NDSU News

NDSU and the Saddle and Sirloin Club are scheduled to host the 86th Little International Livestock Contest Feb. 10-11 on the NDSU campus. During the event, Keith D. Bjerke will be recognized as the Agriculturalist of the Year.

The theme for this year’s Little International is “Agriculture in Action.” It is the largest student-run agricultural event in the state, with more than 200 members and 28 student-led committees helping to organize the longstanding tradition.

The two-day event begins at 8 a.m. each day, and will feature a variety of contests and the annual Dance in the Chips. FFA students and 4-H members will compete in livestock competitions on Feb. 10. In addition, NDSU students will participate in showmanship contests Feb. 11 that include beef, equine, sheep and swine. A public speaking competition and ham curing contest also are scheduled. The competitions will be held in Shepard Arena, the NDSU Horse Park, Bison Sports Arena and Memorial Union.

“For students involved in agriculture, the Little International is an imperative part of our collegiate career,” said Jessie Topp, a senior in agricultural communications from Grace City, N.D., who was selected queen for the event. “Being involved in Saddle and Sirloin has given me the opportunity to network with other students who share the same passion for agriculture and work together to put on an event that highlights our industry. The Little International is my way of taking an active role in giving our industry a voice.”

Eric Berg, Saddle and Sirloin adviser and professor of animal science, said, “Obtaining a bachelor of science degree goes beyond the walls of the classroom. Communication, team building and leadership skills are something that every employer is looking for, yet these skills are very hard to teach in a conventional classroom. The students involved with Little I learn the importance of cooperation and organization.”

Bjerke will be honored for his lifetime achievements at the Hall of Fame banquet Feb. 10 at the Ramada Plaza Suites and Convention Center in Fargo. Banquet tickets are $25. For banquet information, contact Alisha Nord at 367-5609.

A native of Northwood, N.D., Bjerke graduated from NDSU in 1961, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in animal husbandry. For 25 years, he and his wife, Marian, owned and operated Spruce Row Farm near Northwood. He was the charter president of the North Dakota Pork Producers Council in 1971.

In 1989, Bjerke moved to Washington, D.C., to serve as administrator for the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service. He also was the executive vice president of the Commodity Credit Corp. Through these positions, he held responsibilities for the delivery of national farm programs in 50 states and Puerto Rico, consisting of 2,776 county offices, more than 38,000 employees and $30 billion of borrowing authority. From 2001-11, Bjerke served as the vice president of University Relations for NDSU, where his duties included university relations, legislative affairs, publication services and community and corporate outreach.

According to Saddle and Sirloin, Bjerke’s efforts have impacted thousands of students and the future of agriculture. He is being recognized as a “tremendous advocate and lobbyist for the agriculture industry in North Dakota and across the country.”

Bjerke and his wife, Marian, live in Casselton, N.D., and have three daughters (Cari, Patricia and Deborah), one son (Christopher), eight grandsons and two granddaughters.

This year’s show manager is Kelcey Holm of Ellendale, N.D. Nick Austin of Westhope, N.D., is the assistant manager. The public is invited to attend all events on both days.

For more information, visit www.ndsusaddleandsirloin.com. The link to the event schedule is http://ndsusaddleandsirloin.com/Schedule_of_Events.html.

NDSU is a part of two U.S. Department of Transportation competitive grants awarded this month.

The grants, each for about $3.5 million, were among only 22 awarded across the country in the University Transportation Centers Program administered by the DOT’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration. Funding from the grants will support work at NDSU’s Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute.

“These grants represent significant support for our work at the Transportation Institute,” said Denver Tolliver, the institute’s associate director. “With the high expectations that come with these awards, there is also a recognition that the work we do at NDSU and with our collaborators has established a foundation for future success.”

“Efficient and safe mobility is critical to North Dakota and the region,” NDSU Provost Bruce Rafert said. “As NDSU continues to build its capacity for high-quality teaching, research and outreach, transportation will continue to be an important part of our overall program.”

One grant is for an NDSU-led collaborative program called the Mountain-Plains Consortium involving eight universities across the Upper Great Plains and Intermountain West. Efforts will range from development of techniques to extend the life of bridges to improved transportation planning for Indian reservations to improved road safety. Partners with NDSU include Colorado State University, South Dakota State University, University of Colorado-Denver, University of Denver, University of Utah, University of Wyoming and Utah State University. NDSU’s share will be about $1.3 million.

The second grant was one of only two awarded nationally to focus specifically on public transportation. NDSU is a partner with the University of Illinois at Chicago and Florida International University in Miami. The University of South Florida in Tampa will lead the effort. The Small Urban and Rural Transit Center, a part of the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute at NDSU, will provide expertise in rural and small urban transportation. NDSU will receive about $700,000 from the grant.

