Jaelle Dragomir
Instructor
PhD/ABD, Communication, University of Washington, Seattle; MA, Communication, University of Hawaii, Manoa; BS, Communication, Southern Oregon University. Graduated Summa cum laude.
Jaelle has taught classes in the Pacific Northwest, Houston, Texas, Hawaii, and Kathmandu, Nepal. Her collaborative learning classrooms instill mutual respect amongst persons of different cultures, backgrounds, and life experiences; thus, enabling students to integrate a global perspective. Jaelle received the top two honors, Teacher’s Award of Excellence and President’s Award of Excellence, from the Lone Star College System in Houston. Aside from teaching, Jaelle has worked in local, regional, and national politics. Additionally, she’s an award-winning author, poet, playwright, and broadcast journalist. Jaelle is a closet stand-up comedian, but years ago performed at the Jon Lovitz Comedy Club in L.A. As a happily complicated Homo Ludens, there’s only one thing that actually annoys her: a painting hanging at an angle.
Office: Central 049
Phone: 541.552.8406
E-Mail: dragomirj@sou.edu
Leslie Eldridge
Instructor
MESM, Marine Coastal Resource Management & Conservation Planning, University of California, Santa Barbara, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, 2008; BA Cultural and Social Anthropology, Psychology, 2000
Leslie Eldridge’s research and professional experience focuses on data-based and stakeholder-driven management and/or policy solutions to complex environmental problems. Most of Leslie’s work has been in policy and legislation, but focuses on synthesizing the relevant scientific, cultural and economic information while facilitating interest groups to reach a negotiated set of management changes. For example, Leslie’s graduate research and later professional work focused on how to reduce commercial shipping impacts on endangered whales off the coast of California. Management solutions were informed by a stakeholder group of marine biologists and ecologists, acousticians, environmental advocacy groups, federal and state government agencies and shipping industry representatives. Leslie is especially interested in exploring ways to bring traditionally oppositional sides together to realize environmental, economic and social/cultural benefits.
Office: Central 050
Phone: 541.552.7080
E-Mail: eldridgel@sou.edu
Carrie Forbes
University Librarian and Co-Director of the Division of Library and Undergraduate Studies
PhD – Curriculum and Instruction, University of Denver, 2020; MA – Higher Education, University of Denver, 2011; MLS – Indiana University-Bloomington, 1999; BA – History, Western Michigan University, 1998
Office: LIB 328
Phone: 541.552.6833
E-Mail: forbesc@sou.edu
Danielle Hammer
Instructor and Bridge Program Coordinator
PhD – Literature in English, The University of California, San Diego, 2018; BA – English and Anthropology, Southern Oregon University, 2011
Danielle is living her dream of teaching at her Alma Mater, SOU. The wonderful professors that guided her time in school here also inspired her to pursue a career teaching in higher education, so she is happy to be able to give back to the Southern Oregon community. As a student, Danielle was also a Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program scholar, and her time in this wonderful program taught her the importance of encouraging diversity in higher education. To this end, Danielle works as the Coordinator for the SOU Bridge program. She is happy to dedicate her time and energy to helping the underrepresented Oregon students in this program to thrive in their first year of college. In her research, Danielle is fascinated by the literary representations of madness and haunting in Irish literature. She is specifically interested in how authors from marginalized groups use literature as a revolutionary tool to express their cultural oppression. She continues this theme in her Purposeful Learning Seminar course: Unsolved Mysteries. Her seminar course examines how many pop-culture monsters can symbolize much deeper cultural issues. She also loves a good scary story!
Office: Central 002
Phone: 541.552.6014
E-Mail: hammerd@sou.edu
Warren Hedges
Instructor
PhD, English, Duke University, 1993; MA, English, Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies, Duke University, 1988; BA, Creative Writing, College of Wooster, 1986
Warren Hedges has served as a tenured professor in SOU’s English department and later helped create the Emerging Media and Digital Arts (EMDA) major. He has wide-ranging interests and has taught courses for the English, Art, EMDA, and Communication departments as well as Purposeful Learning Seminar and the Honors College. Before coming to SOU in 1996, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Duke University. His current research focuses on video games, and on how speculative genres such as science fiction and fantasy help us to imagine more inclusive cultures, societies, and worlds.
Office: Susie Homes 105
Phone: 541.552.6926
E-Mail: hedges@sou.edu
Laura Jessup
Senior Instructor I; Chair, Purposeful Learning Seminar Program
MA – English (Rhetoric & Composition), Portland State University, 1993; BA – English, University of California at Santa Barbara, 1991
Laura is an experienced and dedicated teacher who has worked with university students since 1992. Her strong, gentle leadership guides students to pursue their passions with confidence and perseverance. Her interests have led her to publish works of nature writing, travel journalism, and educational medical writing. In graduate school, she specialized in Literature of the English Romantic poets, Early 20th Century American novelists, and Rhetoric and Composition. As a lifelong learner, Laura has been able to connect her talents as a writer, grant writer, organizer, and compassionate teacher to help those differently abled and those seeking medical and/or caregiving information. Laura’s current research interests and skills have led her to volunteer in the community as an Internationally Board-Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) and La Leche League Leader, collaborating with healthcare professionals in Southern Oregon Lactation Association (SOLA). She is active in piloting course designs for non-traditional learners and contributes her expertise to peer mentoring, and many support programs and initiatives at SOU.
