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First impressions weren’t misleading for Delaney Baumberger, a first-year graduate student in mechanical engineering at South Dakota State University. When she visited campus as a senior at Blair High School just north of Omaha, Nebraska, the school wasn’t as distant as the 216 miles would suggest. Her dad, Patrick Baumberger, and several uncles had graduated from the SDSU engineering program, “so I grew up hearing about its strong reputation. When it came time to tour colleges in the Midwest, SDSU was an obvious choice to check out.” One experience in particular helped her realize that attending Dad’s alma mater made sense.

South Dakota State University pharmacy students outdid themselves in the 2024 North American Pharmacist Licensure Examination. Dan Hansen, dean of the College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions, said 56 of the 59 Pharm.D. graduates took the exam in 2024, and all 56 passed on their first attempt, giving SDSU a 100% pass rate.

First hosted in 1958-59, the Meadow Brook Seminars at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, served as an historic forum for thought leaders to ensure higher education was meeting the demands of the nation and of the world.

Theater lives by the adage “The show must go on.” But when “on” means on the road, that’s another matter, and when it is 336 miles away at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, that’s another matter yet. But that was the case for 28 South Dakota State University theater students when they presented at the annual event in Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 21.

feel for what it would be like to live on Mars are encouraged to participate in the South Dakota Space Design Competition at South Dakota State University March 8-9. The contest is part of an international event sponsored by Industry Simulation Education, which has been designing aerospace engineering contests since 1984, and is being hosted in South Dakota by SDSU’s Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering.

Transitioning from high school to college can be challenging for anyone, but especially if the high school you went to was 8,000 miles away. Random Nisia, a sophomore mechanical engineering major from Papua New Guinea, freely admits that his first year at South Dakota State University was tough, not so much from an academic standpoint — he had a 3.5 GPA — but from an emotional standpoint. “Being far from home and having to do everything independently was challenging. … Living far away in a new country” brought some homesickness. “You just wanted to be next to the ones you love,” said Nisia, who left behind four siblings and his parents when he arrived in Brookings in August 2023 with 31 others from his tropical Pacific island country.

Selections for the third class of Future Innovators of America Fellowships have been announced by the Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering.

Among the valuable lessons Luke Nichols has learned in college is the truth in the saying “A good night’s sleep lays a foundation for a good day ahead.” “Every single night I close my computer at 8 and read for a little while before I go to sleep a little bit before 9 p.m.,” the civil engineering major from North Liberty, Iowa, said. The senior gets a lot of productivity out of the other 15 to 16 hours in his day. “I seriously prioritize my sleep. Out of all the things I do, I think that provides me the most success. “My efficiency is extremely high. Providing that consistency has allowed me to know exactly what I can do the next day.”

As we walk into the wet cement of 2025, it is appropriate to look back at the marks left by the Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering in 2024. As Dean Sanjeev Kumar noted, it was a year of unprecedented accomplishments and dedicated efforts. Here is a sampling of the 2024 highlights:

South Dakota State University was awarded a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support Native American students through the USDA’s New Beginnings for Tribal Students program. The grant, issued by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, aims to increase the retention and graduation of tribal students attending land-grant universities.