Latoya Gibbs presents research on competency-based training

SOU faculty member presents competency-based findings at aviation conference

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Latoya Gibbs, an affiliate professor in SOU’s Sociology and Anthropology (SOAN) department, recently shared her findings on competency-based training at The World Aviation Training Summit (WATS) in Orlando, Florida.

WATS is billed as the world’s largest gathering of aviation training professionals who serve airlines, regulators, training providers and the training industry.

Gibbs’ presentation, “Competency-Based Training: Connecting the Dots to Passenger Satisfaction,” was part of the WATS Cabin Crew Training Conference – one of four separate conferences at the training summit.

The talk was based on Gibbs’ research on the effect of competency-based training on flight attendants’ performance and, ultimately, passengers’ satisfaction. She trained a group of 109 flight attendants in four competences: managing stress, dealing with conflict situations, displaying human relations skills and delivering quality customer service. The research included pre- and post-training measures of the flight attendants’ performance and customer satisfaction.

Gibbs has worked as a flight attendant and a cabin crew training instructor, and                                   earned her doctorate in hospitality industry administration from Oklahoma State University. Her current research interests include competency-based training in aviation and hospitality education.

She focuses on human capital as a sustainable competitive advantage through performance and retention. She has published in the “Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research” and the “Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Education,” and has presented at various conferences.

Gibbs, who joined SOU’s Sociology and Anthropology Department last year, received her bachelor’s degree from Florida International University and her master’s degree from the University of the West Indies.

She spent 17 years in the aviation industry, serving first as a flight attendant for Air Jamaica and later as a cabin crew instructor for Caribbean Airlines.

Molly Troupe and Jill Kuehler from Travel Oregon story on distilling

SOU alumna helping to reinvent the distilling world

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SOU chemistry graduate Molly Troupe (2012) and her business partner are being portrayed by Oregon’s tourism marketing agency as “the women changing the distilling world” at their craft distillery in Portland.

Troupe and Jill Kuehler opened Freeland Spirits in northwest Portland two years ago. Kuehler serves as the CEO and Troupe is the master distiller – placing theirs among the fewer than 2 percent of U.S. distilleries that are owned and operated by women.

Freeland is also set apart by its commitment to fresh ingredients and flavors – such as the cucumber, mint and other farm-to-still components in its trademark gin.

“Distilling is like art, just in the way that you balance out your recipe,” Troupe said in the recent story and video for Travel Oregon, the marketing arm of the Oregon Tourism Commission.

“You try to create ebbs and flows, and top notes and bottom notes, and that beautiful middle note as well,” Troupe said. “All of the recipes we’re trying to achieve here have this amazing balance that takes a lot of time, patience and understanding of the art and science of distilling to actually achieve.”

Troupe earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry with an emphasis on forensics at SOU – where she was a resident assistant for housing, a chemistry lab teaching assistant and a mentor in organic chemistry. She then studied brewing and distilling at Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University, earning a master’s degree and the designation of master distiller.

She served for a year as a quality control assistant at Hood River Distillers and then three years as production manager and lead distiller at Bend’s Oregon Spirit Distillers.

That’s when Troupe was contacted and recruited by Kuehler, who had developed the vision of a women-run distillery that would get most of its ingredients from local, women-owned farms.

Troupe had already begun to make a name for herself as one of the nation’s youngest master distillers, and she has since been chosen for the Forbes Magazine 30 Under 30 list of food-and-drink innovators. She is also on the board of directors of the American Craft Spirits Association.

Freeland Spirits focuses on craft gin and bourbon, distinguished by unique ingredients and pioneering techniques – such as the combination of heat and vacuum distillation that preserves the fresh flavors in its gin.

“We’re starting with West Coast domination – and then the world!” Troupe said in the Travel Oregon video.

SOU crew wins women's pair category at rowing championships

SOU team continues to surprise the collegiate rowing world

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The SOU Rowing Team, which burst onto the national scene as a rookie program two years ago, captured the gold medal in the women’s pair category a week ago at the Western Intercollegiate Rowing Championships near Sacramento.

SOU’s two-person crew of Kenna Tyler and Molly Beilstein won the 2,000-meter race by two boat-lengths against much more established programs including the University of California-Berkeley and the University of California-Santa Barbara, which placed second.

“This truly is an amazing accomplishment for SOU students,” Environmental Science and Policy Professor John Gutrich, who is faculty advisor to the rowing club, wrote in an email announcing the win. “SOU received much praise and coverage during the announcing of the race.”

Nine West Coast collegiate programs entered the women’s pair competition and six boats qualified for the grand final race on Sunday, April 28. The SOU team was seeded first after winning a preliminary heat the previous day, and faced crews from UCSB; the University of Central Oklahoma, which finished third; UC-Berkeley; Humboldt State University; and Chapman University.

The regatta was held at Lake Natoma, on the American River near Rancho Cordova, northwest of Sacramento.

The SOU Rowing Team also entered crews in the men’s pair category and the women’s 4+ category – which has four rowers plus a coxswain, who guides them.

The team is a sport club at SOU – a student-led organization overseen by the Campus Recreation Department. The university’s sport clubs can be competitive, recreational or instructional but most represent SOU in intercollegiate competition. The rowing team trains at Emigrant Lake.