Office: Central 054
Phone: 541.552.8411
E-Mail: jessupla@sou.edu
Matt Moreali
Senior Instructor I
Juris Doctor (JD) – Law and Government Certificate, Willamette University College of Law, 2013; BA – Politics, History and Legal Studies, University of San Francisco, 2005
Matt works to equip students with the skills needed to clearly articulate their own ideas and express them to various audiences and in any situation. Though once pursuing his own law practice, Matt is inspired by teaching and has taught at Rogue Community College and Southern Oregon University, focusing on leadership skills, expository writing, research writing, and interpersonal communication courses. Because of his background and training as a lawyer, Matt draws on the rhetorical and logical foundations of legal analysis and encourages his students to apply these concepts to their own disciplines. Matt continues his scholarship on topics and inquiries related to freedom of speech, mass hysteria, and family law. He is currently an inactive member of the Oregon State Bar.
Office: Central 001
Phone: 541.552.6142
E-Mail: morealim@sou.edu
Anne-Marie Pedersen
Instructor
PhD – English, Composition and Rhetoric, University of Louisville, 2007; MFA – English, Creative Writing, George Mason University, 2000; BA – English, College of William and Mary, 1996
Anne-Marie Pedersen has a passion for helping students engage with the world through writing. With an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Composition and Rhetoric, Anne-Marie taught at many different institutions–the American Language Center in Amman, Jordan; University of Louisville; Chapman University; and California State University, Fullerton–before joining SOU in 2023. She has published articles on global academic writing, writing across the curriculum, plagiarism, and writing centers. When not teaching and advising students, Anne-Marie spends as much time as possible with her family outside exploring the Rogue Valley.
Office: Central 047
Phone: 541.552.6260
E-Mail: pedersena@sou.edu
Val Soto
Instructor
MS–Interdisciplinary Neuroscience, University of Iowa, 2023; BS–Psychology, Southern Oregon University, 2021; BS–Interdisciplinary Studies (Health and Physical Education & Mathematics), Southern Oregon University, 2021
Val served four years on active duty in the U.S. Army before attending SOU as an undergraduate. He took an immediate liking to Health and Psychology and, after earning dual BS degrees in 2021, left SOU to attend The University of Iowa. There Val specialized in systems-level neuroscience, studying the intricacies of the sleeping brain. He has a fondness for functional neuroanatomy that knows no equal, though after earning his MS in 2023 and returning to SOU to teach, an extreme curiosity in understanding free will emerged and quickly became a passion. His teachings intend to fold strong analysis and critical thinking into creative outlooks on life and the subsequent hurdles that will inevitably arise. Val strives to provide every student an equitable foothold at the start of their undergraduate education, emphasizing the building of strong relationships within the classroom with hopes that those continue outside the classroom, as these relationships, especially those that continue into accelerated age, are the basis for a happy life.
Office: Central 053
Phone: 541.552.6260
E-Mail: sotov@sou.edu
Craig Stillwell
Senior Instructor II
PhD – History, University of Notre Dame, 1992; BA – Biology, BS – Chemistry, University of Oregon, 1982
Craig began his academic career in the chemical and biological sciences, but his fascination with the humanistic side of scientific inquiry led him to pursue a master’s in the history and philosophy of science and a doctorate in European History with an emphasis in the history of science and medicine. His PhD dissertation examined the ideas and science of Ilya Metchnikoff, the eccentric Russian pathologist who became one of the first immunologists and who popularized yogurt as a health food in the early 1900s. After a postdoctoral position at Stanford University studying the history of recent immunology, Craig taught for ten years at the Lyman Briggs School of Science at Michigan State University, where he embraced “The Best of Both Worlds” by teaching the history and philosophy of science and medicine to pre-science and pre-med majors. Moving back to the Rogue Valley in 2001, he soon found himself teaching at SOU, where he developed a University Seminar course that focuses on the art, science, and ethics of medicine. His hobbies include bodybuilding and aquaria keeping.
Office: Central 055
Phone: 541.552.8438
E-Mail: stillwec@sou.edu
Emeritus Faculty
Lee Ayers-Preboski
Associate Professor
E-Mail: ayersl@sou.edu
Deborah Brown
Senior Instructor II
E-Mail: dbrown@sou.edu
John Sollinger
Instructor
E-Mail: sollingj@sou.edu
General Education Staff
Monica Camargo Jarquin
Program Specialist
Office: Central 051
Phone: 541.552.6260
E-Mail: camargojarquinm@sou.edu
Hazel Tincher
Student Success Coordinator
Office: LIB 144
Phone: 541.552.6290
E-Mail: tincherh@sou.edu