Lyn Hennion, former member of SOU Ashland Board of Trustees

Lyn Hennion, SOU friend and former trustee, passes away

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Lyn Hennion, member of the SOU Board of Trustees from its inception in 2015 until 2022 and a longtime advocate for early childhood education, passed away last weekend. She and her husband, Alex Bellen, lived near the historic town of Buncom in the Applegate Valley.

“Lyn was among the very closest friends of our university, always putting the interests of our students first as she generously shared her broad business and life experience with all of us,” SOU President Rick Bailey and Board of Trustees Chair Sheila Clough said in a joint message to campus. “She understood both the importance and financial underpinnings of our institution, always willing to offer a steady hand as she led with kindness.”

Hennion was a retired financial advisor who spent nearly 25 years with Umpqua Investments – formerly Strand Atkinson Williams & York – in Medford. She previously served as vice president and senior regional manager for the Franklin Templeton mutual funds in Oregon, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

She was a graduate of Stanford University, and also completed the Securities Industry Institute at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Her record of community service and commitment to the causes most dear to her were acknowledged through numerous awards. She was honored with the “First Citizen” award from the Chamber of Medford/Jackson County in 2015. The Oregon Center for Creative Learning (OCCL) established the Lyn Hennion Early Learning Scholarship Fund in 2025, as a tribute to one of southern Oregon’s greatest champions for children and early childhood education. She was also recognized as a top financial advisor by both “Worth” and “Registered Representative” magazines.

Hennion served on the boards of the Craterian Performances Company, the Robert J. and Leona DeArmond Public Foundation and the Buncom Historical Society. She is a former director of the Oregon Community Foundation and its Southern Oregon Leadership Council, and also has served on the boards of organizations including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Pacific Retirement Services, the Children’s Institute, the Rogue Valley Airport Advisory Committee, Oregon’s 529 College Savings Network and former Gov. John Kitzhaber’s “Ten Year Plan for Oregon.” She regularly volunteered during tax season as a tax preparer and counselor for the AARP Foundation’s free TaxAide program.

“We know that Lyn will be missed within each of those organizations, just as she is at SOU,” Bailey and Clough said in their message to campus. “The deepest void will be that left by the loss of her genuine compassion and consideration for all who came into her orbit.”

Student fellows sought for leadership program at SOU Ashland

SOU seeking student fellows for new Community Resilience and Leadership program

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(Ashland, Ore.) — Southern Oregon University’s Institute for Applied Sustainability is recruiting students for its new Community Resilience and Leadership Student Fellows program – an opportunity for a cohort of 15 of students to help create meaningful solutions to urgent challenges facing local communities. The one-year fellowship – a cornerstone of the institute’s Living Laboratory concept – offers a total of 12 credit hours plus monetary stipends to students who are selected for the fellowships.

The Community Resilience and Leadership (CRL) fellows program is an opportunity for students to participate in hands-on projects through field-based learning and close partnerships with a variety of local organizations. It is built on the idea of the Living Laboratory – a classroom formed by partnerships between SOU, the southern Oregon region and community organizations.

“CRL is not a class you sit through,” the program’s website says. “It’s an experience you step into.”

The program consists of a spring Local Innovation Lab course that meets two hours per week and offers four academic credit hours; a summer Field School that offers eight credit hours and meets for six weeks beginning in early August; and fall options that include internships, peer mentoring and capstone research projects. The student fellows will receive $1,000 stipends for participating in the spring Local Innovation Lab and $3,000 stipends for the summer Field School.

“The experience of meeting with community partners, exploring ambiguities and personal values with my peers, and the helpful and insightful guidance of the instructors is invaluable,” said one student who has completed the Local Innovation Lab course. “I believe the lab attracts students who are curious, full of life, and willing to learn how to ride the waves of ambiguity and uncertainty.”

Another student said the lab is “not just learning about different tools and ways to improve yourself, but also of ways to impact and affect other individuals in the community, beginning with yourself.”

Students from any major who are interested in the CRL fellows program can attend an information session from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 26, in Room 319 of the Stevenson Union. Lunch will be provided, and questions about the program are welcome. Applications to be part of the 2026 cohort – which begins this spring term – can be submitted online, with a priority deadline of Feb. 2.

The Institute for Applied Sustainability envisions SOU as what it calls a “Living Laboratory,” in which students can turn ideas into action, and theory into real-world solutions. Students use real challenges, data and partners to test ideas, solve problems and create impacts in their community – tackling issues such as energy, water, food systems, forests and community well-being.

