From the President – October 29, 2025

From the President – October 29, 2025

Gratitude, purpose, and connection

Dear EOU Community,

The beautiful fall weather and colors are keeping me focused on the here and now. The tangerines, red, and deep greens have captured my attention and kept me focused on the things that make life enjoyable. The ride! The chaos around us can’t define who we are and what we do.

Gratitude, purpose, and connection are my keys to happiness (and for many others, if you ask psychologists). All the more reason I enjoy sitting down to write these letters to you. Sharing with you our colleagues’ successes helps reframe our commitments to each other and our shared purpose of lifting up educational opportunities for rural Oregonians. We need each other at EOU; faculty, staff, and administration are all here to lift up our work.  

As I write, I don’t know the outcome of our visit with NWCCU, but I do know that so much effort went into preparing for this visit. All across EOU, we’ve been asking hard questions about what we’ve done and how we can be our best, and I’m hopeful they saw that. Karen Clay, Angie Adams, and Provost Peter Geissinger have been our fearless leaders and organizers for this momentous visit. Special thanks to Deans Darren Dutto, Nate Lowe, and Scott McConnell for helping out with some large requests!

I’d like to thank everyone for their patience during the planned power shutdowns. With the assistance of our EOU employees, Darryl Nobles and Brad Walters, OTEC and All Phase were able to gather critical information about our medium-voltage campus utility system. EOU’s IT staff and Darryl also collaborated to ensure that the backup generators operating the Data Centers and Badgley Hall are working properly. Their coordination and hard work before and during the shutdowns have made the process run more smoothly each time. Thank you!

And thank you to all of you who help make our campus vibrant. I appreciate the Library faculty and staff for arranging their Night Against Procrastination event, which draws students in for fun and pancakes at just the right time for both studying and diversion. I’m also impressed by the new work of EOU’s American Democracy Project and their coordination with the League of Women Voters of Union County, Oregon – a nonpartisan organization – to bring a discussion about the impact of changing drug laws in our community. These are just the kinds of events that make universities special!

I’ve been doing my share of event-ing too. I really enjoyed hearing Alysia Cohen’s faculty research on “Mitigating Stress and Anxiety Among College Health Profession Students” at our faculty colloquium. Her presentation resulted in a fascinating conversation that occurred afterwards. I finished my annual meeting with every unit on campus, and it was great to have time in smaller groups to talk about our future and the big and small questions burning in our brains. Of course, supporting EOU athletics is a full-time job, and I loved catching games this weekend and welcoming Scott Crawford, NAIA’s Frontier Conference Commissioner, to EOU. EOU’s Oregon Agricultural Foundation, which supports scholarships for our students, was on campus, and I had a great time discussing our challenges and opportunities. They are such a sweet group of folks who care about our community.

Other meetings included local and state leadership. The Northeast Regional Solutions Advisory Committee, in which I serve as convener, met with Governor Kotek to share our priorities for regional development. I took Casey Hallgarth, Superintendent of Baker School District, for a walk around campus as we discussed how we can better partner to serve Baker County. Superintendent Halgrath is an alum, and he was excited to see some of the changes we’ve made in the past few years.  

I had some travel over the past week that took me to New York City. While I was there, I popped into the Swiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York and saw Bagus Pandega’s “Daya Benda,” an incredible exhibition that examines natural resources extraction.  Such a thoughtful exhibit that made for wonderful conversation with my travel companions. Take a look!  I also got to see the new exhibits on Man Ray and Divine Egypt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This was all great food for my soul.

Finally, Happy Halloween EOU!  I may still be caught binging horror movies for a few more weeks, but never at the cost of serving you! Thank you to each of you who shared your favorite horror movie with me.  

Wishing you well,

Kelly A. Ryan, Ph.D.
President