South Dakota State University’s presence in the state’s largest city grew this past August, when SDSU’s Ness School of Management and Economics established Ness School Downtown, an outpost located at Startup Sioux Falls, 100 E. Sixth St.
Through a partnership with Startup, the Ness School is using the outpost to host speakers’ series, workshops and career fairs, facilitate career coaching and academic advising, and otherwise serve as a point of contact with stakeholders in the metro area.
SDSU President Barry Dunn said Startup Sioux Falls has been a natural fit for the Ness School to extend its land-grant mission beyond its Brookings campus. The original land-grant mission focused on agricultural, technical and classical studies, providing practical education with direct relevance to citizens’ daily lives.
“We’re still doing that, but we’ve expanded and modernized it to serve the quickly changing demographics and economic growth of South Dakota’s largest city,” Dunn said. “It’s about creating better access to where the most people live.”
Ness School Director Joe Santos said, “We founded Ness School Downtown on a simple proposition. As the academic business unit in a public, land-grant, comprehensive research university, the Ness School is well positioned and obligated to advance knowledge by embracing the business and cultural epicenter of our state. To this end, an outpost in Sioux Falls is an ideal instrument.”
“My colleagues and I see Ness School Downtown as a space for knowledge transfer, bringing what we do in research to a wide audience through outreach programming,” he said. “Through Ness School Downtown, my colleagues and I are engaging the Sioux Falls metro-area business community and business audiences more broadly to think about challenges and opportunities in the innovation ecosystem and what we could learn from fundamental principles of accounting, business law, economics, entrepreneurship, finance, management, marketing and real estate, for example.”
Additionally, the school is using the space to connect SDSU students and the Sioux Falls business community.
The outpost’s ribbon-cutting and inaugural event on Sept. 29 was the interactive workshop “Westside Story: A Tale of Determination, Entrepreneurship and Innovation.” Attendees analyzed key elements of a successful entrepreneurial venture, including innovation, marketing identification and sustainable growth, with guest Dillon Kjerstad, who became an entrepreneur when he acquired a single pharmacy; now he operates in eight locations.
In partnership with SDSU Extension, the unit that executes the university’s land-grant outreach mission, the Ness School will hire a coordinator to manage Ness School Downtown’s day-to-day operations.
