SOU Ashland Native students join lobby effort

SOU Native students bring voices to Oregon Capitol

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Southern Oregon University students Luke Wolgamott and Savannah Holliday joined Native student leaders from across Oregon on June 16 for the annual Tribal Student Grant Lobby Day, bringing their stories, experiences and aspirations directly to state lawmakers at the Capitol.

Representing SOU alongside approximately a dozen Native students from Oregon’s seven public universities, Wolgamott and Holliday spent the day meeting with legislators and staff from five to seven legislative offices. The students shared how access to higher education is shaping their futures and discussed the importance of continued investment in programs such as the Oregon Tribal Student Grant, which helps Native students pursue college degrees while maintaining strong connections to their tribal communities and cultural heritage.

The impact of those conversations was evident almost immediately. SOU Director of Government Relations Marc Overbeck shared that Senate President Rob Wagner sought him out to share the impact these visits had, calling the visit with Luke’s small group of students “transformational.”

“That is exactly why opportunities like this matter,” Overbeck said. “When students share their lived experiences directly with policymakers, they help shape understanding in a way that no report or briefing paper ever can.”

For Wolgamott and Holliday, the day was about more than advocating for financial aid. It was an opportunity to ensure that Native student voices are heard in conversations about Oregon’s future. Their participation showcased the leadership, resilience and commitment that Native students bring to campuses across the state and reflected SOU’s ongoing dedication to supporting Indigenous student success.

The Tribal Student Grant Lobby Day also demonstrated the power of student advocacy. By stepping into the halls of the Capitol and engaging directly with elected officials, Wolgamott, Holliday and their fellow student leaders helped put a human face on higher education policy. Their efforts left a lasting impression on legislators and reinforced an important message: when students are invited to tell their stories, they become some of the most effective advocates for opportunity, access and educational success.

SOU Ashland commencement

SOU celebrates 100th Commencement

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Southern Oregon University’s 2026 Commencement ceremony on Saturday, June 13, celebrated nearly 600 new graduates who earned a total of more than 900 degrees.

SOU Ashland Commencement

The ceremony – the 100th since the university reopened at its current location in 1926, following a lengthy hiatus – was at Raider Stadium, at Webster and Wightman streets in Ashland. It began with an 8:45 a.m. processional and lasted for about two hours.

The event featured a color guard from the Oregon National Guard and Eagle Staff from the SOU Native American Student Union. Graduating senior Acacia Cook sang the national anthem.

SOU Executive Vice President and Provost Casey Shillam served as the master of ceremonies. President Rick Bailey offered brief remarks, and Jocelyn Gallegos Vargas followed as the student commencement speaker.

Gallegos Vargas, a first-generation Latina student, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and Spanish Language and Culture. She served as president of the Latino Student Union, worked at Rogue Credit Union’s campus branch and participated in the Global Innovation Scholars Program.

She plans to continue her work with Rogue Credit Union following graduation, serving as a community outreach and financial education coordinator.

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JPR at SOU Ashland

JPR reporters honored with journalism awards

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Jefferson Public Radio reporters have been recognized for their journalism with recent honors from both the Edward R. Murrow Awards and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northwest Excellence in Journalism Awards.

JPR reporter Jane Vaughan won a regional Murrow Award for investigative reporting in the small-market radio division, competing against public and commercial radio stations throughout the Northwest. Her winning story, “Roseburg’s private homeless camps blur business and charity,” takes a close look at a commercial landowner that operates three city-authorized homeless camps.

The regional Murrow awards have been presented since 1971 by the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) to recognize outstanding broadcast and online journalism. Regional Murrow winners are automatically entered in the national Edward R. Murrow competition.

JPR reporters were recognized with eight awards – including second place in the General Excellence in Radio category – in the Society of Professional Journalists contest, which recognizes outstanding reporting throughout Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington.

Reporter Justin Higginbottom won the first-place award in the Crime & Law Enforcement Reporting category for his story, “Lions, guns and meth: Inside the takedown of an Oregon roadside zoo,”  about an interagency raid on a game park near Bandon. Higginbottom also was a first-place award in the Feature – Hard News category for his story, “Pineros in Southern Oregon: How Jackson County became a center for guest workers,” about how Jackson County accounts for more than a quarter of all non-logging forestry workers in the country who are in the U.S. on “guest worker” visas.

JPR’s Vanessa Finney won a first-place award in the LGBTQ+ Equity Reporting category for her story, “A place of their own: ‘Outliers and Outlaws’ in Eugene,”  about the University of Oregon’s Eugene Lesbian History Project. Finney also won a third-place award in the Racial Equity Reporting category for “‘Aging While Black’ amplifies experiences of elderly Black Americans,” her piece on a national movement that amplifies the voices and experiences of Black elders and re-examines aging in the context of race.

Reporter Roman Battaglia won a second-place award in the Environment & Natural Disaster category for his story, “A biomass plant stands amidst a climate debate on the Northern California coast,”  about a 40-year-old facility that burns wood waste to produce electricity in the tiny coastal town of Scotia, California. Battaglia won another second-place award in the Technology & Science Reporting category for his story, “In Arcata, anyone can fly planes and fight wildfires without leaving the library,” about the Hall of Simulation at the Cal Poly Humbolt library.

Reporters Mike Green and Natalie Golay won a third-place award in the Technology & Science Reporting category for their story, “Student engineers build custom car for four-year-old,” about engineering students at Henley High School in Klamath falls who designed and built a custom car as part of the national Go Baby Go initiative.

SOU students win poster presentation at symposium for high performance computing

SOU students win best poster at high speed computing symposium

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Three seniors from the SOU Computer Science program won the best poster award at the 2026 Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Consortium’s HPC Symposium, held May 12 to 14 at Boise State University.

The SOU team – Brayden Stach, Laura Lovrien and Alec Clark – returned with valuable takeaways from the conference and the overall experience. They also won an all-expenses-paid trip to SuperComputing 26, an international conference for high performance computing that will be held Nov. 15 to 20 in Chicago.

“The networking was genuinely great,” the three SOU students said in their report on the Boise symposium. “There was a room with about 15 company booths (IBM, Intel, Amazon and others) open every day.

“We walked around, got some free merch and had real conversations with recruiters and engineers – everyone was really friendly and easy to approach, which made it simple to just walk up and start a conversation.”

The three said some specific examples of advice from recruiters included tailoring your resume to each job posting, including using AI to match the resume to the language in a listing; saying “yes” to extra work and projects early in your career, to gain experience; and making connections that will matter, by showing up and meeting people.

The high performance computing (HPC) symposium included a keynote address about the value of working across disciplines — such as computer scientists collaborating with environmental scientists, psychologists or others to produce results that matter.

The Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Consortium (RMACC) is a collaborative group of academic and research institutions in the intermountain states whose mission is to enable the effective use of high performance computing – the use of computer clusters or parallel processing to perform complex calculations from massive data sets.

The organization’s annual symposium allows researchers, students and industry professionals to meet and explore how high performance computing is being used in research, AI and other work.

“If you ever get the chance to go to a conference like this, do it,” the SOU students said in their report. “The networking alone is worth it, the people are approachable and you don’t need to be an expert to get value out of it.”