(Ashland, Ore.) – The Music program of the Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University presents “Seasons Greetings,” a collection of holiday favorites performed by the SOU Wind Ensemble on Thursday, December 4 at 7:30 p.m. in the SOU Music Recital Hall.
This concert showcases the large wind ensemble at Southern Oregon University, under the direction of Dr. Cynthia Hutton. The SOU Wind Ensemble will perform “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” with Sarah Wright, a Theatre Arts major, narrating the well-known poem. The concert includes selections from the Renaissance composition “Danserye” and “Patapan,” a traditional carol; Russian Christmas Music; selections from “The Nutcracker;” and “Sleigh Ride.” The concert also features the Brass Consort and Siskiyou Saxophone Orchestra.
“All who enjoy band music with a holiday twist will enjoy this concert,” said Hutton. “I especially encourage all members of our community bands and folks who support the SOU wind and percussion collaborations to attend this concert.”
The SOU Wind Ensemble has approximately 45 members and is opened to talented student musicians from all campus disciplines. It is dedicated to the study of a diverse repertoire for winds and percussion from masterworks to recent commissions of new compositions. The SOU Wind Ensemble has performed for the Oregon State Music Educators Association Conference, the Lawrence R. Sutherland Intercollegiate Wind Band Festival, the College Band Director Regional Conference and the Western International Band Conference.

Hutton is Associate Professor of Music at Southern Oregon University. She teaches classes in conducting, music theory, aural skills, brass methods and instrumental music education. In addition to her role at SOU, Dr. Hutton is the Music Director of the Youth Symphony of Southern Oregon and has served as Conductor of Youth Symphony and Youth Orchestra since 1995. She has served on the boards of the Oregon Music Educators Association and College Band Directors National Association, Northwest Division. As a horn artist, Dr. Hutton is a member of the Rogue Valley Symphony and the RVSO Brass Quintet.
Tickets are $10 general admission, $5 for senior citizens and free to full-time students. The Performing Arts Box Office is located in the Music Recital Hall lobby. Box office hours are noon to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and two hours prior to each performance. Tickets can be purchased with a credit card over the phone by calling 541-552-6348 or online at sou.edu/performingarts. Contact the box office for discounts offered to SOU alumni, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute participants and SNAP/Oregon Trail cardholders.
About Southern Oregon University
Southern Oregon University provides outstanding student experiences, valued degrees, and successful graduates. SOU is known for excellence in faculty, intellectual creativity and rigor, quality and innovation in connected learning programs, and the educational benefits of its unique geographic location. SOU was the first university in Oregon—and one of the first in the nation—to offset 100 percent of its energy use with clean, renewable power, and it is the first university in the nation to balance 100 percent of its water consumption. Visit sou.edu.
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November 6, 2014
(Ashland, Ore.) — Many fire scientists would like Smokey Bear to hang up his prevention motto in favor of tools like thinning and prescribed burns. These tools can manage the severity of wildfires while allowing them to play their natural role in certain ecosystems.
A new international research review, led by Max Moritz, an associate at UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), and Southern Oregon University research ecologist Dennis Odion (also an associate project scientist at UCSB’s Earth Research Institute) says the debate over fuel-reduction techniques is only a small part of a much larger fire problem that makes society increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic losses unless it changes its fundamental approach from fighting fire to coexisting with fire as a natural process. The findings appeared this week in the journal Nature.
“We don’t try to ‘fight’ earthquakes — we anticipate them in the way we plan communities, build buildings and prepare for emergencies,” said Moritz, also a cooperative extension specialist in fire at UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources. “We don’t think that way about fire, but our review indicates that we should. Human losses will only be mitigated when land-use planning takes fire hazards into account in the same manner as other natural hazards such as floods, hurricanes and earthquakes.”
The review examines research findings from three continents and from both the natural and social sciences. The authors conclude that government-sponsored firefighting and land-use policies actually incentivize development on inherently hazardous landscapes, amplifying human losses over time.
The analysis examined different kinds of natural fires, what drives them in various ecosystems, the ways public response to fire can differ and the critical interface zones between built communities and natural landscapes. The authors found infinite variations of how these factors can come together.
“It quickly became clear that generic one-size-fits-all solutions to wildfire problems do not exist,” Moritz said. “Fuel reduction may be a useful strategy for specific places like California’s dry conifer forests, but when we zoomed out and looked at fire-prone regions throughout the western United States, Australia and the Mediterranean basin, we realized that over vast parts of the world, a much more nuanced strategy of planning for coexistence with fire is needed.”
The authors recommend prioritizing location-specific approaches to improve development and safety in fire-prone areas, including adopting land-use regulations and zoning guidelines such as restricting development in the most fire-prone areas, and building codes that require fire-resistant construction to match local hazard levels and encourage retrofits to existing ignition-prone homes.
The paper also suggests implementing locally appropriate vegetation management strategies around structures and neighborhoods; evaluating evacuation planning and warning systems, including understanding situations in which mandatory evacuations are or are not effective; and developing household and community plans for how to survive stay-and-defend situations as well as better maps of fire hazards, ecosystem services and climate change effects to assess trade-offs between development and hazard.

