Dear Alumni and Friends,
It’s a great day to be a Jackrabbit! 
What better phrase is there to show our pride and love for South Dakota State University? Thanks to all the accomplishments we have enjoyed this academic year, I think we say this phrase more now than any other time during my tenure. In this edition of STATE Magazine, you will see we continued to reach our vision of being a premier land-grant university.
SDSU rang in the new year with the excitement and thrill of watching our Jackrabbits football team win its first FCS national championship, 45-21 over rival North Dakota State. We brought the blue to Texas and had an amazing time. Thousands of Jackrabbits came to cheer on the team and celebrate the historic moment, reminding us of all the passion we have for SDSU. It was a premier moment for us all and a storybook ending for Coach Stiegelmeier as he announced his retirement a couple of weeks later. Thank you, Coach Stig, for everything!
The Pride of the Dakotas had a very exciting season with trips to both New York City and Frisco, Texas. The Pride represented South Dakota in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and marched the streets of New York City in front of millions. The Pride also made the trip to Frisco and added to the game’s excitement with its tremendous performance before, during and after the game.
Faculty members Kristi Cammack, Amanda Blair and their team at SDSU West River Research and Extension secured an $80 million grant for the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Initiative. This partnership separates our university and faculty from others. It makes SDSU a premier research university, and the award was recognized nationally by our peers and various media outlets.
Recently, judges from NASA and other experts selected students in the Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering to compete with 14 other teams in the next stage of the $3.5 million Break the Ice Lunar Challenge. SDSU is one of three universities to be selected as the rest of the competition includes teams from established aerospace engineering companies or start-ups. The goal of the competition is to develop technologies and hardware to create water resources and excavation activities needed to build infrastructure on the moon.
SDSU students representing the Department of Geography and Geospatial Sciences won the regional Geography Bowl competition for the third year in a row. SDSU competed in the Great Plains/Rocky Mountains Division, representing geography departments in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Utah, Colorado and Kansas. SDSU junior Elijah Myers qualified for the World Geography Bowl competition in Denver this spring.
Lastly, this fall I was honored with the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Higher Education. This prestigious award recognizes the SDSU Wokini Initiative and reflects the work of many across the university. I am deeply grateful for the support this program has received in its five years.
These are just a few examples of the premier work being done by our faculty, students and staff, and they remind us that our accomplishments stretch from the competition field to the classroom and through our research labs. I am honored and humbled to be president of this great university.
I hope everyone has a great spring, and I look forward to seeing you soon.
Sincerely,
Barry H. Dunn
President
