At wildlife crossing site, SOU students Shawn Johnson, Emily Heller

Funding in place for wildlife crossing with key SOU role

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(Ashland, Ore.) — A total of $37 million in federal and state funding has been secured to build a wildlife crossing over Interstate 5 south of Ashland, in a project that Southern Oregon University faculty and students have supported by monitoring wildlife patterns in the area.

Oregon recently was awarded a federal grant of $33.2 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation for the project – the first wildlife overcrossing in Oregon or anywhere on I-5, from Mexico to Canada. The Oregon Department of Transportation will match the federal funding with $3.8 million, for a total project cost of $37 million.

The overpass – whose construction is expected to begin in early 2028 – will span the freeway’s northbound and southbound lanes 1.7 miles north of the Oregon-California state line to help reduce vehicle-wildlife collisions. Its site is within the Mariposa Preserve of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.

Coyote at wildlife crossing site south of SOU AshlandSOU associate professor Karen Mager and her students have used camera traps to study wildlife use of I-5 for the past three years to better understand regional needs for wildlife crossings. Their data was a key component of the feasibility study that identified Mariposa Preserve as the priority site for an overpass. They provided species use data for the state and federal funding applications. and their monitoring efforts are expected to continue during and after construction of the crossing.

“My SOU students have captured over 12,000 unique observations of the wildlife inhabiting this highway corridor,” said Mager, who serves in SOU’s Environmental Science, Policy & Sustainability and Biology departments, and is a fellow in the university’s Institute for Applied Sustainability.

“Our research confirms the extraordinary animal biodiversity at the site where this wildlife crossing will be built,” she said.

Thirteen SOU undergraduate research assistants and four undergraduate capstone projects have contributed much of the data for the project.

Karen Mager, who is leading SOU's efforts at the wildlife crossing

Karen Mager, who is leading SOU’s efforts at the wildlife crossing

“Students do fieldwork and then go through the images to identify species,” Mager said. “Incredibly, it took over 1 million photos and videos – mostly triggered by wind – to capture 12,000 animal images. SOU assistant professor of Computer Science, Bernie Boscoe, and her students worked with us to use AI to detect animals in all those images.”

The crossing will benefit the many SOU students who will continue to gain hands-on research experience by studying its impacts, Mager said. The monitoring efforts will help to document the crossing’s effects on animals and motorists.

About 6,000 vehicle-wildlife collisions are reported each year throughout Oregon, according to state agencies. The average cost of damages in a deer collision is $9,000, and it’s $24,000 for each collision with an elk, according to ODOT. Data from six wildlife underpasses in Oregon – five under Highway 97 and one under Highway 20 – show that their construction led to an 86% decrease in wildlife-vehicle collisions in those areas.

The site of the I-5 overpass is considered to be the highest-priority location along I-5, due to its biodiversity and sensitive wildlife populations, and its promise for improving animal movement through one of the only mountain corridors that connects the coast ranges to the interior Cascades.  The Cascade–Siskiyou National Monument is home to rare mammals such as the Pacific fisher, along with deer, bear, elk, cougars and other large-bodied animals – all of which have been observed by Mager at the site of the future overpass. Many rare and unique butterflies and other species are also found in the area.

ODOT is working on the project in collaboration with the Southern Oregon Wildlife Crossing Coalition. A vision for the wildlife crossing grew out of a February 2021 meeting of representatives from 17 organizations and agencies that are part of the coalition.

“This is the Christmas present that wildlife in southern Oregon were hoping for,” said Jack Williams, an emeritus senior scientist for Trout Unlimited and co-coordinator of the Southern Oregon Wildlife Crossing Coalition.

“The Mariposa Wildlife Overcrossing is exactly what wildlife need – it helps to heal and restore critical east-west habitat connections that were lost when Interstate 5 was built more than 50 years ago,” Williams said.

The state and federal funding will pay for directional fencing to funnel wildlife to the overpass and associated habitat improvements, along with construction costs of the overpass itself. Some lane closures are expected along I-5 during the construction.

