casnewsfall19

THE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES continued to make great strides this fall! The Jewett Regional Science Education Center was inaugurated as a new gateway to campus. Faculty are moving forward with proposals for new undergraduate and graduate programs in communications, English, languages, science and social science, for example, while continuing to maintain the quality of existing programs. To support those efforts, new instructor and assistant professor positions have been created and existing vacancies filled in biology, communications and sociology, as well as a new position of STEM Outreach Coordinator. Suffice to say, it is an exciting time for the college and an exciting time to be at Northern! Dear Friends of NSU’s College of Arts and Sciences, NORTHERN STATE UNIVERSITY | FALL 2019 NEW PROGRAMS The S.D. Board of Regents recently approved new programs for NSU, including minors in creative writing and social work and certificates in quantitative analytics and Germans from Russia. Proposals for several other undergraduate and graduate programs are currently under consideration, including biochemistry, English and English education, film studies, global languages and culture, public relations, science and science education, and social science education. SLIGHTLY OVER 10 YEARS AGO, a small group of science faculty generated an “action plan” to serve as a working document for the department, but also to provide objectives and goals tied to a National Science Foundation (NSF) Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) grant. This action plan, called the “Center for Environmental Studies,” outlined strategic efforts that the department planned in order to build curricula, increase student numbers, generate faculty lines and establish rapport/outreach within the community. Campus leadership received this document, and were very receptive and appreciative of our efforts; it was a guide they could follow to facilitate growth on campus by working with leadership in Pierre. We suggested curricular changes and staffing needs in the sciences, but also discussed infrastructure to help build these capacities, including a new greenhouse and science building. We built a greenhouse at our old facility several years ago, and now we have a new science building that opened in August 2019. Our “action plan” was widely successful, to say the least, but could not have been achieved without the leadership and guidance of NSU administration and community partners. Our measure of success is the number of students majoring in the sciences. When I started in 2007, we had 78 biology majors. Today, we have two to three times this number, in just biology. Another measure of success is the number of degree programs, outreach activities and other related activities we offer. New courses, such as histology and human biology, and new certificates, such as quantitative analytics, are now a part of the biology repertoire. We are establishing new collaborations with other institutions, e.g., in engineering, and new degrees, e.g., a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry and a graduate certificate in the sciences. Now, the science programs are housed in the new, two-story Jewett Regional Science Education Center. The state-of-the-art facility will enhance research and science education for the entire region, and will also support community outreach. We will offer three summer camps for middle school students and three teacher workshops at the science facility. We hope to generate interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields by providing exciting experiential opportunities for these groups. Northern invited dignitaries, including Harvey Jewett IV, to the Jewett Regional Science Education Center ribbon-cutting ceremony on Sept. 12. On that date, we celebrated the opening of the first standalone academic building constructed on campus in 40 years. The public got a chance to tour the building at an open house on Oct. 17. There is a buzz of excitement on campus as a result of all these changes. An anatomy student, Rachel Guthmiller, said, “The new biomedical laboratory has truly enhanced THE HARVEY C. JEWETT IV REGIONAL SCIENCE EDUCATION CENTER To explain the significance of the recent opening of the Harvey C. Jewett IV Regional Science Education Center at NSU, I would like to outline the history of its conception. DEAN Joshua Hagen