NDSU has led the Mountain-Plains Consortium since 1988, successfully competing three times since then for the designation as a federally funded University Transportation Center. The program has generated a library of more than 200 research publications and has helped establish the successful transportation and logistics graduate program at NDSU. The consortium also has established itself as a leader in using technology for training and outreach.

“Each of the participating universities has key strengths and programs. The consortium will combine them into a comprehensive and coordinated program that addresses key transportation issues in the region,” Tolliver said. The consortium has on-going programs in several areas including transportation and sustainable energy development, bridge monitoring and performance, tribal transportation planning, transit oriented development and urban sustainability, workforce skill development and development of online courses and training.

The Small Urban and Rural Transit Center was established at NDSU in 2002 and has developed nationally recognized programs in rural and small urban transit. Researchers have conducted unique research on transit coordination, mobility needs of elderly in rural areas, use of technology by rural small transit agencies and other topics. Training and outreach by center staff include topics as diverse as transit agency management, tribal transit management, risk management and customer service with staff members conducting nearly 30 training courses in 17 different states during the past year.

“NDSU’s participation in this program will bring a rural or small community focus,” noted Jill Hough, director of the Small Urban and Rural Transit Center. “We will also gain ideas from our partners that may be transferable to the smaller transit providers that we serve. Each of the four partner universities brings unique strengths and accomplishments to this consortium, but by working together we will enhance our overall collective contribution to the transit industry.”

For more information on the grants, contact Tom Jirik, communications coordinator for the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute, at 231-9629 or thomas.jirik@ndsu.edu.

Innovation Week 2012 culminates Thursday, Jan. 26, with the final breakout sessions, keynote address and awards ceremony for Innovation Challenge winners.

The day starts with a breakout session titled “What not to do” from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. in the Memorial Union Prairie Rose room. The speaker is James Carlson, president of JDC Management, a real estate development firm in Fargo. Carlson also is the former CEO of PRACS Institute, a full-service contract research organization that offered pre-clinical, clinical, bioanalytical and statistical research services to serve the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and skin care industries.

“How I moved from concept to marketplace” will be from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. in the Memorial Union Prairie Rose room. Alex Warner, CEO and president of Pedigree Technologies, Dave Batcheller, CEO of Appareo Systems, and Mark Rheault, former CEO of Intelligent InSites, will be the speakers.

The keynote address and Innovation Challenge ’12 awards ceremony will be at 3:30 p.m. in the Memorial Union Great Room. Businessman Tom Walter, CEO of Tasty Catering, will be the speaker. A serial entrepreneur from the Chicago area, Walter has started 29 companies and acquired three more. He is a member of the Chicago Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame.

For more information about Innovation Week, visit www.ndsuresearchpark.com/about/Pages/Events.aspx.

North Dakota State University and the NDSU Research and Technology Park are hosting the third annual Innovation Week, Jan. 23-27, to showcase students’ creative research and development projects.

“Innovation Week showcases our activities at NDSU and allows us to bring in people with new ideas to brainstorm and share,” said Provost J. Bruce Rafert. “We live in a global knowledge economy, and higher education is on the front lines. At NDSU, innovation is everywhere.”

A new component is the Innovation Challenge ’12. More than 60 NDSU students representing 24 teams submitted ideas for new, progressive products or services. The teams are competing for cash prizes – $5,000 for first place, $2,500 for second place and $1,000 for third place.

“Innovation Week provides a platform to raise awareness for entrepreneurship on campus,” said Tony Grindberg, executive director of the NDSU Research and Technology Park. “By adding a competition to the week, students have the opportunity to showcase the innovative work being done on campus and to drive entrepreneurship through innovation.”

The teams’ posters will be on display Wednesday, Jan. 25, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., in the Memorial Union Prairie Rose Room. Oral presentations will be the same day, 10 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., in the Memorial Union Great Room and Century Theater.

“We encourage the public to attend the presentations taking place on Wednesday so they can see firsthand the innovative projects that the students will be competing on,” Grindberg said. “New software technologies, coating advancements and energy self-sustainability platforms are just a few of the projects that will be showcased.”

The Innovation Challenge ’12 awards ceremony and the Innovation Week keynote address will be Thursday, Jan. 26, at 3:30 p.m., in the Memorial Union Great Room. Businessman Tom Walter, CEO of Tasty Catering, will be the keynote speaker. A serial entrepreneur from the Chicago area, Walter has started 29 companies and acquired three more. He is a member of the Chicago Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame.