“While I-5 is a vital transportation corridor for our region and state, it divides the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, obligating wildlife to make death-defying treks across high-speed traffic,” said Oregon State Rep. Pam Marsh, whose district in the House of Representatives covers southern Jackson County. “This location will reconnect habitat and support biodiversity, while reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions. I can hardly wait for the time that bears, mountain lions and deer are safely traversing well above the freeway.”

The federal portion of the construction funding is through the Department of Transportation’s Federal Highways Administration Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program, which in turn is funded by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Oregon’s U.S. senators, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, pushed for that piece of the funding, along with an earlier $400,000 appropriation that helped pay for the design and engineering phases of the project.

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Scavenger Hunt contestants at SOU Ashland

SOU Scavenger Hunt teaches academic skills to pre-college youth

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Middle and high school students from across the southern Oregon region recently competed in the annual Scavenger Hunt event held by SOU’s Office of Youth Programs. Scavenger Hunt is a three-day academic “hunt,” in which students search for answers to clues provided by the hunt’s director, Jim Impara. Answers to the dozens of questions provided are found through research on the internet or in local community settings.

The following week, the students gather for a one-day adjudication portion on the SOU campus. Students defend their answers during the adjudication, and argue against their competitors’ findings in front of a moderator and adjudication judges. To earn points from their competitors, students must show proof of their evidence through detailed research and proper citations. Students can rebut the findings of opponents in other schools by respectfully articulating why they should earn more points based on their own evidence.

Students participating in the Scavenger Hunt can also improve their positions by using “bring ins” – materials that they bring to the adjudication to present to judges. For example, a recent “bring in” list encouraged students to “Find a dinosaur or extinct creature that lived in this area and make a recreation of it using crafts, food or costumes.” The students were also asked to present information to the judges about the creatures they chose.

The Scavenger Hunt event, held each year in November and December,  benefits students by teaching them to access and critically analyze sources of information, support teamwork in an academic arena, and engage in civil discourse and respectful argumentation skills. The hunt provides a safe place to learn and develop important educational skills that can be used later in life.

A middle school participant wrote that “coming to SOU to defend our answers” was the best part of the program. Another 6th-grader from Hanby Middle School in Gold Hill wrote that they “love the way that Scavenger Hunt not only challenges our thinking skills, but brings students closer together”.

Results
The middle and high school teams with the most points at the end of the competition are declared the winners and awarded a traveling trophy. The program has grown significantly since its inception 42 years ago, with a total of 23 middle and high schools competing this year. Logos Charter School of Medford earned first place for the high school and middle school Division A portions, while Medford’s Oakdale won the middle school Division B competition.

Academic Competitions
Middle and high school students have the opportunity to take part in a number of academic competitions presented by SOU Youth Programs throughout the year. In addition to the Scavenger Hunt, the program offers the Best of the Best Art Show, Brain Bowl and the Southern Oregon Mathletes League (offered through the SOU Mathematics Department).

To learn more about SOU’s Youth Programs competitions, visit youth.sou.edu/academics.

SOU computer scientist Bernadette Boscoe receives Sloan grant

SOU computer scientist receives Sloan grant for “tacit knowledge” research

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(Ashland, Ore.) — Bernadette Boscoe, an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Southern Oregon University, recognizes a shared need in fields as dissimilar as astronomy, environmental science and violin acoustics, and a new grant will pay for research that may benefit those and other academic disciplines.

Boscoe has received a $250,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation that will fund her study of tacit knowledge in research settings – gathering, storing and retrieving the unspoken practices of academic teams that sometimes are lost when a project is disrupted or ends. She will use a Large Language Model (LLM) of artificial intelligence to archive the protocols of scientific groups researching environmental science at SOU, astronomy at UCLA and violin acoustics at Cornell University.

“When students, postdocs, researchers or even professors leave a project or lab, much of the tacit, hands-on training practices are lost, because they are not documented,” Boscoe said. “With the rapid advances of LLMs in AI, we now have more computational capabilities to keep track of tacit knowledge, as well as query it in a natural language form.”

