Postcards from the Rogue Valley

I lived in Ashland for several years before becoming involved in Southern Oregon University (SOU), two miles from our house. I first discovered the university’s Honors College with its remarkable students and faculty. I then became friends with the university’s new President, Rick Bailey, hired in 2022. The last three years, I’ve been a fellow-traveler as the university fights for solvency. Honors College alumna Sarah Grulikowski, who features in the reflections below, has been a steady friend and guide in this journey.

“It’s hard to say how I ended up at SOU,” Sarah Grulikowski (’21) told me. “I’m not sure any seventeen-year-old really has a plan for how they choose a college. I was drawn to SOU by the opportunities it provided: the incredible access to the outdoors, the world-class theater down the street, and the small class sizes. She continues

When I visited SOU for the first time, I was surprised by a few things. First, the woman I’d met at a coffee shop that morning was right: The library really did look like something out of Treehouse Masters. Second, the campus community was just so welcoming. I walked onto the campus that morning not knowing anyone. But by the end of the day, I’d received a tour of the theater building, met a handful of faculty, and even connected with the Director of Student Life. I immediately felt like I fit in, and that was enough for me.“

The university Sarah entered in 2017 was tilting toward a financial crisis by the year she left.

The first eruption surfaced in 2023 when the university adopted a fiscal realignment plan called “SOU Forward” which involved cutting 82 full-time equivalent positions, or 13 percent of university staff, and collapsing several academic departments. Falling student enrollment and chronic underfunding from the Oregon legislature (Oregon ranks 46^th in state funding for higher education) had taken a large toll. 

Today, two years later, the hazards have grown only bigger. Student enrollment at SOU is down a stunning 10 percent for this fall and the Trump administration’s plans to amend federal student loans and Pell grants (anchors for SOU’s largely working class students) have pushed the university to what the university’s President Rick Bailey calls a “financial exigency.” The university will need to cut an additional 15 percent of its budget in the next three years to become solvent, SOU’s Board of Trustees have decided. 

“We’ve never been able to put money in reserves, and because of that, every time there’s a crisis, we have to do something drastic just to move forward,” President Bailey said.

L: Churchill Hall, 1926; R: Classroom, date unknown

Nine lives

One of seven public universities in Oregon, Southern Oregon University’s path has rarely been smooth.

Between the time Southern Oregon University began as “Ashland Academy” in 1872 — founded by Ashland’s Methodist Episcopal Church — and became a “university” more than a century later, it had risen and fallen multiple times and gained and shed nine names. 

Like its counterparts across the U.S. in the late 1800’s, Ashland Academy began as an official state normal school, built primarily to train elementary-level teachers for blooming public schools in towns and cities nationwide. Unlike normal schools in other states, however, Ashland Academy received no public funding, relying on tuition and private donations to cover the costs of supporting its 42 students and four teachers.

The school closed in 1890, re-opening when the state legislature finally awarded a first-time appropriation of $7,500. Now called “Southern Oregon State Normal School,” it briefly flourished until the legislature reversed course in 1909 and withdrew support. It remained closed until state funding reappeared sixteen years later. In a show of community spirit, Ashland residents passed the “Normal School Site Bonds” to purchase the campus property, and the legislature approved $175,000 to build a new facility on 24 acres on the southside of town.

“The legislature,” one Oregon newspaper quipped at the time, “finally realized that funding public higher education was in their best interests.”

There were other turning points. In 1935, the school’s speech and drama professor, Angus Bowmer, staged a Fourth of July production of Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice,” launching what would become the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and an enduring connection between the two institutions.

At the close of World War II, the school’s enrollment was a low of 45; three years later it was nearly 800, rising with the tide of the GI bill. As its course offerings expanded, the school earned a new name, “Southern Oregon College.”  As the concept of a state system swept U.S. public higher education in the 1970s, the word “state” was inserted in the title. 

It was not until 1997 that the campus became Southern Oregon University. 

Enrollment and matriculation: a postscript

If student enrollment is a significant indicator of a university’s health, 2010 was a high water mark at SOU with 6,744 students. SOU’s President at the time, Mary Cullinan, noted

 All of Oregon’s public universities grew this fall. We’re an affordable option in a difficult economy. But SOU’s growth is exceptional. We’re the only university of its kind on the West Coast. We’re a public university with a focus on connecting students with faculty and with the region. We’re committed to powerful programs in the arts and the sciences—but also to professional programs in education and business that educate the professional workforce of this region. We’ve worked hard to get the news out about SOU. And now we’ve been discovered.”

The tide ebbed quickly, though. Between the fall of 2014 and fall 2023, enrollment at SOU declined 16 percent. (Pushing against the reflex to blame COVID for drops in attendance, from theater-going to school-going, an analysis by the Hechinger Report found that declining higher education enrollments had begun long before the coronavirus struck.)

Enrollment this fall at SOU, as noted earlier, has dropped 10 percent from 2024.

What about matriculation? Figures for the percentage of enrolled SOU students who ultimately earn degrees average 33 percent for students who graduate in four years and 43 percent in six years (the corresponding national averages are higher — 45 percent and 63 percent).

President Rick Bailey addressing faculty and staff at campus meeting, Aug. 1^st

“Toward a (more) Resilient SOU”

When President Rick Bailey, the year after he arrived at SOU in 2022, invited faculty and staff to a “campus discussion” on the financial emergency stalking the university, I took a front seat. Familiar with the plan intended to address the crisis, I was interested as much in what faculty and staff had to say as I was in Bailey’s presentation.  Not surprisingly, faculty in departments most vulnerable to what the plan called “Embracing a New Fiscal Paradigm” (a.k.a., some would say, cuts and consolidation) fought back.

Bailey was sympathetic. He agreed with the speaker who retorted, “You can’t cut your way to success.” But he said he had no alternative.

