May 8, 2025 – President Bailey discusses SOU’s new strategic planning process – SOU Thrive – in this month’s video message to campus and the community. He describes a strategic plan as “really just a fancy way of saying this is the vision of how we are going to get from where we are now as a university to where we want the university to be a few years from now.” The process starts with understanding the context and environment surrounding the university, determining what the future should look like, and then answering the question, “how do we get from Point A to Point B?” He said the SOU Thrive plan needs to be approachable and useable, rather than “some convoluted plan that sits on a shelf and nobody uses.” The planning process is underway, with a campus survey, meetings with stakeholder groups, an open house and more. He hopes that the end product will help SOU move from what he calls “a defensive posture” to being able to “build the university that everyone deserves.”

April 14, 2025 – President Bailey discusses SOU’s new strategic planning process – SOU Thrive – in this month’s video message to campus and the community. He describes a strategic plan as “really just a fancy way of saying this is the vision of how we are going to get from where we are now as a university to where we want the university to be a few years from now.” The process starts with understanding the context and environment surrounding the university, determining what the future should look like, and then answering the question, “how do we get from Point A to Point B?” He said the SOU Thrive plan needs to be approachable and useable, rather than “some convoluted plan that sits on a shelf and nobody uses.” The planning process is underway, with a campus survey, meetings with stakeholder groups, an open house and more. He hopes that the end product will help SOU move from what he calls “a defensive posture” to being able to “build the university that everyone deserves.”

February 21, 2025 – President Rick Bailey has a single topic for his February video message, and it gets straight to the heart of SOU: love. “We are built on a principle here at Southern Oregon University that everyone is deserving and worthy of love and respect and kindness and support,” President Bailey says. The university has love for all, regardless of where they are from, their last names, how they identify themselves, their abilities, their military status, their hometowns or how they choose to vote. “You still have a home here at SOU,” the president says. Current events have highlighted the divisions throughout society, but SOU provides an environment where people of all stripes can live and learn together with respect – and love. “This is not a political stance, and it certainly is not a political act of defiance,” President Bailey says. “I think we can do two things at the same time. We can be honorable, and we can make sure we’re following all of the federal and state laws. And at same time, we can hold true to the principle that everyone is deserving of love.”

January 14, 2025 – Why is President Rick Bailey sitting in an electric Volkswagen van on a video set at SOU’s Digital Media Center? It’s what his January video message is all about: partnerships. In this case, SOU’s partnership with Lithia Motors and its GreenCars division – the VW ID. Buzz electric bus is on loan to the university, part of an historic gift that created the Lithia & Driveway Scholarship program, the SOU Institute for Applied Sustainability and much more. President Bailey says that partnership has had “direct impact in the community and university and statewide. He also shares during this month’s video that he was a first-generation college student, and receiving college informational packets while he was in high schoo helped reinforced the idea that he was college material. Fast-forward to present day and SOU has forged data-sharing partnerships with 10 school districts around the state and region, giving SOU the opportunity to share information and encourage students to pursue their college aspirations. “That’s an example of a partnership where the more we get students into colleges in the state, the more everyone wins,” he says.