Tag Archive for: SOU Alumni

SOU Ashland alumni awards recipients

Four to receive annual SOU alumni awards

/in , ,

(Ashland, Ore.) — This year’s Southern Oregon University alumni award winners will be a business lawyer who has conducted an investigation of Las Vegas city officials and managed litigation for a $4 billion real estate firm; a lifelong educator who has written three books and made more than 500 educational presentations; a former legislator who made a film documenting the Klamath River restoration; and an award-winning novelist whose short stories have been featured in various publications.

This year’s four award recipients were chosen by the SOU Alumni Association Board of Directors: Catherine Meulemans for the Distinguished Alumni Award; Sue Teele, Ph.D., for the Alumni Excellence in Education Award; Jason Atkinson for the Stan Smith Alumni Service Award; and Abbigail Rosewood for the Outstanding Young Alumni Award. The awards will be presented during a celebration at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 2, in the Schneider Museum of Art. RSVPs at (541) 552-6127 are required.

Meulemans
The Distinguished Alumni Award is presented each year by the university and the SOU Alumni Association to recognize someone whose personal and professional achievements have significantly benefited humankind and brought distinction to the university. This year’s honoree, Catherine Meulemans, graduated magna cum laude from SOU in 1985 after serving as an exchange student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She earned her law degree from Georgetown University, then co-founded a multi-state boutique law firm that specialized in complex business litigation, real estate and civil appeals. She conducted a high-profile investigation of several Las Vegas city officials on behalf of the Office of the Nevada Attorney General, and managed the litigation portfolio for a $4 billion privately held international real estate brokerage. Meulemans is now the utilities team co-leader in the San Francisco office of Frost Brown Todd, a firm with law offices across the U.S.

Teele
The Alumni Excellence in Education Award recognizes career achievement in education, service to community and commitment to SOU. Sue Teele, who will receive this year’s award, earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Redlands in Southern California, then received her teaching credentials from the University of Alaska before accepting a teaching position in Medford and enrolling in a graduate program at what was then Southern Oregon College. She received her master’s degree in 1969, taught at the junior high level for 11 years, then spent 36 years as a higher education administrator – first at California State University, San Bernardino, and then at the University of California, Riverside. She was responsible for 50 different educational certificate and state approved credential programs that served 12,000 educators annually while at Riverside. Teele has written three books on teaching and learning, and developed an assessment tool, the “Teele Inventory for Multiple Intelligence (TIMI),” which has been used in throughout the U.S. and in dozens of other countries to quickly identify how students learn.

Atkinson
The Stan Smith Alumni Service Award recognizes alumni who have demonstrated an outstanding commitment to the community and service to people. Jason Atkinson earned his bachelor’s degree in history and political science at what was then Southern Oregon State College in 1992, then a master’s degree in business administration and public administration at Willamette University. He started a consulting business, then was elected to the Oregon Legislature – first the House of Representatives and then the Senate. He took a sabbatical to make the film “A River Between Us,” documenting the Klamath River restoration, and ultimately worked on the project for three decades before dam removals began in 2022. Atkinson has been recognized as one of the top 20 most influential fisherman of the West, served as a commissioner for the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife, and was named a hero of conservation by Field and Stream.

Rosewood
The Distinguished Young Alumni Award is presented to a recent university graduate who has demonstrated distinction in career, civic involvement or both. Abbigail Rosewood received her bachelor’s degree at SOU in 2013, focusing on creative writing, then earned her master of fine arts degree in fiction from Columbia University in 2017. She won the Michael Baughman Fiction Award while at SOU. She has written numerous essays, reviews, articles and creative works for online and print publications. Her debut novel, “If I Had Two Lives,” was published in 2019 by Europa Editions and her second novel, “Constellations of Eve,” was published in 2022 by Texas Tech University Press. Her works have appeared in publications including TIME Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Salon, Elle U.K, Pen America, BOMB and Cosmopolitan. Rosewood has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and Best American Short Story 2020, and she won first place in the Writers Workshop of Asheville Literary Fiction contest.

-SOU-

SOU Commencement 2018

Recognitions to lead off SOU commencement event

/in , ,

NEWS RELEASE
(Ashland, Ore.) — Seven alumni of Southern Oregon University will be honored – two with special posthumous recognitions and five with annual awards – as part of Saturday’s 2018 commencement activities. All of the awards will be presented at the Pre-Commencement Alumni Breakfast on Saturday morning.

Steven Nelson, who passed away this spring, will be posthumously recognized when a President’s Medal is presented to his family. Nelson, a financial advisor and former banker, received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at SOU, and served nearly 20 years as a volunteer leader at Jefferson Public Radio and the JPR Foundation. His work contributed to JPR’s growth and expansion, restoration projects at the Cascade Theatre in Redding and the Holly Theatre in Medford, and the development of the radio station’s new home in the SOU Theater Building.

Edrik Gomez, who was a high-achieving SOU student when he died in a helicopter crash while on a firefighting crew at northern California’s Iron 44 blaze in 2008, will be honored posthumously when a Certificate of Achievement is presented to his mother. He was majoring in communication and political science, had a 3.72 grade point average and had been admitted into the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program at the time of the accident that claimed nine firefighters’ lives. Gomez, who was from Coquille, was involved in SOU’s Multicultural Center, the Latino Student Union, and the Ecology and Sustainability Center.