As an example of positive steps, the report cites new fire danger mapping efforts, including an existing fire hazard severity zone map that guides building codes in California. Produced by the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the current map does not explicitly incorporate locally varying wind patterns, which influence the worst fire-related losses of homes and lives, but future iterations will include these data.
“Wildfires are a natural part of many ecosystems and can have a positive long-term influence on the landscape, despite people labeling them as disasters,” said co-author Dennis Odion. “They can often stimulate vegetation regeneration, promote a diversity of vegetation types as the intensity of fires varies, provide habitat for many species and sustain other ecosystem services, such as nutrient cycling. However, where exotic grasses are invading, fires may be harmful, so there is a need for site specific analyses.”
Odion is the lead author of another PLOS ONE paper published earlier this year that examined the frequency, size, seasonality, impacts and other characteristics of naturally occurring fires in Ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forests of western North America. The findings show that prior to settlement and fire exclusion —the elimination of all types of wildland fire from a specified area — these forests historically exhibited much greater structural and successional diversity and as a result of fires burning with complex patterns of intensity. This is often the byproduct of weather patterns, as we see in modern wildfires. This can limit the effectiveness of fuel treatments, and is a reason why the kind of coexistence strategies described in Moritz et al. are needed.
“A different view of wildfire is urgently needed,” Moritz concluded. “We must accept wildfire as a crucial and inevitable natural process on many landscapes . . . there is no alternative. The path we are on will lead to a deepening of our fire-related problems worldwide and will only become worse as the climate changes.”

November 4, 2014
(Ashland, Ore.) — As part of an ongoing effort to become 100 percent carbon neutral by 2050, Southern Oregon University is considering replacing its existing natural gas-fired steam boilers with a biomass cogeneration facility that would provide the University’s main campus with heat while producing electricity that could be sold back into the power grid. A biomass cogeneration system would be more economical than maintaining the current system, would reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and would make a significant step toward SOU’s carbon emission reduction targets.
Two of the University’s four existing boilers are reaching the end of their useful life. SOU commissioned a series of studies to explore options to meet the increasing demand for campus heating. The reports found that a biomass cogeneration facility would have a range of environmental, social, and economic benefits.
Biomass fuel is a renewable resource that typically comes from forestry byproducts. Creating a use for this material reduces waste, improves forest health and emits far less carbon than would otherwise come from burning slash piles, prescribed burning, or wildfires. Biomass fuel is also cheaper than natural gas, resulting in lower operating costs. Because state and federal agencies are interested in the use of biomass as an alternative fuel source, it is likely that grant funds may be available to help offset the capital construction costs.
If the biomass cogeneration option does not move forward, the two outdated gas-fired boilers will be replaced in the next several years by a natural gas fired cogeneration facility. The University wants to hear from the community before making a decision on whether biomass cogeneration is right for SOU. Please join us at a community meeting on November 12 at 6 p.m. in the Rogue River Room inside Stevenson Union on SOU’s main campus. Visit the project website for more information: www.SOUcogeneration.org.

October 24, 2014
(Ashland, Ore.) — The Southern Oregon University Foundation’s ‘Count Me In’ campaign for student scholarships was a great success, raising more than $210,000 for the SOU Scholarship. More than 400 alumni, faculty, staff, students and community members participated in the 100-hour campaign.
“The Count Me In campaign really brought the community together in support of SOU students,” said Eric Baird, Executive Director of the SOU Foundation. “Community partners Radio Medford, Jefferson Public Radio, KOBI 5, the SOU Digital Media Center, and Southwick Specialty Advertising helped the campaign become a reality.”
The SOU Scholarship is awarded to students based on financial need with preference given to those who are first in their families to attend college. It is designed to help students bridge the funding gap between other forms of financial aid and the cost of attendance at Southern Oregon University.
“Thanks to the inspirational gifts from Jed and Celia Meese, Lithia Motors, an anonymous donor and the rest of the more than 400 individuals who contributed, we collectively raised scholarship funds that will inspire and change the lives of many students,” Baird said. “We are very thankful for the support and look forward to awarding the SOU Scholarship.”