Distinguished Alumni Award winner Fred Mossler and three others to be honored

SOU Distinguished Alumni Award recipients to be recognized

An entrepreneur and former Zappos executive, a chemist working toward a cure for Duchene muscular dystrophy, a conservation and youth program leader, and the architect of an award-winning band program will be honored Thursday during a Homecoming Weekend luncheon to recognize Southern Oregon University’s annual Distinguished Alumni Award winners.

Fred Mossler, who earned his bachelor’s degree from SOU in 1990 and helped lead upstart online retailer Zappos to prominence, will receive this year’s Distinguished Alumni Award and Susan Ramos-Hunter, Ph.D., who earned her SOU bachelor’s degree in 2010, will receive the Distinguished Young Alumni Award.

This year’s Stan Smith Alumni Service Award will go to Greg Wolley, who received his master’s degree in environmental education at SOU in 1981 before embarking on a career in conservation management with a focus on opportunities for youth and people of color. The Excellence in Education award will be presented to Scott Kneff, who earned his bachelor’s degree in music performance at SOU in 1999; he has nearly tripled band participation in the Southern California community of Santa Paula since 2008 and built the program into a consistent award-winner.

The four award recipients will be honored Thursday at an 11:30 a.m. luncheon at the Ashland Springs Hotel that launches this year’s Homecoming Weekend. The award luncheon is by invitation-only, due to COVID-19 protocols.

Mossler worked his way through SOU at a local shoe store and as a resident advisor in the dorms. He went to work for Nordstrom after graduation, first in Seattle and then San Francisco – which is where he was recruited in 1999 by Nick Swinmurn to lead customer service and day-to-day operations at a newly-launched online shoe retailer – which became Zappos.com. The company had more than $1 billion in sales when it was acquired 10 years later by Amazon. Mossler left the company in 2016 to focus on other entrepreneurial and philanthropic ventures – from revitalizing downtown Las Vegas to launching après ski-inspired shoe brand Ross & Snow and Vegas-based restaurant chain Nacho Daddy, which donates a portion of every purchase to children in need.

Ramos-Hunter, originally from northern California, transferred to SOU from Rogue Community College to study psychology and was mentored by faculty member Mark Krause – who recommended the Ronald E. McNair Achievement Program for potential graduate students. She graduated as a McNair Scholar, majoring in psychology with a chemistry minor, then earned her master’s degree and doctorate in chemistry from Vanderbilt University. She is now a senior scientist at Entrada Therapeutics in Boston, and part of a team synthesizing cutting edge bio-therapeutics and working toward a cure for Duchene Muscular Dystrophy.

Wolley came to SOU to earn his master’s degree in environmental education after receiving his undergraduate degree from University of California, Berkeley. The local beauty combined with energetic, thoughtful teaching helped him lay the personal and academic foundation for a career that would include management roles with the Nature Conservancy, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, Mt. Hood National Forest, the city of Portland and TriMet. His volunteer service includes co-founding the African American Outdoor Association and membership on the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission.

Kneff visited SOU as a senior in high school and fell in love with the university and the Ashland community. He attended community college in California for two years, then found his way back to SOU to complete his bachelor’s degree in the music program, participating in the university’s jazz band, symphonic band, saxophone quartet and the Raider Band. He then returned to Southern California to earn a bachelor’s degree in history, his teaching credentials and an eventual master’s degree. His teaching career began with stints in Los Angeles and Bakersfield, California, before he returned to Ventura County, where he grew up. Isbell School in Santa Paula had just 57 band students spread through three classes when he began in 2007; within 12 years the program had 175 students reached consistent “superior” ratings in regional band and orchestra competitions.

Bobby Arellano elected Oregon Humanities chair

SOU creative arts professor elected chair of Oregon Humanities board

(Ashland, Ore.) — Robert Arellano, a professor in the Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University, was elected board chair for Oregon Humanities on Oct. 16. As the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Oregon Humanities’ mission “connects people and communities through conversation, storytelling and participatory programs to inspire understanding and collaborative change.”

The nonprofit sponsors hundreds of community forums all over Oregon in an average year. Last year, the organization rapidly adapted its “Consider This” conversation series to a remote format called “Connect in Place,” drawing hundreds of online participants from across the state.