The CRL Student Fellows Program, an integral part of the Living Laboratory model, has grown out of the Local Innovation Lab project – which started as a response to local problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the September 2020 Almeda Fire. SOU economics professor Bret Anderson and several members of the local community created the lab in partnership with the university.

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Older adult living project paused at SOU Ashland

Plans paused for older adult living community at SOU

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(Ashland, Ore.) — Southern Oregon University’s project to create an older adult living community on its Ashland campus has been paused after one of the two companies being considered as partners with the university withdrew its response to SOU’s request for proposal. SOU will take time to consider what potential partnerships may look like before possibly issuing a new request for additional proposals from private developers.

University President Rick Bailey said the delay will allow more time to evaluate the long-term effects of a facility that will be a part of SOU and the Ashland community for generations.

“We have learned a lot in the last several months about both the challenges and opportunities of this project,” President Bailey said. “We acknowledge that this would likely be a 100-year project, and want to make sure we explore all our possibilities to optimize the benefits to our students, the university and our region.”

Medford-based Pacific Retirement Services, which was in discussions and performing initial due diligence with SOU regarding the project, notified the university this month that a decision has been made to focus capital and resources elsewhere. PRS emphasized that it intends to maintain its close relationships with SOU, including education of health care staff and an on-site Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) program at its Rogue Valley Manor in Medford.

President Bailey said the campus community remains excited about the potential for a public-private partnership to develop the 4.3-acre site previously occupied by the Cascade Complex of residence halls. He said that placing the preliminary discussions on hold will enable the university to explore additional development options for the property.

Developers from around the country were invited last January to submit project proposals for an older adult living community – an entrepreneurial opportunity to forge a synergy between the facility’s residents, traditional SOU students, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at SOU and the university. The project’s goal is to generate long-term revenue for SOU while supporting the university’s commitment to lifelong learning.

Older adult communities are a rare but growing feature on university campuses across the U.S., and an SOU facility would be the first in Oregon – capitalizing on southern Oregon’s reputation as a retirement mecca with a blend of educational, cultural and recreational opportunities.

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New book for educators by SOU Ashland's Renee Owen

New book suggests transformation of education and educators

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(Ashland, Ore.) — A new book by Renee Owen, an associate professor in the SOU School of Education, sold out on Amazon almost immediately after it was published but is now back in stock and getting enthusiastic reviews from educators nationwide.

The book, “Becoming a Transformative Leader from the Inside Out,” describes an educational model through which both teachers and their schools are transformed to more positively influence society. It is intended for both new and veteran educators interested in changes that benefit students, teachers and their communities.

Owen, who coordinates the Principal Administrator Licensure program at SOU, co-wrote the new book with Christine Y. Mason, an educational psychologist who is the founder and senior scholar at the Center for Educational Improvement, a non-profit dedicated to heart-centered learning. The book was published in November by Bloomsbury Academic Publishing.

“They not only create a vision of a new model for the world of educators and education, but they also present us with a manual for accomplishing it with humor, hope, real-world experience, wisdom and courage,” Jean Houston, the chancellor of Meridian University and co-founder of the Human Potential Movement, said in the book’s foreword.

“There is no question that Renee Owen and Chris Mason have envisioned, designed and are helping to create a world of joyfully effective, whole-bodied, whole-hearted, whole-systems education, from the inside out,” Houston said. “What a wonder and gift these authors have given us.”

Owen said she wrote the book with students from SOU’s Principal Administrator Licensure program in mind, but “it would also be a great book for anyone teaching or administrating in higher ed.” In fact, Owen shared in her book the story of how SOU President Rick Bailey took a transformative approach to addressing a flawed fiscal structure when he came to the university four years ago.

“I had never met anyone so gregarious, yet thoughtful and authentic in their com­munication,” Owen said. “Rick organized a series of town hall meetings and truly listened to everyone’s concerns. He answered every email. He went out of his way to meet students, attend faculty gatherings and get to know everyone personally.

“Most importantly, he had a practice of total transparency. Every major decision he made, no matter how painful, he announced it, provided the rationale behind it and offered a compassionate response to those who were affected negatively.”

The book’s authors share a variety of stories about school leadership and how to teach meaningful lessons. The book is based on neuroscience, systems thinking and holistic philosophy, and intended for use in both leadership courses and professional development – with ideas that can change lives, improve relationships and impact school or communities.