She said that mentorships are the main training method to transfer knowledge within most academic research groups – professors and researchers onboard new members to their groups, and train them to do research.

“AI can be used to have researchers rethink how they onboard newcomers, and consider how important tacit knowledge is in continuing collaborations and research over time,” Boscoe said.

She is using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), an AI framework that pairs an LLM with an information retrieval system to improve accuracy and relevance of resulting data. She is working with SOU computer science graduate Chandler Campbell to build the project’s RAG-LLM tool, called AquiLLM – named after the constellation Aquila.

Boscoe is a computer and information scientist who builds and researches infrastructures and tools to help domain scientists do their work. She earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in painting from the Pratt Institute in New York, an associate degree in computer science from Northampton Community College in Pennsylvania, a master’s degree in mathematics from California State University-Northridge, and a Ph.D. in information science from UCLA.

The research that will be funded over the next year by the Sloan Foundation grant is an extension of her previous work, with the addition of artificial intelligence frameworks.

The grant will fund the development of AquiLLM tools to be used at SOU, UCLA and Cornell, so that each research team can store and query its own tacit knowledge over time. It will also provide funding to students who are participating in the research projects at the three universities.

This material is based upon work supported by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation under Grant No.(APSF grant number G-2024-22720).

The Sloan Foundation is a not-for-profit, mission-driven, grant-making institution dedicated to improving the welfare of all through the advancement of scientific knowledge. It was established in 1934 by Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., then-president and chief executive officer of the General Motors Corporation. It provides grants in four broad areas: direct support of research in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and economics; initiatives to increase the quality, equity, diversity and inclusiveness of scientific institutions and the science workforce; projects to develop or leverage technology to empower research; and efforts to enhance and deepen public engagement with science and scientists.

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candidates forum SOU

SOU class to host candidate forum for local political races

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(Ashland, Ore.) — Political Science students in Southern Oregon University’s upper division course on political campaigns will partner with SOU’s Office of Government Affairs to host a forum for candidates in all contested races for the Ashland City Council and the Jackson County Board of Commissioners.

The forum, which is free and open to the public, will be from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 16, in the Rogue River Room of SOU’s Stevenson Union. Light refreshments will be served.

Questions for the candidates have been generated by students in the political science class, through research on key issues in the community. The goal of the event is to help educate members of the southern Oregon community about issues and areas of civic life that may impact the region in general or local residents individually.

Students in the class hope to give the candidates in local races an opportunity to discuss their positions and explain how they intend to support a good quality of life in Ashland and Jackson County.

“Political Campaigns” (Political Science 324) is a four-credit course that introduces students to modern American elections and the complex processes that influence them. The hybrid in-person and online course, taught by SOU General Counsel Rob Patridge, examines the basic techniques of organizing and implementing a political campaign. It explores the relationships between candidates and the media, the psychology of political oratory, campaign finance, grassroots organizing and use of the Internet.

For more information on the course or on the Oct. 16 candidates forum, contact Patridge at patridger@sou.edu

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virtual reality biology SOU Ashland

Seminar to show benefits of a virtual reality and real-world teaching combination

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(Ashland, Ore.) — Two biologists and academic administrators from Arizona State University will present a new method of teaching biology that combines immersive virtual reality with highly structured classroom activities when the Southern Oregon University Biology Department hosts this year’s inaugural Friday Science Seminar on Oct. 11.

The presentation, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in Room 151 of the SOU Science Building, is free and open to the public. The Friday Science Seminars program is a feature of the SOU School of Science and Business that offers community events on topics ranging from astronomy to computer science to biochemistry.

Michael Angilletta and John VandenBrooks, who both work in ASU’s innovative EdPlus program, will demonstrate in Friday’s presentation how virtual reality can be used to teach about biological concepts and skills, and will show how students taught with the new curriculum have excelled when compared to peers in conventional classrooms. The biology teaching model is called Dreamscape Learn.

“This new curriculum enables students to enter a fictional world, where an artificial intelligence has created an intergalactic wildlife sanctuary to preserve endangered ecosystems from across the galaxy,” promotional material for the Friday Science Seminar says. “In each learning module, students become the heroes of a story – discovering, investigating and solving novel yet realistic problems.”

