in ensuring that these students take all the right steps over the next five years. If they do, they will be accepted to SOU.

“I’ve been envisioning a program like this ever since I came to Oregon,” said SOU President Mary Cullinan. “It really does take a village to help students get to college. This program creates that village. With Pirates to Raiders, these students can fulfill their dreams.”

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SOU’s Distinguished Lecture Series Continues Nov. 9 with Professor Diana Maltz

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(Ashland, Ore.) — As part of Southern Oregon University’s Insights: Distinguished Lecture Series, English and Writing professor Diana Maltz, will give a talk Nov. 9 about a cultural group in England—known as the Fellowship of New Life—that pursued peace, environmentalism and equality in the 1890s.
President Mary Cullinan initiated the lecture series last year to highlight the work of SOU faculty.
“Our faculty are doing outstanding scholarship and creative activity in every field,” she said. “I very much want our community and our campus to gain insight into the work being done at SOU.”
Maltz will review writings by novelists who participated in the rural colonies, as well as satires by writers who simply found New Life initiatives impractical and their practitioners self-important and deluded. Read more

Geteducated.com Gives SOU’s Online Business Program High Marks

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(Ashland, Ore.) — Southern Oregon University’s online business degree was recently ranked as a top best value in online education by GetEducated.com.
Logo - Best Buy online bachelors in businessSOU’s bachelor’s degree in business administration was ranked number 19 out of more than 100 programs. The Get Educated online university affordability rankings are based on a comprehensive nationwide survey of online learning costs at 67 regionally accredited colleges that offer 136 online degrees in business administration at the bachelor level.
“Online learning allows non-traditional students to attend America’s best universities in terms of brand reputation and affordability,” said Vicky Phillips, founder of GetEducated.com. “Southern Oregon University is an undisputed Best Buy for students nationwide looking for a quality online business school with a top consumer ranking.” Read more

Big Weekend Ahead for SOU Homecoming 2011

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Football, soccer and two volleyball games in 24 hours

(Ashland, Ore.) Southern Oregon University Raiders fans will be decked out in red this weekend to celebrate Homecoming 2011. Four games are scheduled from Friday night through Saturday night, including two home games for the Raiders volleyball team, this week’s Cascade Conference Team of the Week. Read more

SOU Archaeologist Brings Pieces of Victorian Scotland to Ashland

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(Ashland, Ore.) — The dumps and compost piles of yesteryear may seem like an unlikely place to learn about culture, but discarded items reflect society, educating anthropologists on what people ate, wore, used as tools and other insights into daily life.

chelsea rose with an artifact in scotland

Chelsea Rose, an archaeologist with Southern Oregon University’s Laboratory of Anthropology, holds a piece of 18th-century ceramic after digging at Amisfield Tower in southern Scotland this summer.

Chelsea Rose, an archaeologist with Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology has discovered exactly that after years of digging in Scotland. This summer, she went back to Scotland for the fifth time, digging at Amisfield Tower—a Scottish border tower completed in 1600—and an area inhabited since prehistoric times. Located in the southern Scotland area known as Dumphriesshire, the tower was built by the Charteris family, who arrived in Scotland with William the Conqueror.
“Last year we explored the landscape to see what was there. This year we targeted certain areas—one area ended up being a medieval garbage dump. We found bones from the food people were eating, coins, a piece of carved ivory and a lot of medieval pottery,” Rose said.

“Lamb—they ate a lot of lamb,” she added.

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Dedication of Humanitarian Sculpture Collection

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(Ashland, Ore.) – The Hannon Library at Southern Oregon University will hold a dedication ceremony on Nov 4 for a sculpture collection of humanitarian peacemakers. Meera Censor, an Ashland resident and artist, donated her collection to the library. It features 21 sculptures of people from all around the world that have contributed to peaceful causes. Icons such as Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela are expertly recreated in hydrostone and bronze. The ceremony takes place at 3 p.m. with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the first floor of the library. A reception will follow in the Meese Room (#305) with light refreshments. The event is free and open to the public. Read more

Fingerprinting, Blood Analysis All Part of SOU’s Forensic Workshop

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(Ashland, Ore.) — Don’t be alarmed if you see police tape throughout the Southern Oregon University Science Building on Oct. 29—it’s all part of SOU’s CSI-style forensic science workshop.
High school and community college students from southern Oregon and northern California will participate in the seventh annual, hands-on Science Workshop, solving a crime using state-of-the-art instruments. The free workshop still has spots available, but time is running out. The deadline to sign up is Oct. 21. Read more

Hannon Library presents “Grave Matters” author on archaeology and reparations

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Cover of Grave Matters(Ashland, Ore.) – Hannon Library presents author Tony Platt on Tuesday, November 1st at 4 PM in the Meese Meeting Room on the SOU Ashland campus. Platt will be joined by OSF actors Robynn Rodriquez and Derrick Lee Weeden in readings from his new book “Grave Matters.” The bitter legacies of archaeology and the politics of reparations are examined in the book, which focuses on the Big Lagoon, an historic Yurok site on the northern California coast, while illuminating larger issues. This free presentation explores the origins and consequences of the looting of native graves and the story of the Northwest Indian Cemetery Protection Association.
Tony Platt is the author of ten books and 150 articles dealing with issues of race, inequality, and social justice in American history. This deeply researched history is written in an accessible style that combines cultural critique with first-person narrative. Howard Zinn has praised his work as a “fascinating excursion into history, full of provocative insights about the culture of remembering.” Platt is professor emeritus after teaching at the University of Chicago, UC Berkeley, and CSU Sacramento. Platt also consulted on David Edgar’s 2-play epic “Continental Divide” commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The author will sign copies of “Grave Matters” after this free presentation. For more information contact Hannon Library at (541) 552-6835 or Anna Beauchamp beauchamp@sou.edu or (541) 552-6823

Civility, Focus of This Year’s Campus Theme at Southern Oregon University

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(Ashland, Ore.) — For the third year, Southern Oregon University will showcase a campus theme—an annual conversation across campus and the community that focuses on a specific topic and features multiple events.
This year’s theme is Civility—a timely topic in all areas of our society.
“We see incivility in virtually every aspect of our lives—in politics, day-to-day social interactions, sports, online social networks and the media,” says Daniel Morris, an SOU French professor and campus theme co-director. “We want to explore what it means to be civil, and hope to find ways to increase civility at all levels of society.” Read more

SOU Professor Greg Jones in USA Today

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To the litany of changes being wrought by global warming, we may be able to add one more: where wine grapes can and can’t be grown.
Read the full story here: www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/story/2011-10-06/climate-change-could-impact-wine-growing-regions/50682188/1