The fixes promised by SOU Forward did not stop the slide, however. This August, President Bailey once again summoned faculty and staff to an airing of the lingering “financial exigencies” the university faced. He outlined the provisional plan SOU’s Board of Trustees had just approved, auspiciously called “Toward a (more) Resilient SOU: A Plan to Respond to Changing Financial Conditions and Reimaging the University.” Over the next three years, he explained, the plan called for cutting 15 majors — including chemistry, ecology and economics — as well as 11 minors, eliminating 20 jobs, and leaving several positions unfilled.

(The public was not invited to this meeting; the account that follows leans on reporting from a journalist with Oregon Public Broadcasting.)

Bailey did not mince his words, the OPB reporter notes, offering a surprisingly honest assessment of the economic chasm the university faced and the need for drastic cuts.

“There are a few things the university has failed at during my tenure, including saving money,” he said. “We’ve never been able to put money in reserves, and so because of that, every time there’s a crisis, we have to do something crazy just to move forward.”

The savings gained through the SOU Forward cuts, Bailey admitted, “weren’t necessarily tied to a well-defined strategic vision.” He said that he hadn’t built up enough trust as a new president to make more drastic changes.

Today’s plan, by contrast, “[will] allow us to do the transformative things that we need to do as an institution,” he said. “Let me be very clear. We’re not closing. It’s not bankruptcy. It’s not even close to that, but it is the mechanism that allows for transformation.”

 “Everything that’s in this provisional plan I own,” Bailey added, “I’ll take responsibility for it. I’ll take the arrows for it. I’ll take the criticism. And I’ll take the ideas. What can we do to make this plan better?”

Photo credit: Bob Palermini, Ashland News

Students as partners

Absent from Bailey’s speech was mention of the role SOU’s undergraduates might — should — play in its “transformation.” After a lifetime supporting student voices in strengthening public schools — from high schools through universities — I have seen the power of including students as real partners in creating strategies for improvement and change. 

Sarah Grulikowski, who served as SOU’s student body president in 2020-21, writes passionately about keeping students at the center.

One of the most significant moments in my time at SOU happened before I attended my first class. It was a cool, fall morning at Raider Stadium, and my classmates and I were waiting for convocation to start. 

We heard from the outgoing Student Body President, the Football team sang us a song and, for the finale, we received an address from the University President (at that time, President Linda Schott). 

She closed her address with an offer: “If at any point, you’ve got an idea, a question, or just need a little help, send me an email. I respond to every email I get and, if I can’t help, I know who can.” 

While I doubt she expected anyone to take her up on her offer, I sent her an email while sitting in the stands of the stadium. I introduced myself and asked a question or two about getting involved on campus. I didn’t expect a response. 

To my surprise, she replied the next morning. President Schott’s email included thoughtful advice about getting involved on campus and a chance to meet, so I could learn more about the opportunities available on campus. 

That meeting was the beginning of the four great years that followed. In my experience, the faculty, advisors and administrators on campus were incredibly approachable. I was surprised by who I could talk to, learn from and work alongside if I was only willing to reach out. I learned a lot there, thanks to the people who are so uniquely dedicated to supporting their students. 

Four years later, I told the story about President Schott to an incoming class of freshmen at their own convocation ceremony. Only now, I was the outgoing Student Body President opening for the football team.

I wanted the incoming class to know that SOU’s greatest strength is its people – the faculty, advisors and administrators who care so deeply about each and every student’s success. 

What did Sarah and her fellow student leaders (more than 100 in all) accomplish? The record shows that they

• Solved SOU’s Student Incidental Fee deficit problem. Together with student, faculty and administrative partners, they rebuilt the fee’s budget and allocation processes, taking it from an approximately $300K deficit to a surplus in just one fiscal year.
• Reinvented the University’s undergraduate general education requirements alongside faculty partners, creating an academic program that supports student-directed learning.
• Partnered with the student leaders at Oregon’s Technical and Regional Universities (TRUs) to advocate for increased funding for public higher education in the state budget.
• Collaborated with the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group (OSPIRG) and faculty leaders to replace costly textbooks with free open educational resources (OERs), making higher education more affordable for students.

These past three years, however, have found successive student body presidents often caught between mediating the cuts and consolidation embedded in each new plan and the perception of some students that they were complicit in the dismantling. Last May, the election for the the ’25-’26 student body president was postponed when no candidates stepped forward.

Coda

Despite the grim news in President Rick Bailey’s “community conversation” last week about the cliff the university faced, he ended on a high note. “The reason why I am here,” he said, “is because I know that as an institution, we are sitting on a winning lottery ticket. I’m sure of it, and there is a future that is better for us, and it’s ahead of us. It is. We can do this.”

Bailey’s optimism not withstanding, will SOU’s enrollment ever rebound? Probably not. Will it inhabit a smaller footprint? Probably so.

Regardless of the footprint, what better time than now, when the stakes are so high, to nurture and support student leaders at SOU and re-engage them as full partners in building a more resilient university?

“When we listen to each other, we create a campus culture that’s rooted in collaboration and shared purpose,” Sarah says.  “It’s in those moments that we find our strength and maybe even the unexpected solutions.”

Yesterday, when I asked Race, our server at the wine tasting room Tony and I visit every Friday — and a new SOU alum — what he’d suggest to Rick Bailey, he said: “Shrink the university and make it a sought-after center for experiential learning.” He offered a half dozen examples, including a business program (Race majored in business) which prized internships that give students a real leg up.

After graduation in 2021, Sarah Grulikowski was recruited as the volunteer coordinator at Ashland’s ScienceWorks Hands-On Museum and then the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She currently works as a copywriter at Rogue Credit Union — and has her sights set on dual M.B.A. and M.Ed. degrees.