News at SDState

When Erica Summerfield talks about the growth of South Dakota State University’s agricultural communication program, one word keeps coming up: opportunity. That opportunity has reached a new level with the establishment of the Karen D. Stuck Endowment. On Sept. 25, during a special endowment ceremony, Summerfield, a second-year assistant professor, became the first-ever Karen D. Stuck Endowed Professor of Agricultural Communication.

South Dakota State University’s Bachelor of Science in respiratory care program, housed in the College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions, has earned provisional accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation for Respiratory Care.

Brittney Meyer, professor of pharmacy practice in the College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions at South Dakota State University, recently received an Excellence in Honors Mentorship Award from the Van D. and Barbara B. Fishback Honors College.

Minnesota Avenue in Sioux Falls is starting to look more yellow and blue. South Dakota State University pharmacy and respiratory care students began the spring semester on Jan. 12 in the newly renovated east two-thirds of the SDSU Metro Center at 33rd Street and Minnesota Avenue, after spending the past two years taking classes in the unremodeled portion of the building.

The average person likely has a very specific image in mind for what a laboratory looks like: white coats, protective goggles, blue latex gloves and half-filled beakers abound. An upcoming peer-reviewed journal sponsored by South Dakota State University explores research happening daily in a different setting across campus.

More than half of South Dakota’s landscape, around 24 million acres, is covered with the most abundant ecosystem in the world, rangeland. More than pretty scenery, the complex and varied environment is home to relationships among plants, animals and soil that were formed over millennia to mutually thrive and now play a crucial part in the South Dakota way of life.

South Dakota State University’s two largest relationship-building partners have consolidated into one organization, effective Jan. 1, 2026.

South Dakota State University Theatre and Dance’s fall 2025 musical production of “Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story” has been selected to be presented at the 58th annual Region 5 American College Theater Festival Conference in Rochester, Minnesota, on Jan. 20. To help defray the costs of taking the production to Rochester, a one-night-only fundraising performance of the show will be presented at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 15, at the Fishback Studio Theatre in the Oscar Larson Performing Arts Center on the SDSU campus.

The South Dakota Nurses Association recognized nurses from across the state — including many with ties to South Dakota State University — at its 2025 Convention and Annual Business Meeting.

South Dakota State University’s student-produced literature and arts magazine, Oakwood, has been a community and regional favorite for decades. Thanks to a generous estate gift from Mary F. Buckmiller, the School of English and Interdisciplinary Studies will revamp the publication to continue flourishing in the future. The Mary F. Buckmiller School of English and Interdisciplinary Studies Endowment fund will support the Oakwood in perpetuity.