Recipients of this year’s annual alumni awards are Jeff Brady, for Distinguished Alumni; Amanda MacGurn, for Young Alumni; Malcus Williams and Tim Williams, for the Stan Smith Alumni Service Award; and Betsy Bishop, for Excellence in Education.

Brady, who earned his SOU bachelor’s degree in communication in 1995, is a national desk correspondent in Philadelphia, focusing on energy issues for National Public Radio. He is credited with helping to demystify an industry that can seem complicated to many listeners and to establish NPR’s Environment and Energy Collaborative for reporters at NPR member stations around the country.

MacGurn, a 2006 French language and culture graduate at SOU, taught English in Costa Rica and Chile before joining the Peace Corps and ultimately earning her master’s degree in public health from Emory University. An internship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention led her to a full-time position in the health agency’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine. MacGurn was deployed to West Africa four times during the Ebola outbreak, and continues to work in the region where her French skills are critical.

Malcus Williams, who died while on a call for the Ashland Police Department in March, played football and met his wife, Ona, while a student at SOU. He became a reserve officer and then was sworn in as a full-time Ashland Police officer during the 1996 flood. He completed his degree in criminology and criminal justice in 2008, while serving as a full-time officer, and served on the department as a school resource officer, firearms instructor, patrol officer, sergeant and Citizen’s Academy diversity instructor. He also served in the community as a youth sports coach.

Tim Williams was a forward on the nationally ranked SOU basketball team of the late 1990s before earning his bachelor’s degree in criminology in 1999, then moving on to earn his law degree at the University of Oregon School of Law in 2003. He is a partner in the firm of Dwyer Williams Dretke Attorneys, has been recognized as one of the best trial lawyers in the country, has held a variety of posts in the Oregon State Bar and has advocated justice for the economically disadvantaged. He has also served on the board of directors of the Ronald McDonald House of Central Oregon, the Sparrow Clubs of Central Oregon and other nonprofit organizations.

Bishop received her undergraduate degree from Catholic University in Washington, D.C., before earning her master’s degree in teaching at SOU in 1977. She taught 10 years at Monrovia High School in California, and has taught English and theatre at Ashland High School since moving back to Ashland in 1988. She has maintained a 25-year school and business partnership with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, has been recognized with four statewide teaching awards and earned two national awards in 2016.

-SOU-

SOU Delaney Matson Sewing

Life in stitches: Delaney Matson’s passionate patterns

/in

The old axiom says that if you do  something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. That may not hold true every single day for SOU alumna Delaney Matson, but she is coming pretty close.

Matson, who graduated in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in theatre arts with an emphasis on costume design and construction, is now heading up the sewing shop at Colette Patterns, a leading independent pattern-design company.

She has melded a lifelong love of sewing with the business and technical skills she picked up at SOU to craft a career. While sewing has always been central to her life, she says SOU allowed her to combine multiple passions.

“I really love sewing, costuming and fashion,” Matson said. “I also had wanted to be a history major, and I didn’t know what to pick. Historical costuming is where the two blended, so that’s where I found myself.”

Matson took her theatre and sewing experience into the work world after graduation but says it wasn’t a straight path to find a job that suited her passion and paid the bills. After graduation, Matson moved to Portland and worked briefly as the manager of the costume and scene shop at Portland Community College. “When I left that job, I left theatre and haven’t gone back,” she said. “But I have continued to pursue sewing.”

A position at David’s Bridal kept sewing in the forefront, and when Colette Patterns had an opening, Matson leapt at the opportunity. Working at a fabric store in Ashland introduced her to the Colette brand and its people. “I had always wanted to be part of the Colette team, so I kept my eye out for a position there,” she said. “When one came open, I jumped. And I’ve been there ever since.”

Although hired as a tailor in the sewing room, Matson has moved up quickly at Colette. As sewing manager and technical editor, Matson sews all the samples for photo shoots that advertise the company’s new patterns in its monthly magazine, “Seamwork,” and she ensures a level of quality control for each pattern on the market. “I make all the samples for the photo shoots, but I also test the patterns to make sure that the measurements are correct and that the pattern sews up correctly,” she said.

Matson said the skills she mastered at SOU have been absolutely critical to her success at Colette. “We focused on vintage sewing and historical sewing techniques and how these are applied to a more modern audience,” said Matson of SOU’s costume design and construction program. “We learned flat-pattern drafting, where we had a list of equations and we put in our measurements to figure it all out. Now there’s computer technology that makes it easier, but learning how to draft it by hand, knowing what makes a true fit, and translating that information, I use that every day,” Matson said.

According to Matson, the hands-on nature of costuming in the SOU Theatre Arts Program gave her the kind of in-the-trenches experience she needed to be successful. “I do a lot of alterations, and in theatre – especially in costuming – you are constantly having to alter existing costumes to fit the next actor,” she said, noting that studying “fit issues” has helped her ensure proper fit across all of Colette’s patterns.

But Matson is not one to rest on her laurels. She is currently spearheading a product-testing program at Colette to help understand the user experience. “Everybody sews really differently, so I’m trying to gauge how people sew at home so we can reflect that in our designs and in our accessibility,” she said.

Reprinted from the Fall 2017 issue of The Raider, SOU’s alumni magazine