“In the summer of 2019, I got to moderate an in-person conversation at Grizzly Peak Winery for Oregon Humanities in partnership with SOU that brought Richard Blanco, President Obama’s inaugural poet laureate, to Ashland,” Arellano said. “Over 200 southern Oregonians came out to connect with this renowned poet and teacher.”

Bobby, as he’s known to his students and coworkers, will chair a board of 22 volunteer members for the next two years. Beginning in 2016, he served previous terms as chair of two Oregon Humanities subcommittees – programs and communications.

Arellano is a founding director of SOU’s Emerging Media and Digital Arts program, and teaches courses in design, production and writing. He has done pioneering work in electronic publishing, and has published graphic-novel editions and five other novels. He received both his bachelor’s degree and master of fine arts degree from Brown University.

“I would not have been able to take on a leadership role at Oregon Humanities without the unequivocal support of my division director, David Humphrey, and SOU Provost Sue Walsh, who have also both participated in events we’ve hosted here in the Rogue Valley,” Arellano said.

More ways to get involved with Oregon Humanities include free college-credit classes through the Humanity in Perspective program, summer youth courses and award-winning publications, podcasts, and video productions. The organization also offers free subscriptions to its Oregon Humanities Magazine.

“If there’s one thing you do to learn more about Oregon Humanities, take a minute to subscribe to our magazine,” Arellano said. “We publish stories and photos by people from right here in our community, and it’s delivered free, three times a year to anyone with an Oregon mailing address. It’s just one more benefit to being an Oregonian.”

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About Southern Oregon University
Southern Oregon University is a medium-sized campus that provides comprehensive educational opportunities with a strong focus on student success and intellectual creativity. Located in vibrant Ashland, Oregon, SOU remains committed to diversity and inclusion for all students on its environmentally sustainable campus. Connected learning programs taught by a host of exceptional faculty provide quality, innovative experiences for students. Visit sou.edu.

Toya Cooper is SOU's first-ever Vice President for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

SOU hires its first vice president for equity, diversity and inclusion

(Ashland, Ore.) — Toya Cooper, an attorney who has spent almost 20 years addressing diversity in higher education, has accepted an offer to become Southern Oregon University’s first vice president for equity, diversity and inclusion. She will start work with the university Nov. 15

“I think SOU is ready to engage the questions of equity, diversity and inclusion that this moment in our nation’s history brings to bear, and to model for students what it means to respond effectively to them,” Cooper said.

“I’m excited to learn more about the good EDI-related work already underway at SOU, the OSF, city council and chamber of commerce, and eager to discover what partnerships are to be had among us for the greatest positive impact.”

SOU has a long history of providing a welcoming atmosphere for all students and employees, and has had an equity, diversity and inclusion professional on its leadership team for many years. A decision was made to elevate the position to the vice president level after the most recent person in that role resigned a year and a half ago. A three-person group of SOU administrators has served as the university’s EDI Leadership Team during the interim.

“Our candidates for this new position at SOU were exceptional, and Toya rose to the top,” SOU President Linda Schott said. “She brings a wealth of experience to the job, along with a remarkable ability to collaborate and build teams. I am confident that all members of our campus community will be well-served by her efforts.”

Cooper most recently served for a year as director of equity, inclusion and compliance at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York. She previously worked for 18 years at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California – as special assistant to the president for legal affairs and associate director of multicultural programs during her first year, and then as college counsel and special assistant to the provost for diversity initiatives. She has authored and presented a variety of diversity trainings and talks.

She received her bachelor’s degree in political science from Westmont College and her law degree from the Willamette University College of Law in Salem. She worked as a law clerk for the Marion County District Attorney’s office while in law school, and said she welcomes the opportunity for a return to Oregon.

“I called Salem home for three years,” Cooper said. “I was drawn by and fell in love with its natural beauty, which Ashland certainly does not lack.

“In addition to SOU’s mission, values and vision, that beauty certainly serves as a draw for me.”

SOU’s vice president for equity, diversity and inclusion will oversee fairness and equal opportunity efforts at all levels of campus, and will serve as the university’s point person on those matters throughout the region and the state. It is a key leadership position that works closely with the university president and serves on the president’s cabinet.

The interim Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Team is made up of Kylan de Vries, an associate professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies; Jonathan Chavez-Baez, Assistant Director for Latino/a/x Programs & Outreach; and Patricia Syquia McCarthy, a contracts administrative officer and risk manager in the SOU Service Center.

