MAGAZINE This Issue Features the College of Arts & Sciences SPRING 2018
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DAKOTAFOR OUR ALUMNI, PARENTS AND FRIENDS STATEMAGAZINE This issue features the College of Arts & Sciences SPRING 2018 1 Dear DSU Community, This issue of our alumni magazine focuses on the arts and sciences at Dakota State University. Studies in these areas have always been and continue to be key contributors to the success of our DSU graduates. These days a lot of the conversation around getting a college education focuses on career-readiness and one of the core missions of DSU, digital fluency, or skills in the cyber sciences. A DSU degree leads in both. However, university graduates today more than ever will be living out their professional careers in a rapidly changing global economy of ever greater diversity and multidisciplinary interdependence. Research has shown that today’s graduates will average five to seven career changes in their lifetime. Whatever their chosen career, they will live through swiftly evolving modifications in the skills and knowledge required to continue to be successful in their fields. A recent survey revealed that 90 percent of all recent college graduates believed they were well prepared for their jobs. Unfortunately, only half of hiring managers agreed with them. Interestingly, the hiring managers were not concerned about their young employees’ knowledge of the field in which they had landed a job. No, the companies were most concerned about these graduates’ ability to problem solve, critical thinking skills, creativity, writing proficiency, attention to detail, and speaking ability. Those were the skills companies found most lacking in the new grads joining their efforts. While education in a specific field can contribute to these soft skills, it is study and participation more generally in the arts and sciences that zeroes in on them. In his book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Friedman states that “in an age when parts or all of many jobs are constantly going to be exposed to digitization, automation, and outsourcing…it is not only what you know but how you learn that will set you apart. Because what you know today will be out-of- date sooner than you think.” Albert Einstein said, “The greatest scientists are always artists as well.” Decades later, a MacArthur “genius grant” fellow, Robert Bernstein, set out to see if Einstein’s statement was true. He examined the biographies of the top 100 scientists who lived over the last 200 years, including those who led the technology revolution that launched us into this Cyber Age. What he found was that Einstein was totally correct: every single one of the 100 scientists was not only accomplished in her or his field, but in one of the creative arts as well. In this issue of our magazine you will read some thoughtful insights by luminaries in the arts and sciences who are part of our DSU faculty. You will also read about a few highlights of DSU’s many activities and achievements in the arts and sciences. Through these endeavors and others like them, DSU students have multiple opportunities to hone their abilities in “learning how to learn,” to express and develop their creativity, their problem solving and critical thinking skills, their writing and speaking skills, and their global understanding and insight. These are essential to their future and ongoing success in their careers as well as their contributions to their communities as citizens of the world. The arts and sciences are rising at Dakota State University. Warmly, Dr. José-Marie Griffiths President 2 From the Dean Rising programs in the College of Arts & Sciences The Dakota State University College of Arts and be found in the following pages. Sciences has seen a great deal of growth and change We’ve also been able to grow our mathematics and in the past two years and our students are doing some art faculty in the past couple years and are pleased to amazing things. Our digital arts and design program have brought on Mark Spanier, Richard Wicklein, has a great mix of opportunities for students to learn and after many years as an adjunct and instructor, Ms. about and create professional quality graphic design Angela Behrends to do her amazing work as a tenure work: impressive 2D and 3D animations; audio, music, track professor of art. Angela’s work has been exhibited and sound arts; and we have the only film and cinematic around the state and her students are constantly arts program in South Dakota. When the Beacom inspired by her creativity. Our English for New Media Institute of Technology opened, it included a state of program faculty have begun a graduate certificate in the art animation lab with all the high-end computing digital humanities and this fall we will begin offering power one might see in a Pixar studio. Our graphics a new interdisciplinary degree program called Cyber labs expanded, updated their computers, and the studios Leadership