Northern State University’s Rising Scholars Program is a dual-creditenrollment program which provides highschool students with the opportunity to take college-level courses and receive both college credit and high-school credit for those courses. The program was established in 2005 and is open to junior and senior high-school students. The Rising Scholars Program offers two options. In the first option, the courses are taught at the student’s own high school during the regular high-school day. These courses are taught by highly qualified high-school faculty who must meet the qualifications of adjunct faculty at NSU (a Master’s degree and significant graduate course work in the discipline). The courses use a college-level textbook and corresponding syllabus. Each course is assigned an NSU faculty mentor who is an expert in that subject area. The mentors work with the high-school teachers to ensure that the offering is a college-level course. In the second option, local or regional high-schools students take courses on the NSU campus. Students may register for any scheduled course for which they have met the prerequisites. In this case, students pay regular tuition and fees, but may qualify for available scholarships. There are significant benefits to students participating in the program. After highschool graduation, as entering college freshmen, these students will have college courses credited on their NSU transcripts, thereby reducing the time and cost needed to complete their college degrees. The courses are offered at a greatly reduced tuition, with corresponding savings to the students enrolled in the program. In addition, the program provides an excellent opportunity for the students to be challenged academically throughout the duration of their last two years of high school. The students taking courses on campus also have the opportunity to learn about college life while still living at home, which will help them adjust to the challenges of the college experience. The Rising Scholars Program has experienced significant growth. The student enrollments in the program have more than doubled in the last three years, from an enrollment of 117 students in Fall 2008 to 269 students in the Fall of 2011. Currently, there are twelve courses offered in seven South Dakota high schools. The courses include English Composition, Introduction to Literature, Biology, Chemistry, U.S. History, Art, Web Authoring, and Calculus. The Rising Scholars Program is under the direction of Ms. Terry Piatz. She can be reached at terry.piatz@northern.edu or 605626-7197. NSU Rising Scholars Program Enrollments Continue to Grow The new accelerated nursing option at NSU will be open to the first cohort of students starting in January 2013. South Dakota State University has established an accelerated nursing site here in collaboration with NSU. All the classes and offices will be housed at NSU. The accelerated nursing program is a twelve-month curriculum in which students with an existing bachelor’s degree complete all the required nurse coursework for a Bachelor’s in Science in Nursing (BSN). Students will have to apply to SDSU to be admitted into the program. The required coursework for a BSN is sixtytwo credits, including clinical work to be completed at Avera St. Luke’s hospital or the Sanford Clinic in Aberdeen. The requirements for the program are an overall GPA of 2.8 and a GPA of 3.0 (with grades no lower than a C) in the pre-nursing coursework. Upon completion of the program, the students will receive a BSN from SDSU. The goal of the program is to have forty students per calendar year. Accelerated Nursing is an intensive program, but worth the time investment since there is a need for nurses in northeastern South Dakota, particularly with the growing community of Aberdeen. Information regarding the Accelerated Nursing Program in Aberdeen can be found at http://www. sdstate.edu/nurs/programs/undergraduate/ bachelors/aberdeen.cfm. Dr. Alyssa Kiesow, NSU Professor of Biology, is the program’s contact person and advisor. The first deadline for applicants is September 25, 2012. NSU expects to see enrollment growth, as students seeking a four-year degree become interested in qualifying for this program. Mr. Daryl Kosiak joined NSU faculty in 2012 as Instructor of Sociology. Following graduation from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota with Bachelor of Arts degree with majors in History and Political Science, Kosiak served as a high-school social-studies teacher and coach in northeastern South Dakota. After graduating from the University of North Dakota (UND) School of Law in Grand Forks, he was admitted to the North Dakota Bar and worked in southeastern North Dakota in private practice and as a state prosecutor. From 1986 through 2009 he worked in several different positions as an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Prisons. Following retirement from government service, Kosiak enrolled in the Ph.D. in Criminal Justice program at the UND. He has completed all course work necessary for a Ph.D. and continues to work on his dissertation. While in Grand Forks, he taught college-level criminal-justice courses at UND and the University of Minnesota, Crookston. During his legal and teaching career, Kosiak wrote several articles in criminal justice and is the co-author of a college textbook on corrections. Dr. Anthony M. Wachs, native of Aberdeen, was hired as the Director of Forensics in 2011. He just received his Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Duquesne University this spring. Dr. Wachs’ areas of emphasis are the rhetoric and philosophy of technology, and the rhetoric and philosophy of interpersonal and organizational communication. Wachs earned his M.A. in Speech Communication from Kansas State University in 2008, and completed his B.S. in Political Science from Black Hills State University in 2005. In his doctoral dissertation, Wachs connects Marshall McLuhan’s work on the classical and medieval trivium to McLuhan’s media theory. His research agenda is focused upon utilizing the classical and medieval trivium tradition as a basis for understanding technology and culture in the twenty-first century. In particular, he is interested in transcending the problematics of thought and being since the rejection of this tradition within the Protestant Reformation, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and within Postmodernism. New Faculty at NSU Accelerated Nursing Program
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