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SOU EcoAdventure students work on Bear Creek restoration

SOU’s EcoAdventure experience gets local in response to fire

(Ashland, Ore.) — Past versions of Southern Oregon University’s “EcoAdventure” courses have taken students to northern California’s Lassen and Yosemite national parks, Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and Costa Rica. But last year’s Almeda Fire brought a huge ecological test almost to SOU’s doorstep, and EcoAdventure faculty and students jumped on the opportunity to play a role in assessing and restoring a charred Bear Creek Greenway between Ashland and Medford.

Each year’s EcoAdventure courses are intended to connect students with real-world environmental issues and create an atmosphere of investigation and problem-solving.

“For the first few months after the Almeda fire, I was working at a local hotel that was housing victims of the fire,” said Ethan Robison, a student in last spring’s EcoAdventure fire restoration course through SOU’s Environmental Science and Policy Program. “Each of the 50 families staying there had their own journey towards recovery and I was proud to be a small part of that process.

“When I started at SOU and found out about this class, I saw it as an opportunity to learn about the impacts of the fire on our local ecosystem.”

The spring EcoAdventure class drew 18 students, and they chose Bear Creek restoration work as their service learning project. The course covered fire regimes and climate change in the Rogue Valley, the history of Bear Creek and the U.S. Clean Water Act, and a talk, tour and native planting day in Phoenix led by a the Rogue River Watershed Council.

A separate effort by four Environmental Science capstone students looked at Bear Creek water quality following the Almeda fire. Those students presented data to the EcoAdventure class about erosion, dissolved oxygen, turbidity and other measures of water quality.

Environmental Science and Policy instructor Leslie Eldridge, who taught the Bear Creek EcoAdventure course, said many of the students felt a sense of revival after experiencing or hearing extensively about the fire, and then studying both its environmental causes and the steps to remediation. The day of planting native species along the creek was especially powerful.

“It was a beautiful example of ecosystem reset and opportunity to bring Bear Creek and the Greenway to a new condition that may improve ecological health and social connectivity between Ashland, Talent, Phoenix and Medford,” said Eldridge, who initiated the EcoAdventure water restoration course ­– the real-world element in a broader Environmental Science and Policy curriculum.

“The idea is to get students working hands-on and experiencing the environments and environmental challenges we discuss in our courses,” said Vincent Smith, an associate professor of environmental science and policy, and director of the Division of Business, Communication and the Environment.

“Certainly, we have theory-based courses in these areas including restoration ecology, environmental field methods, water resources and hydrology, but in each of these cases, the idea is to prepare students to address pressing needs,” Smith said. “The Bear Creek Greenway is an example of one of those pressing needs.”

Capstone students in Environmental Science and Policy – those who are nearing graduation – each choose a capstone project that is intended to pull together much of what they have learned in the program. Capstone advisor John Gutrich offered last year’s students a variety of options, ranging from bark beetle mitigation in the Ashland Watershed to impacts of climate change on LatinX communities of southern Oregon. Four of the students chose to focus on the Almeda fire’s impact on Bear Creek, and worked together to produce a series of reports on water quality issues that were then shared with the agencies spearheading restoration efforts.

Both the EcoAdventure courses and capstone projects vary from term to term, but Smith said it’s likely the Environmental Science and Policy program’s collaborations on the restoration of Bear Creek will continue.

“I can’t predict what students will select to work on next year, but I’d be surprised if at least one group doesn’t continue work on restoration work from the fire,” he said.

Robison, the student who was drawn to last spring’s EcoAdventure course after first working to help house victims of the fire, said the restoration element of the project was a healing experience.

“Essentially, I wanted to see some physical evidence of recovery from the fire, just to prove to myself that it was possible,” he said. “Seeing the effort people put into repairing the ecosystem after the devastation helped me look past some of the pain I had seen and internalized.”

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SOU's Presidential Search Committee will conduct interviews in October

SOU presidential search entering interview phase

The Presidential Search Committee of the SOU Board of Trustees will begin first-round interviews by the start of October with candidates to become the university’s next president, and plans to select and interview finalists for the position by the end of October. SOU President Linda Schott announced in April that she will retire by the end of this year.