and Intelligence. The focus of this major is to designed for students to create and collaborate provide educate students in digital forensics, world affairs, human an environment that W. L. Dow, Beadle Hall’s architect, behavior, and most importantly, leadership. would appreciate. Speaking of leadership, we know our natural sciences But as you might expect, growth and change in students are leaders as we’ve had students named as the College of Arts and Sciences are more than the Goldwater Scholars two years in a row. This highly technology we use and the buildings in which we teach competitive national scholarship demonstrates that and learn. In addition to adding the film program, we our students, even as undergrads, are doing top quality Dr. Benjamin Jones brought a philosopher back to the faculty. Associate scholarly research and getting noticed at international Dean, College of Arts & Sciences Professor Joseph Bottum came to Dakota State research conferences and published in scientific journals. University to teach philosophy and most importantly, Last year’s winner, Ms. Hope Juntunen, and this year’s ethics, to students learning cyber security. In fact, winner, Ms. Vaille Swenson, comprise half of South President Griffiths and I charged him with directing Dakota’s Goldwater scholars for the last two years. The the Classics Institute to do public outreach on the expertise and hard work of the biology and chemistry computer revolution’s impact. The institute will also faculty, led by Dale Droge, Michael Gaylor, and Patrick develop a professional cyber-ethic for our students and Videau have enabled our students to achieve these the wider public. Joe writes weekly columns in an online prestigious awards. So as you can see, the College of Arts newspaper, The Free Beacon, is often invited for radio and Sciences faculty, from philosophy to music to art and and TV interviews, and has been asked to speak at other biology, are guiding our students to new heights. Arts universities around the country. He’s a compelling writer and sciences at DSU are rising. and his thoughts on the importance of the liberal arts can UNIVERSITY ADVANCEMENT Bob Preloger, Interim Vice President Table of Contents Jill Ruhd ‘04, Development Officer Jona Schmidt, Director of Alumni Affairs Arts & Sciences 4 MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS Deb Pauley, Director of the Production Center Campus News Barbara Stacey ‘05, Digital Marketing Coordinator 14 Jane Utecht, Strategic Communications Coordinator Advancing the Mission 20 ATHLETICS Nick Huntimer ‘05, Sports Information Director Athletics 25 PRESIDENT’S OFFICE Kathleen McClatchey, Assistant to the President for 28 Class Notes MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTORS Strategic Projects Dakota State Magazine is published by the DSU Foundation and the Alumni Office and distributed at no cost to over 11,000 alumni, donors, and friends. Send address updates and class notes to: [email protected] or DSU Alumni Office, 820 N Washington Ave., Madison, SD 57042 Cover image: Student artwork from the recent DSU French Film Festival. See page 7 for artwork credits. 3 Arts & Sciences | by Dr. Joseph Bottum, Associate Professor and The Humanities Director of the Classics Institute There’s a curious moment in David Copperfield, Charles Dickens’s classic All of that is true enough. All of 1850 novel about how children grow those defenses suggest real benefits into adults. The young David’s mother to the humanities. And they are all has remarried after the death of David’s completely beside the point. We would father, and the new husband—a need to teach our undergraduates handsome man with the ugly name the liberal arts even if they were not of Mr. Murdstone—is determined particularly useful. For that matter, we to divide his wife from his stepson. would need to provide a grounding in Punishing the boy for any imagined the humanities even if the practical slight, he continually locks David in a effect proved negative, actually slowing room that contains little but his dead the students’ advance toward good jobs. father’s dusty old books. The reason is that the liberal arts As it happens, the books are mostly are only incidentally about practicality novels: Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, in the current job market. We do glimpses into how other people and the like. In desperate boredom and not teach “reading as if for future understand themselves: what goals they a child’s incapacity to understand why employment.” We teach “reading as if seek and what means they are willing he is being rejected, David begins to for life.” The humanities are not about to use to achieve their goals. Literature read the stories. And in their pages, he what our students will do and how gives us an escape from ordinary life receives his inheritance from his true they will think when they are 22 years by extending our imagination into father: the fantastical escape the books old.