Press Releases
SOU Launches New Program for Deployed Soldiers
August 17, 2009
Southern Oregon University (SOU), named today by G.I. Jobs magazine to its 2010 list of Military Friendly Schools, will offer a unique distance education program for deployed soldiers beginning this fall. Class study is not offered online. Instead, course materials for the self-paced program include workbooks, comprehensive textbooks and CDs with multimedia and digital materials.
"You can do these courses in a foxhole or riding in a truck; you don’t have to be connected to the Internet," says Lt. Col. Keith Ensley of the Oregon National Guard, the instructor for two of the four courses to be offered. Ensley teaches military science. SOU will also offer writing and history courses.
"We expect to have 30 Oregon National Guard soldiers stationed in Iraq in our first deployed soldier group," says SOU Admissions Director Mark Bottorff. "The number of classes offered will grow in winter term and, we hope, so will deployed soldier enrollment. SOU is the only campus in the Oregon University System (OUS) to offer this type of program to deployed soldiers."
"These are lower division courses," says Bottorff, "and will be the first college experience for many of the soldiers who are taking them. We hope the soldiers are successful students and decide to come to SOU fulltime when their deployment ends." The new post-9/11 GI Bill offers generous education benefits to returning national guardsmen.
Credit earned in SOU's deployed solider distance education program is widely transferable to colleges and universities everywhere. The military science course credits are transferable to any college ROTC program.
