The challenge for women navigating our complex social and professional world is often one that requires sacrificing their sense of personal safety. But with ConnectHER, an app that will compete in this year’s Invent Oregon Collegiate Challenge, women will be empowered with a tool to connect them with professionals they’ll have fewer reasons to fear: other women. Conceived and created by a duo out of Southern Oregon University, Sophie Haney and Russ Wonsley, ConnectHER seeks t

What has its roots in in the personal transformations of its team members, the #metoo movement, the rash of school shootings, and research on suicide? The innovation from Eastern Oregon University known as Kula Dudes. “Research indicates that suicide is the 7th leading cause of death for men and that 25 percent of the entire population of men in the U.S. have zero close friends in which to confide,” says Kula Dudes faculty team member Spencer Harber. Those kinds of uncomforta