Owen earned her bachelor of fine arts degree at the University of Michigan, a master’s degree in Educational Leadership at the University of Colorado, Denver, and a doctorate in Organizational and Adult Learning and Development from Columbia University Teachers College. Mason, who received her doctorate in Educational Psychology from Ohio State University, is an assistant clinical professor in the department of psychiatry in Yale University’s school of medicine.

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SOU grad's Cold Connect cooler keeps vaccines cool

SOU grad’s beverage cooler idea pivots toward humanitarian use

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(Ashland, Ore.) — Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. Build a better beer cooler, and you just may save lives.

Mark Morrison set out to do that – build a tech-heavy, personal-use cooler to keep a beverage cold – when he realized that his invention may have more humanitarian applications. The project quickly morphed into Cold Connect – an internet-enabled, solar-powered cooling and monitoring cap that screws onto standard vacuum-insulated hydration flasks to create a delivery system capable of transporting heat-sensitive vaccines to remote regions of the world.

“At some point it clicked that this technology could save lives instead of just saving my afternoon,” said Morrison, who grew up in Hawaii and then moved to Ashland to earn his bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science & Policy at Southern Oregon University. It was when he returned to SOU last year to earn a certificate in environmental communication that his thirst inspired an invention that may save both lives and money.

“I am a problem solver at heart; I simply cannot let a challenge go unanswered,” Morrison said. “When I discovered the magnitude of this issue, I knew I had to tackle it. I immediately began pouring my technical and creative energy into a solution.

“The need is massive, especially as international aid organizations face funding crunches,” he said. “Right now, nearly half of all life-saving vaccines destined for remote locations in the global south go to waste due to temperature excursions. That represents $34 billion a year in wasted inventory, but the statistic that keeps me up at night is that 1.5 million children die every year from diseases we already know how to prevent.”

Morrison, who currently works as an IT Infrastructure Specialist with the city of Ashland and Ashland Fiber Network, says he has always been a tinkerer and builder at heart. He considers Professor Erik Palmer of the SOU Communication Department to be his mentor, and he listened when Palmer encouraged him to pitch his latest invention, first at an “Innovation Jam” for a class and then at Raider Demo Day, an opportunity for SOU students to showcase business ideas, win prizes and potentially advance to other competitions – which Morrison did.

His idea took first place at last spring’s SOU Business Venture Tournament, a campuswide entrepreneurship contest, and then won the Visionary Award at InventOR – a state-sponsored, college-level competition that encourages students to take their inventions from concept to reality. It was the first-ever win for an SOU project in the contest for universities throughout Oregon, and the results included a short YouTube documentary that is now being used to generate support.

Along the way, as designs for prototypes were fine-tuned, Morrison brought friend and fellow SOU alumnus Elijah Anderson-Justis onboard to serve as the project’s lead architect. Mickey Fishback joined the team as operations manager, and Cold Connect was registered in July with the Oregon Corporation Division.

Morrison credits the InventOR competition for propelling his project from a business concept to a commercial and humanitarian enterprise.

“It’s much larger than a Shark Tank scenario,” he said. “It began as an intensive bootcamp where they brought us to Portland for training and connected us with mentors and subject matter experts. The final competition involved pitching to over 200 people and a panel of 30 judges, followed by a three-hour booth session.

“It wasn’t just a pitch; it was a pressure test for the entire business model.”

There were what Morrison called “Mr. Miyagi moments,” referring to the instructor from the “Karate Kid” movie franchise, and his meticulous “wax on, wax off” exercises – in this case, teaching that invention involves more than building a clever device.

“You have to focus on customer discovery, so you don’t end up with a solution in search of a problem,” Morrison said.

The active, intelligent and solar-powered Cold Connect units are designed to replace passive ice chests – which too often fail before reaching their destinations – by maintaining specific temperatures without relying on ice or the power grid. The invention will ensure that medicine is as potent when delivered to remote locations as when it left the factory.

Morrison and his team are currently finishing work on their “Revision 4” prototype, designed to achieve the World Health Organization’s Performance, Quality and Safety (PQS) certification – a standard that prequalifies health care items such as “cold chain equipment” as products reliable for use by United Nations agencies and member states.

“We’ve moved beyond the ‘science fair’ stage and are now producing hardware that is getting closer to industrial-grade, field-ready tools,” Morrison said.

The Cold Connect Team is also seeking investors and partners, through conversations with humanitarian organizations including the Gates Foundation, Floating Doctors and the Oregon BioScience Incubator. Morrison can be reached at mark@cold-connect.org.

“We are still a startup, and we need subject matter experts, connections to NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) and funding partners to help us bridge the gap between a working prototype and a global solution,” Morrison said.

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