Innovation Week also will include breakout sessions to help students learn what resources are available for aspiring business owners and to interact with members of the local business community. Topics include how to turn an idea into a business opportunity, how to finance a venture and how to find customers. Visit www.ndsuresearchpark.com/about/Pages/Events.aspx for a full list of events, which are all open to the public.

NDSU is a student-focused, land-grant, research university listed among the top 108 research universities in the nation by the Carnegie Foundation.

The NDSU Research and Technology Park and Technology Incubator are home to fast-paced, high-growth companies that promote technology-based economic development in North Dakota. The companies compete globally or have the potential to. To operate within the park or Technology Incubator, a company needs to be involved in the advancement and development of new technology and be willing to establish a working relationship with NDSU. The companies work in the fields of material sciences, biosciences and life science technology, information technology, nanotechnology, and advanced manufacturing and sensors/micro-electronics.

NDSU was selected by the Higher Learning Commission as one of 22 colleges and universities in the North Central region to test a new accreditation model that evaluates what a school is doing to improve student learning.

The model uses learning outcome benchmarks from the “Degree Qualification Profile.” To help administrators, faculty and staff understand the model and how to use it; the profile’s co-author Paul Gaston will visit NDSU on Thursday, Jan. 12. He will present a campus pedagogical luncheon titled, “Academically Adroit: Strengthening Student Learning Through Greater Intentionality,” from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Memorial Union Great Room. All faculty, staff and graduate students are welcome to attend.

“The new model is about taking something we’re doing on campus, emphasizing student learning and seeing how we can improve the process,” said Larry Peterson, professor of history, philosophy and religious studies, who also is a member of the Core Undergraduate Learning Experience committee. “This model says, ‘let’s be thoughtful about what will help us do our most important work – student learning – and do it better.’” The current accreditation process, which occurs every 10 years, essentially approves a college’s or university’s past performance rather than considering quality improvement for the future.

The Higher Learning Commission invited a variety of schools – small, large and community colleges – to test the “Degree Qualifications Profile.” The schools have an accreditation date in either 2015 or 2016 and an unblemished accreditation record. Together, the schools are called Cohort Three of the Pioneer Institutions of the Pathways Demonstration project.

“It’s definitely an honor to be selected,” Peterson said. “It means we’re recognized as a school that’s done exceptionally well in previous accreditations.”

Gaston, trustee’s professor and former provost at Kent State, describes the “Degree Qualification Profile” as a framework that “illustrates clearly what students should be expected to know and be able to do once they earn their degrees.” The profile hopes to establish a set of minimum standards in area such as communication, quantitative reasoning and major-specific skills for all American colleges and universities. For example, “If you say that your students will be able to communicate clearly, what are the standards by which you judge this?” Peterson said.

As a test school, NDSU is required to complete a quality improvement project by spring 2013 and an assurance visit in fall 2015. For its quality-improvement project, NDSU is evaluating its capstone courses using a template to assess how course activities for each major match the applied learning outcomes for the “Degree Qualifications Profile.” Peterson said it requires departments to think in reverse. “We have to build backwards,” he said. “If these student learning outcomes are the goal, how do we get there?” For the assurance visit, a team of higher education leaders will visit NDSU for a more focused and scaled down version of the current accreditation process.

Gaston has written extensively on the Bologna Process, academic strategic planning and assessing educational outcomes. He earned his doctorate in English from the University of Virginia and has been both a Woodrow Wilson and DuPont Fellow.

During his visit, he also will meet with NDSU’s Core Undergraduate Learning Experiences team, a Faculty Senate ad hoc committee, reviewing general education requirements and assisting with accreditation, and with NDSU heads and chairs.

To register for the luncheon, visit

https://epayment.ndus.nodak.edu/C22800_ustores/web/store_main.jsp?STOREID=49&SINGLESTORE=true and add the luncheon to your “cart.”  Then check out.  The luncheon is free. The deadline to register is before Jan. 9.

For more information, contact Peterson at larry.r.peterson@ndsu.edu or 231-8824.

Burnett

Birmingham

Elizabeth Birmingham and Ann Burnett have been named associate deans for the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at North Dakota State University, effective Jan 9. Birmingham is associate professor of English, and Burnett is professor of communication and director of the Women and Gender Studies Program at NDSU.

As associate deans, Birmingham and Burnett will be responsible for promoting grant-funded research, supporting faculty professional development and mentoring, and fostering an environment of diversity, equity and inclusivity. They also will lead efforts to strengthen the college’s honors program, enhance general education offerings and recruit and retain talented students.