“We have enjoyed high levels of engagement every step of the way, and I am pleased to report that we received more than 100 applicants expressing their interest in becoming SOU’s next president,” Danny Santos, the search committee chair and Board of Trustees vice chair, said this week in a message to campus.

“This is extraordinary and could not have been accomplished without the help of every person on campus who has engaged in the search process, in ways both big and small,” Santos said.

The search committee already has narrowed the list of applicants to 12 top candidates who will be included in first-round interviews over the coming days. The committee’s tentative schedule calls for three to five finalists to be interviewed on-campus – unless COVID-19 conditions require remote or hybrid options – the weeks of October 11, 18 and 25. Each finalist will be interviewed over two days in a process that will enable participation by various segments of the campus community, including students, faculty and staff.

“We are unable to announce the exact dates for these visits until we know who the finalists will be and can confirm their plans for travel to southern Oregon,” Santos said. “We will notify the entire campus and members of the public of specific details when more information is available.

“I urge members of the campus community to be as flexible as possible with their schedules throughout the period in October when finalists will visit campus,” he said. “Your engagement and feedback will be of tremendous value in the decision-making process, for SOU and the candidates.”

The SOU Board of Trustees selected Parker Executive Search in May to help identify and recruit candidates for the university’s presidency, and appointed a diverse, 18-member Presidential Search Committee composed of five trustees, three students, three faculty members, three staff members, three community members and one Oregon university president. Parker is a firm that specializes in higher education presidential searches.

Santos said the university is committed to making the interview and hiring processes as inclusive and transparent as possible, whether it occurs fully on campus or COVID restrictions require other approaches. The identities of finalists will be made public and opportunities for interactions with them will exist regardless of the interview formats. Santos emphasized that a priority is to ensure the safety of SOU’s campus community and all candidates for the position.

The latest information on the presidential search can be found at sou.edu/presidentialsearch.

solar arrays installed at The Farm at SOU

Solar arrays pop up at The Farm at SOU

(Ashland, Ore.) — The Farm at SOU is sprouting solar arrays this month, with two new and innovative projects taking shape over the past week. The first, mounted on The Farm’s storage building, is student-funded and the second, installed atop 20-foot poles, was financed by a private investor.

“It is a coincidence that these projects happened within a few days of each other, but it is also indicative of our commitment to sustainability and environmental stewardship,” said Rebecca Walker, SOU’s sustainability and recycling manager. “These are exciting projects that were both innovatively funded and will generate renewable electricity for the university and our community, and provide educational and other benefits to our students.”

The storage building project, installed early last week by Ashland-based True South Solar has been funded by a Renewable Energy Development Grant from Oregon Department of Energy and the SOU Green Fund. The SOU Green Fund comes from a “Green Tag” fee of $13 per student each term and is overseen by the Environmental Affairs Committee of the Associated Students of SOU. The student Green Fund will receive annual payments based on the generation of the electricity from the storage building, through a power purchase agreement with the university. The Green Fund allows the university’s student government to invest in sustainability projects at SOU, such as renewable energy generation on campus and offsetting SOU’s water usage.

That new solar array will produce 15.48 kilowatts of electricity.

The second array, installed last Friday by Ashland’s STracker Solar, is a community project that employs dual-axis tracking technology – the solar panels follow the path of the sun throughout the day, maximizing efficiency and output. The three elevated panels are adjacent to three existing panels on the neighboring ScienceWorks property – all of them owned by Abbott’s Development.

Abbott’s is owned by Brad Roupp of Ashland, and operates the Abbott’s Cottages vacation rentals. Abbott’s is considered a tax equity investor, leasing property for the new array from SOU and using the city of Ashland’s virtual net metering system to allocate the power it generates to the company’s rental properties. SOU receives an annual lease payment, all renewable energy credits related to the project and the opportunity to use the solar facility for educational and research purposes.

The six solar trackers at Abbott’s installations at The Farm and ScienceWorks will produce a combined 160 megawatt hours of electricity per year.

“The Farm at SOU is a center for sustainability,” said Vincent Smith, director of The Farm at SOU and of the university’s Division of Business, Communication and the Environment.

“These two new projects will not only offset all of our energy use, but will provide opportunities for student and faculty research,” Smith said.

SOU has a total of eight other solar arrays on seven buildings on the Ashland campus and one at the Higher Education Center in Medford. Output from SOU’s solar facilities is typically fed back into the electrical grid and credited to SOU’s accounts, reducing the university’s utility bills.