SOU’s rowing team was formed two years ago and surprised many at the 2017 American Collegiate Rowing Association (ACRA) National Championships in Georgia by finishing second overall out of 22 entries in the novice women’s 4+ category.

Chance White Eyes

New Native American Studies faculty member to begin at SOU this fall

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Chance White Eyes, who has worked most recently as a post-secondary consultant on educational and diversity issues, has accepted an offer to join the SOU faculty as a tenure-track assistant professor of Native American Studies.

White Eyes, an enrolled member of the Oneida Tribe of Wisconsin, will begin teaching at SOU this fall.

He served at the University of Oregon for almost five years as a graduate teaching fellow and then another year as assistant to the university’s tribal liaison before shifting to consulting work last fall. He previously served for a year at the UO as an academic advisor and Native American retention specialist.

White Eyes has most recently consulted with Oregon State University on Native American access and success, and has operated RED Day Consulting with a focus on global diversity, indigenous and human rights, and equity and inclusion in post-secondary settings.

He received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from OSU and his doctorate in critical and socio-cultural studies in education at the UO.

His research interests include indigenous research methodologies, indigenous post-secondary educational success, the history of education in the United States, oral traditions, storytelling and narrative analysis. He has offered presentations on indigenous issues and initiatives at several national and international conferences.

White Eyes is currently working on an article that examines Native American storytelling and how those stories can support Native American students in non-Native colleges and universities. He is working on another article that explores acts of student resistance and how those acts enrich or detract from educational experiences.

Harry Fuller birding in Klamath Basin

Author, birder Harry Fuller hosted at SOU by Friends of Hannon Library

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(Ashland, Ore.) — Natural history author Harry Fuller, whose work includes books on birding and owls, will discuss the Klamath Basin and its birds in a presentation on Thursday, May 9, that is part of the Friends of Hannon Library Speaker Series for the 2018-19 academic year.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 4 p.m. in the Southern Oregon University library’s Meese Room (#305).

Fuller will explain why the Klamath Basin is such a rich birding location, and how one of the nation’s first wildlife refuges was designated in that area. He has been leading bird trips and teaching birding classes since the 1990s. Annual trips that Fuller leads include trips in Oregon and Washington for the Klamath Bird Observatory, Road Scholar and Golden Gate Audubon.

Before retirement, Fuller managed TV and internet newsrooms in both San Francisco and London. He has lived in Oregon since 2007.

His natural history books include “Freeway Birding” and “Great Gray Owls in California, Oregon and Washington.”

The Oregon State University Press will publish a book of Fuller’s essays next year about Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, titled “Edge of Awe.” It will include his essay on common nighthawks that are seen at the Malheur refuge in abundance.

Fuller’s birding journal can be accessed online at atowhee.blog.

Friends of Hannon Library was established in 1974 by a group of SOU librarians, faculty members and interested citizens to raise money and enrich the library’s collections. The organization sponsors a lecture series each year – this year bringing a total of six speakers to campus for talks on a variety of literary topics.

Those who are visiting campus to attend Thursday’s event can park free in any SOU lot by entering the special code FHL1904 in the lot’s parking meter.

Those who need disability accommodations to participate in the event, may contact DOU’s Disability Resources office at (541) 552-6213. For more information on the event, contact Hannon Library staff at libraryevents@sou.edu or (541) 552-6816.

Bill Rauch speaks to a group at OSF

An interview with Bill Rauch: Trials and Transformations at OSF

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ShakespeareAMERICA, Jefferson Public Radio and Oregon Shakespeare Festival will present “An interview with Bill Rauch: Trials and Transformations at OSF,” from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on Monday, May 6, at SOU’s Music Recital Hall.

Rauch, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s outgoing artistic director, will discuss his 12-year leadership of the organization in Monday’s special presentation.

Geoff Riley of Jefferson Public Radio will conduct the interview, which will be recorded for future broadcast on the “Jefferson Exchange” at JPR. There is no admission charge.

David McCandless, director of Shakespeare Studies at SOU and organizer of the event, said Rauch will have an opportunity to reflect on all aspects of his work. He will discuss signature challenges, crucial turning points, proudest achievements and thoughts about OSF’s future.

Rauch is due to leave OSF in August to assume artistic leadership of the Ronald O. Perelman Center for Performing Arts at the World Trade Center in New York City.

Rauch became OSF’s fifth Artistic Director in 2007. He has directed more than 25 plays during his tenure, including seven world premieres. One of those premieres – “All the Way,” by Robert Schenkhan – went all the way to Broadway, and the Tony Award for Best Play in 2014.

ShakespeareAMERICA – an OSF-SOU consortium committed to exploring the meaning of “American Shakespeare” – was founded by David Humphrey, director of the Oregon Center for the Arts at SOU, and Paul Nicholson, OSF’s executive director emeritus.

Past ShakespeareAMERICA events include “Much Ado About Shakespeare in America,” “Multi-Cultural Shakespeare,” “The Woman’s Part in Shakespeare,” “Shakespeare in Prison” and “A Conversation with Peter Sellars.”

This story is reposted from the Oregon Center for the Arts at SOU