The storyline continues as students apply their virtual reality experiences to their work in the classroom.

Students who are taught biology concepts at ASU in the Dreamscape Learn format have been almost twice as likely to earn “A” grades on their assignments – scores of 90 to 100 percent – than were other students who were taught the same concepts with traditional teaching methods, according to Angilletta and VandenBrooks. They say their research shows potential benefits of using emerging technologies and a compelling narrative structure to enrich science education.

Angilletta, an associate dean of Learning Innovation in ASU’s EdPlus program, earned his Ph.D. in Ecology & Evolution from the University of Pennsylvania. VandenBrooks, an associate dean of Immersive Learning in the EdPlus program, received his Ph.D. in geology and geophysics from Yale University.

The EdPlus program focuses on the design and delivery of digital teaching and learning models to remove obstacles and improve the likelihood of student success.

SOU assistant professor Jacob Youngblood, Ph.D., is hosting this week’s Friday Science Seminar.

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shanell sanchez SOU Ashland

SOU faculty member publishes book on consequences of discrimination

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(Ashland, Ore.) — Shanell Sanchez, an associate professor in the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department at Southern Oregon University, is co-editor of a new book on the causes and consequences of discrimination against vulnerable populations.

“Exploitation and Criminalization at the Margins: The Hidden Toll on Unvalued Lives” was published by Rowman & Littlefield, a well- respected independent publisher of U.S. academic titles.

The book is co-edited by Sanchez and Taryn VanderPyl, an associate professor of Criminal Justice Sciences at Western Oregon University, with chapters contributed by each of the editors and 18 others. It is divided into four parts – Value and Risk, Lived Experience, Immigration, and Power and Oppression – and a total of 15 chapters.

It examines discrimination against children, women, people of color, immigrants and others who are systemically devalued. The book’s contributors explore bias from institutions and those in positions of authority, in the context of policing and criminal justice, sex trafficking, intimate partner violence, immigration, disability, politics, substance abuse and food insecurity.

Chapter topics range from food apartheid and the criminalization of food insecurity, to stigmatizing and labeling Mexican immigrants, to the normalization of hate.

“VanderPyl and Sanchez’s edited volume brings to the forefront the complex realities for people entangled in the criminal legal system and other systems of injustice,” Kimberly Kras, an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University, said in a review of the book. “Looking behind the scenes on topics including policing and prisons, education, media, immigration, and political power and oppression, the authors illuminate the subtexts of structural oppression.

“By uplifting voices of those with lived experience, this collection reveals the undervalued humanity of people who cause harm and yet are also harmed,” Kras said. “These stories-as-scholarship evoke the empathy and empowerment needed to change our notions about whose life is most valued – and encourages actions to transform the system.”

Sanchez joined the SOU Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice faculty in 2016, and served previously as an assistant professor of criminal justice at Colorado Mesa University, from 2013 to 2016. She received both her Ph.D. and master’s degree in sociology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and her bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from the University of Northern Colorado.

Her teaching and research areas of interest include crime and deviance, social change, comparative crime, social inequality, qualitative methods, latino/a immigration, education and society, mass media, criminology, juvenile justice and delinquency, and minority health and illness.

VanderPyl has served on the faculty at WOU since 2019. She received her Ph.D. in special education and juvenile justice from Claremont Graduate University, her master’s degree in special education from Arizona State University and her bachelor’s degree in business administration from Northern Arizona University. Her research interests include interventions and legislation that pertain to juvenile and adult corrections, and that affect reentry and recidivism.

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SOU receives grant from Ashland Community Health Foundation

SOU receives behavioral health care grant

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Southern Oregon University has been awarded a $110,000 grant from the Ashland Community Health Foundation to fund a faculty position for the 2024-25 academic year in SOU’s master’s degree program in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.

The SOU grant is the first undertaking by the ACHF that will be paid for with a $1 million grant that the nonprofit community health organization received from CareOregon. The grant to ACHF is intended to be used over the next three years to help boost the Rogue Valley’s behavioral health care workforce.