SOU’s first solar installation was a 24-panel, 6-kilowatt array that was placed on Hannon Library in 2000 and it still generating electricity.

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SOU named Tree Campus USA

SOU recognized as Tree Campus USA

(Ashland, Ore.) — Southern Oregon University was recognized this month as a Tree Campus USA for the seventh consecutive year.

Tree Campus USA, an Arbor Day Foundation program started in 2008, honors higher education institutions and their leaders for promoting healthy trees and engaging students and staff in the spirit of conservation. SOU is one of 392 U.S. colleges and universities to receive the most recent recognition and one of seven in Oregon.

“Over the past year, many have been reminded of the importance of nature to our physical and mental health,” Dan Lambe, president of the Arbor Day Foundation, wrote in a letter to SOU President Linda Schott.

“Your campus trees provide spaces of refuge and reflection to students, staff, faculty and the community,” Lambe said.

SOU earned the Tree Campus designation by fulfilling the program’s five core standards for effective campus forest management: a regular observance of Arbor Day, sponsorship of student service-learning projects and establishment of a tree advisory committee, a campus tree-care plan and dedicated annual expenditures for the campus tree program.

The Tree Campus program for higher education institutions has spawned two similar programs – Tree Campus K-12 and Tree Campus Healthcare – and the Arbor Day Foundation president called upon recognized colleges and universities to lead by example in their areas.

“We hope your example inspires collaboration,” Lambe said.

SOU’s Arbor Day observance is run by the Landscape Services Department, which organized volunteers to plant 137 large trees and 24,000 plants around campus between 2014 and 2016,.

All trees planted at SOU’s Arbor Day celebrations are donated by Plant Oregon, a Talent nursery. SOU offers free t-shirts and lunches to its Arbor Day volunteers. Arbor Day is celebrated each year on the last Friday of April.

The Arbor Day Foundation is a million-member, nonprofit conservation and education organization with the mission of inspiring people to plant, nurture and celebrate trees. Tree Campus USA’s colleges donate money to support the Arbor Day Foundation’s Time for Trees initiative, which strives to plant 100 million trees in forests and communities by 2022.

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SOU emeritus professor Mike Rousell has a new book about surprise

Retired SOU professor examines surprise in new book

(Ashland, Ore.) — Mike Rousell, a psychologist and emeritus professor of education at SOU, has a new book that should surprise no one who has followed his career. “The Power of Surprise,” which will be released Sept. 15 by Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, is the result of more than 30 years of researching life-altering events and the surprises that typically triggered them.

“One day, while pouring over my vast collection of transformative stories, looking for patterns, I experienced a revelation: A surprise sparked most of these events,” Rousell said. “Here’s the key: Moments that change us happen to us, not by us, during a surprise event.”

He cites the example of “Cindy,” a student who tended to be among the last to finish tests, and a librarian who complimented that slowness as “attentive deliberation that shows grit.”

“The comment surprised Cindy, giving her a burst of the motivator neurotransmitter dopamine and creating a window for belief formation,” Rousell said. “Now, when Cindy writes tests, her instincts prompt her to go slowly and feel proud because it confirms her grit.”

The new book – which can already be ordered on Amazon – examines the science of surprise, how it can result in spontaneous personal and societal changes, and how it is used strategically by comedians, magicians, filmmakers, writers and others. Rousell looks at how surprise can open the door for a change in belief even without conscious awareness and how it can be tapped to enrich lives, maximize influence and create positive mindsets.

He said the book is intended for a general audience – parents, teachers, coaches, supervisors, healthcare providers and others who may want to draw upon the positive influences of surprise.

Rousell said that surprise events produce a jolt of dopamine, a chemical that enables the transmission of signals among the brain’s nerve cells.

“I found that big surprises in our evolutionary past often indicated momentous opportunity or danger,” he said. “Thinking slowed reaction time. Those that stopped to think during critical moments often perished, along with the propensity to ponder when surprised. Evolution favored those who learned instantly. As a result, we developed a disposition to bypass thinking and learn instantly.”

Rousell was an associate professor of education at SOU for about 12 years before his retirement in March 2020. His previous publications include the 2007 book, “Sudden Influence: How Spontaneous Events Shape Our Lives.” A video of his 12-minute presentation about surprise at a 2019 TEDx Talks event in Salem drew thousands of views on YouTube.