“Dr. Burnett and Dr. Birmingham were selected as associate deans because they are highly talented and respected scholars, teachers and professional citizens who can serve as models of excellence for our college,” said Kent Sandstrom, dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. “They both bring strong skills in communication, problem solving and leadership to their new positions. They also have significant interest and experience in mentoring faculty and students. I am pleased that they are willing to serve as administrative leaders for our college, and I look forward to working closely with them.”

Birmingham earned bachelor’s degrees in English and art history from Dominican University, formerly Rosary College, of River Forest, Ill. She earned a master’s degree in English and a doctorate in rhetoric and professional communication from Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. Before beginning graduate studies, she was a Fulbright Fellow in architectural history at Australian National University, Canberra. Birmingham joined the English department at NDSU in January 2001 as assistant professor. In August 2007, she was promoted to associate professor.

Burnett earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from The Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colo., a master’s degree in communication from the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, Colo., and a doctorate in communication from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah. Before joining NDSU’s communication department in 1997, she was assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., and associate professor at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Neb. Burnett was named director of Women and Gender Studies in 2002 and was promoted to professor in 2010.

NDSU winter commencement ceremonies are scheduled for Friday, Dec. 16, at 4 p.m. in the Fargodome. The location will change to the Bison Sports Arena if the Bison football team hosts an NCAA playoff game during the week of commencement.

A total of 733 graduate, professional and undergraduate students are eligible to participate, and 520 have indicated they intend to march in the ceremony.

“This will be NDSU’s largest fall graduating class,” said Rhonda Kitch, associate registrar. “We’ll celebrate the academic success of more than 730 students at the ceremony.”

If the Bison host an NCAA football playoff game that weekend, the ceremony will take place at the Bison Sports Arena, which is adjacent to the Fargodome. According to Registrar Kristi Wold-McCormick, “Planning is underway to ensure that commencement is successful and memorable for our degree candidates and their guests, regardless of venue.” She said the location will be confirmed and communicated to graduates and the public by Sunday.

Adlina Paramarta, who will receive a Bachelor of Science in chemistry, has been selected to speak as the class representative. A dedicated international student who carries a 3.99 grade-point average, Paramarta is a native of the island of Java in Indonesia whose family came to Fargo in 2006, where she graduated from Fargo North High School. She has been highly involved in campus activities. She has been a College of Science and Mathematics Ambassador and participated in the International Student Association, Chemistry Club, Tennis Club and Phi Eta Sigma Honor Society. In addition, she served as a master of ceremonies for NDSU’s International Night.

The commencement soloist will be Chase Daniel Burkhart, a graduate of Grand Forks, N.D., Central High School, who is receiving a Bachelor of Music in vocal music education. He participated in numerous music performing ensembles such as NDSU Concert Choir, Madrigal Singers, Statesmen, Bison Arts Singers, University Band and the Opera Workshop productions of “Pirates of Penzance,” “Secret Garden” and “Die Fledermaus.” He also co-founded a student organization called the NDSU Songwriters Guild.

For commencement details and location updates, visit www.ndsu.edu/commencement.

NDSU is scheduled to host the first Northern Plains BEST Robotics regional competition on Saturday, Dec. 10, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in the Bentson-Bunker Fieldhouse at NDSU. BEST stands for “Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology.”

Sixteen teams from Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota schools will demonstrate how well their remote-controlled robots perform. The teams also will be judged on team exhibits, marketing presentations, engineering notebooks, spirit and sportsmanship.

The robots were designed and built through BEST Robotics, a program to encourage students to pursue careers in engineering, science and technology through a science and engineering-based robotics competition.

The 2011 program kicked off in September when 40 middle school and high school teams from three local hubs each received a kit of equipment and parts and a set of game rules. The teams were from Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Canada.

Five weeks later, the teams tested their robots. Six weeks later, they participated in the robotics competition at their hub. Teams that advanced to the Northern Plains BEST regional competition either had the top-performing robot or won the BEST Award, which is based on a project engineering notebook, marketing presentation, team exhibit and interview, spirit and sportsmanship, and robot performance.

The three local hubs are Bison BEST at NDSU, which has been in existence for five years, and two new hubs, Wildcat BEST at the North Dakota State College of Science, Wahpeton, and Blue Hawk BEST at Dickinson State University. The addition of Wildcat BEST and Blue Hawk BEST made it possible to offer the regional competition at NDSU for the first time.

Students participating in the competition will be on the NDSU campus Dec. 8-10. In addition to competition activities, they will tour the campus, meet with other BEST teams at a social and pizza party, and attend a Fargo Force hockey game.

The robotics competition is free and open to the public. The event will also be streamed live at www.cateyenls.com.