From the President – July 16, 2025

Dear EOU Community,

Summer has taken off! A month ago, we held a wonderful commencement, and I’m grateful to everyone for their support in making this a special day for our graduates. I hope everyone enjoyed the Juneteenth and July 4th holidays. I know we all needed it!

July 1, 2025, was the 10th anniversary of Eastern Oregon University becoming an independent institution. It’s an interesting time for this anniversary, given the extensive discussion in higher education about the importance of independent governing boards. I’m deeply appreciative of our board’s service, which asks a lot in terms of time and dedication to our mission.

We’ve had some incredible things to celebrate since I last wrote:

The College of Marshall Islands and EOU’s College of Business have developed a partnership to send students through our MBA program. Congratulations to AVP Bennie Moses-Mesubed and Dean Scott McConnell.  

Our Mountaineer Success Guides’ impact on the students they serve is positively contributing to student success, with new first-year and new transfer students experiencing a 2% and 7% higher persistence rate than their peers without a guide. Thank you to all our Success Guides and Tressa Seydel for leading the charge. Sixty EOU faculty and staff have signed up to help out next year. Amazing, and thank you!

Our Summer Institutes registered 65 students this year (a leap from 51 in 2024), and more of the students who attend these Institutes are choosing to attend EOU – up to 46%!  Thank you to Kathleen Brown and all the faculty and staff involved!

Eastern Oregon University has once again been recognized as a College of Distinction for 2025–2026, marking our 10th year receiving this prestigious honor. In addition to overall institutional excellence, EOU earned distinctions for its College of Business, College of Education, and Career Services. We are also proud to be the only institution in Oregon awarded the Affordable College of Distinction designation.

We’ve had some incredible successes this year in Athletics, which culminated in our second-highest ever ranking in the Learfield Directors’ Cup. Our student athletes are excellent students, too! Nearly 50% of undergraduate student athletes made our dean’s list in Spring 2025. Athletic camps have been busy, busy, busy this summer, with over 1,800 registrations for our football, volleyball, wrestling, and basketball camps!

As part of our new Ascent ‘29 Strategies, academic advisors have been registering students as soon as possible for Fall 2025 to reduce summer melt, and they’ve registered 35 more newly admitted students than they did last year. Thank you, advisors! 

Our Onboarding Strategy Team delivered a final report to Cabinet Plus, as they will now be advancing new programming for new staff employees in August. Their clever work resulted in an onboarding Canvas shell, a new checklist that prioritizes employee and supervisor engagement, and mentors to help employees adjust to our EOU community. More to come! Thank you to Jamie Landa, Kimberly Newman, and Chris McLaughlin, who spearheaded the movement to its launch.

I’ve been busy planning for the next academic and fiscal year, alongside everyone else at EOU! Finance and Administration has been closing the books on FY25 and preparing for FY26. A lot of hard work goes into these final moments all across the EOU staff!

We continue to work on our Ascent ’29 Strategies this summer to meet the promises we made when we collaboratively designed the work. In the works are a new communication plan for students, the Hoke Union’s student-centered redesign, a new comprehensive fundraising campaign, the Academic Master Plan, and many other projects. We look forward to working with everyone on each of these projects.

Wishing you some summer bliss!

Sincerely,

Kelly Ryan, Ph.D.

President