He received his bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Alberta, and his master of education and doctorate from the University of Oregon. He taught elementary, middle and high school in Edmonton, Alberta, before joining the School of Education at SOU, and also has worked in private practice and school counseling as a certified psychologist.

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SOU gets perfect score from Campus Pride

SOU scores a perfect 5 with Campus Pride

(Ashland, Ore.) — Southern Oregon University has been recognized for the ninth year in a row as one of the nation’s top 30, “Best of the Best” LGBTQ-friendly colleges and universities by Campus Pride, a nonprofit that supports and improves campus life for LGBTQ people on campuses nationwide.

SOU earned five out of five stars overall on the Campus Pride Index, which ranks universities in each of eight categories: policy inclusion, support and institutional commitment, academic life, student life, housing and residence life, campus safety, counseling and health, and recruitment and retention efforts. SOU drew five-star rankings in six of the categories and four-and-a-half stars in the other two.

The Campus Pride recognition is meaningful for prospective and current LGBTQ students, particularly during a period of political polarization and pandemic-related isolation.

“In order to be in the ‘Best of the Best’ listing, an institution had to score the highest percentages in the LGBTQ-friendly benchmarks for policies, programs and practices,” Campus Pride said on the list’s website.

SOU was also ranked 21st among the 50 best colleges for LGBTQ students for the second year in a row by the online publication College Choice, which released its 2021 rankings in July.

The Campus Pride “Best of the Best” list of the top 30 LGBTQ-friendly colleges and universities in the U.S. included six in the West region and just two in Oregon – SOU and the University of Oregon.

SOU addresses sexual orientation and gender identity in the university’s non-discrimination policy and offers LGBTQ-themed housing. Advocacy for gender and sexuality justice is available via the Social Justice and Equity Center, and the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program provides LGBTQ-related academic offerings. SOU also participates in LGBTQ-specific college fairs and its counseling and health staff provide queer- and trans-oriented services.

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SOU's Chelsea Rose on National Geographic series

SOU archaeologist returns to TV for National Geographic series

(Ashland, Ore.) — Southern Oregon University research archaeologist Chelsea Rose – who was on the cast of a 2013-14 archaeology series on Oregon Public Broadcasting and featured in a 2017 book intended to pique girls’ interest in archaeology – returned to TV screens this summer as host of a show about Wild West history for the National Geographic Channel.

Rose appears on an episode in season four of the series “Drain The Oceans,” an Australian and British documentary series whose previous seasons have focused on underwater archaeology. The current season shifts to terrestrial archaeology, with an emphasis on the West.

Rose’s episode – whose U.S. premiere was Aug. 2 on the National Geographic Channel – features segments on the ghost town of Bodie, California, 19th century steamboat wrecks and the Little Bighorn battleground.

“This show has a good reputation for portraying archaeology in an accurate manner, so when colleagues who had been on previous seasons suggested me as an expert contributor for the Wild West episodes, I was happy to comply,” Rose said. “Plus, Bodie has been on my bucket list since I was a kid!”

Bodie, a 19th century gold-mining town, is now a California State Historic Park and well-known tourist attraction near the Nevada border. The “Drain The Oceans” producers worked with park staff and archaeologists to reveal the site’s hidden stories, including the role of women and the town’s Chinese residents.

“Since so much of the town is preserved, it is an amazing dataset that relates to many of the archaeological projects we work on at the SOU Laboratory of Anthropology (SOULA),” Rose said.

“Being able to see the artifacts and buildings associated with 19th century gold mining, as part of a relatively complete landscape, helped me to better understand how these resources would have been experienced by Oregonians.”

Much of Rose’s archaeological work involves using artifacts to reconstruct the lives of Chinese immigrants in the Western gold-mining and railroad-building communities of the 1800s.

Rose’s first stint on an archaeology-based television series was for both seasons of the OPB national series “Time Team America,” which was produced in Oregon but shot on locations throughout the U.S. She was one of six scientists who teamed with the show’s host to uncover historical secrets that had been buried underground.

She was one of three U.S. archaeologists who were featured in the 2017 book, “Archaeology: Cool Women Who Dig,” by California author Anita Yasuda. The book, which is available to order on Amazon.com, was intended to give 9- to 12-year-old girls a peek at work and life in the field of archaeology.

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