In addition to the $110,000 grant that will fund the SOU faculty position, the ACHF money will be used on paid internships for local behavioral health counseling students, scholarships for second-year students in counseling programs, continuing education for those who offer peer support in behavioral health settings and an endowment to support future behavioral health workforce needs. All of the grant-funded efforts are being administered in partnership with Jackson Care Connect, and are meant to help those serving low-income and vulnerable populations, such as Medicaid clients.

The CareOregon grant to ACHF is in response to the 2023 Oregon Health Care Workforce Needs Assessment, in which the Oregon Health Policy Board and Oregon Health Authority prioritized expansion of the behavioral health care workforce

SOU’s master’s degree program in Clinical Mental Health Counseling prepares its students to serve as behavioral health counselors in both public and private settings. The accredited program, which meets both state and federal standards, offers small classes, supportive student-faculty connections and hands-on, experiential learning opportunities.

The ACHF has administered more than $1.5 million in scholarships for nursing and allied health students during its 22-year history. The 501(c)(3) organization promotes innovative and equitable approaches to community health and wellness in Ashland and the Rogue Valley.

Sister institutions SOU and Universidad de Guanajuato renewed their collaborative relationship

SOU and Mexican sister institution establish new agreement

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(Ashland, Ore.) — The leaders of Southern Oregon University and its Mexican sister institution, the Universidad de Guanajuato, officially renewed the schools’ 55-year relationship on Wednesday by pledging in a new memorandum of understanding to “strengthen institutional collaboration in the areas of teaching, research and extension.”

The new agreement – which builds upon a commitment the two universities made to each other during their 50th anniversary celebration in 2019 – was reached as a delegation from SOU visited Guanajuato this week. The memorandum was signed by SOU President Rick Bailey and UG Rector General Claudia Susana Gómez López, whose position is equivalent to that of the president at a U.S. university.

“All of us at Southern Oregon University are grateful to President Claudia Susana Gómez López and her wonderful team at the University of Guanajuato for celebrating and continuing this beautiful 55-year partnership,” President Bailey said. “We look forward to even more opportunities for our students, faculty and staff to collaborate in a spirit of friendship, partnership and love.”

More than 1,000 students, faculty members and others have participated in a variety of exchange programs between the two universities and the cities of Ashland and Guanajuato, which are sister cities.

The cooperative link between the two cities and the two universities is unique. Guanajuato is closer in size to Eugene than to Ashland, and Universidad de Guanajuato – which is larger than any university in Oregon – has sister university relationships with more than 300 other institutions worldwide. But the Ashland-Guanajuato relationships – between both the cities and universities – were the first for each entity.

Some families from the Mexican city have been involved in the relationships with Ashland and SOU for three generations, and more than 80 marriages have united partners from Ashland and Guanajuato.

The new memorandum of understanding commits the two universities to maintain a close working relationship:

“Universidad de Guanajuato and Southern Oregon University express their intention to strengthen institutional collaboration in the areas of teaching, research and extension, through activities or projects that will be formalized by specific agreements, within the framework of the attributions conferred by their regulations.”

Contingents of academic and administrative leaders of the two universities regularly visit the other’s campus, and collaborative programs benefit the students of each. One current example is the Global Innovation Scholars program – a collaboration on multicultural business development that grew out of an initiative from the U.S. Department of State. The program, which began in 2022, includes online coursework for participating students from the two schools during each year’s winter and spring terms, and a visit to each other’s communities to assess and create development plans for local businesses or organizations.

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SOU's Kelly Szott awarded post-doc fellowship

SOU faculty member earns research fellowship on substance abuse

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(Ashland, Ore.) — Kelly Szott, an associate professor of sociology at Southern Oregon University, has been awarded a post-doctoral fellowship at New York University’s Rory Meyers College of Nursing to study drug use and addiction issues during her sabbatical year at SOU. The fellowship is funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Her 12-month fellowship through NYU’s Behavioral Sciences Training in Substance Abuse Research program began June 30 and will be her first step in studying the effects of climate change on drug use, drug markets and treatment.

