Raiders Rising, SOU Featured Stories

Raiders Rising is a series of in-depth feature stories about SOU students and recent alumni who have risen to academic, career or personal challenges in spectacular ways.


Southern Oregon University Raiders Rising A product of heritage passions curiosity and SOU Cover

Raiders Rising: A product of heritage, passions, curiosity and SOU

Connect these dots: Fidel Castro and the Mariel boatlift. The Miami Dolphins and that city’s Little Havana neighborhood. The Everglades, alligators, pythons and a fossilized tooth. Intellectual curiosity. Southern Oregon University. Those are waypoints on the road map of Frank Rodriguez’s life. He is anchored to and guided by them even as he takes a giant step toward the career that, until recently, he would have lacked the audacity to so much as dream about – paleontologist and research scientist.

Raiders Rising Sachta Bakshi Southern Oregon University School of Business Alumni

Raiders Rising: International travelers, entrepreneurs find family at SOU

It’s fitting that Sachta Bakshi was visiting her grandparents in Ashland when she fell in love with Southern Oregon University. It’s always been a family affair. She was a 10th-grader in India at the time, and a chance visit to campus led her to the Admissions Office, SAT tests a few days later and then the intriguing prospect of a student job in SOU’s International Programs office. What followed has become legend in the university’s School of Business.