“My main aim with this fellowship is to work toward developing a grant proposal for a research project that examines the impacts of climate instability (including wildfires, drought and smoke) on drug use risks, such as overdose,” Szott said.

She is one of 16 pre- and post-doctoral researchers from around the country who were awarded fellowships in the NYU program to study a variety of drug use and abuse issues ranging from drugs among college students to politics in drug policy. The fellows meet each Monday to collaboratively review their work, listen to speakers and participate in training.

The Behavioral Sciences Training in Drug Abuse Research program at NYU has been funded by the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse since 1984, making it the largest and oldest such training program. It awards fellowships to researchers from a variety of academic disciplines, including public health, social work, psychology, criminal justice, sociology and nursing.

Szott is a medical sociologist who uses qualitative methods to study drug use and harm-reduction responses. She received her bachelor’s degree in social science from the University of Michigan, and her master’s degree and Ph.D. in sociology from Syracuse University.

Her past research has focused on fentanyl use and harm-reduction responses in rural contexts. Her more recent research has examined wildfire’s impacts on the health and social support networks of rural, older adults – which she is now expanding to the impacts of climate crisis events on drug use. Szott’s research has appeared in publications including the monthly International Journal of Drug Policy, and the Critical Public Health and Human Organization quarterly journals.

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Travis Campbell's research on family support for transgender youth

SOU economist’s research paper stresses importance of family support for trans youth

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(Ashland, Ore.) — SOU economist Travis Campbell is the lead author of a research paper that highlights the critical role of family support during the “identity development” of transgender youth. The study was published in this month’s issue of JAMA Pediatrics, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Medical Association.

The paper, “Mental Health of Transgender Youth Following Gender Identity Milestones by Level of Family Support,” concludes that transgender youth who live in unsupportive families are at significantly increased risk of suicide attempts and running away from home when they initiate any of four gender identity milestones: feeling that their gender is different, thinking of themselves as transgender, telling others that they are transgender and living full-time in their gender identity. By contrast, for those who live in supportive families, “there were no statistically significant associations between gender identity milestones and adverse mental health outcomes,” the research found.

In their study, Campbell and his co-authors – Yana Rodgers, a professor in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University; Samuel Mann an associate economist at RAND Corporation; and Nathaniel Tran, an incoming assistant professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois, Chicago – analyzed data from the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, the largest-ever assessment of transgender people with more than 27,700 respondents across the U.S. The collaborating authors analyzed the responses of 18,303 of those survey respondents, all of whom were transgender adults who had initiated at least one gender identity milestone between the ages of 4 and 18 years.

“These results demonstrate that without a supportive family environment, gender identity development increases the risk of transgender youth attempting suicide or running away from home,” the paper in this month’s JAMA Pediatrics said. “Social services and community resources to establish supportive relationships between transgender children and their parents are essential.”

Gender identity milestones are common and important steps in identity development for transgender youth, the paper said, and “may result in changes in internalized and externalized stress because of exclusion, rejection and violence,” which can contribute to “gender dysphoria” – a sense of distress for those who feel their assigned sex at birth does not match their gender identity. But the authors also said that achieving those milestones “is one way transgender people achieve self-actualization.”

The paper said the mental health of transgender people can improve with medical procedures that reduce gender dysphoria and interventions that lessen any gender-related stigma they may experience. On the other hand, limiting the options of transgender people can negatively affect them, the authors said.

“Antitransgender legislation is associated with worsening mental health outcomes among gender minority individuals, which is of particular note given the recent rise in antitransgender legislation, including bills that establish criminal charges for providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth,” the paper said, citing new laws in Oklahoma and Wyoming that ban gender-affirming care for minors.

Campbell joined the SOU Economics faculty as an assistant professor after earning his Ph.D. in economics in 2022 from the University of Massachusetts. His research applies microeconomics to social justice issues, including economic inequalities based on race, gender and sexuality. His classes at SOU include Micro and Macroeconomics, Quantitative Methods and Application, Healthcare Economics, Labor Economics and Gender Issues in Economics.

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