News & Events

South Dakota Zeta Chapter
International Honor Society in Social Sciences

Five Presentation College students have been inducted into the South Dakota Zeta Chapter of Pi Gamma Mu, an International Social Science Honor Society. The new student inductees are Madeline Ellerbusch (Criminal Justice/Psychology), Jordan Kulczyk (Human Services), Jacqueline Lilleodden (Nursing), Harleigh Utecht (Human Services), and Ashleigh Wong (Criminal Justice/Psychology).

Membership in Pi Gamma Mu is open to qualified undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty members.  To qualify for membership, a student must have junior, senior, or graduate standing and have a “B” or better average in at least 20 semester hours of social science classes.

Pi Gamma Mu has 150 chapters located at colleges and universities in the United States and abroad.  This is the ninth year of the South Dakota Zeta Chapter, which now has eighty-three lifetime members, including two former Pi Gamma Mu graduate scholarship recipients.  Dr. Brad Tennant is the faculty sponsor for the Presentation College chapter and serves as the Regional Chancellor for the North/Northwest Region on the Pi Gamma Mu Board of Trustees.

For more information, please contact Dr. Brad Tennant at brad.tennant@presentation.edu.

Aberdeen, S.D. – Presentation College (PC) just released the private institution’s fall enrollment and reported 222 new students across all undergraduate, graduate, and online programs. This is an increase of 69 new students from last fall semester. The college is also seeing an upward trend in total student enrollment.

In total, PC has increased from 584 students in 2019 to 625 this current semester. Not only has the college had an increase in total students, but full-time equivalent (FTE) is up 7.65%.

“We have gone through a lot of changes as a school this past year to position ourselves to meet our goals in terms of enrollment. Nevertheless, like every other college across the country, we had no idea what the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic might be. Our students know that as part of the Saints Family, we are always here for them. We have a tremendously dedicated PC faculty and staff who have been stepping up in these tough times, as these results show,” said Dr. Paula Langteau, Presentation College President.

This year PC has achieved a healthy increase across many of its programs including a 6.7% growth in the Division of Nursing and an outstanding rise in the Division of Social Science and Humanities by adding 39 new students. 

Dr. Marcus Garstecki, PC’s Vice President for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management said, “We are really excited about our enrollment numbers this fall. The college has an increase in on-campus students, as well as the number of students taking online courses. The college has implemented several new recruitment and marketing strategies and those efforts are really paying off for the college. PC saw an increase in new on-campus students during the spring semester and now this fall we surpassed our target for total students. The results are a credit to the efforts of our staff and faculty who made this happen through their hard work. The impact of COVID-19 certainly made student recruitment more challenging, but our great team continued to develop personal relationships with these students while conveying the value of our academic programs and the PC experience. 

Dr. Garstecki added, “While our enrollment numbers are strong the most exciting part is that our students, faculty, and staff are back on campus together. This has been our goal since the start of the pandemic.”  Overall, as a private college in the Midwest, PC has shown great resilience in a year of uncertainty with COVID-19 and the challenges the pandemic brought. Not only has the college remained open to face-to-face classes but has also started all four fall athletic seasons including football, volleyball, and both men’s and women’s soccer. The current student population at the school has many people optimistic about the growth of the college.

Jacob Blake suffered seven gunshots wounds at point blank range by police officers in Kenosha, Wisconsin, over the weekend. Police were called to break up a dispute between two entirely different people. The horror of the unjust shooting was witnessed by Jacob’s three young children. Jacob’s father told the media today that Jacob is now paralyzed from the waist down. While we are grateful Jacob survived, we are deeply saddened by the pain and suffering he and his family are enduring now and will into the future.

Wisconsin is my home state. Kenosha is just south of Milwaukee, where I grew up. The unimaginable is happening all across this country, in all of our neighborhoods. Black men and women are being gunned down.

This morning, I read a statement put out by the Bradford Community Church in Kenosha, yesterday, where cars in an adjoining lot were set on fire in protest. It is one of the most powerful things I have read in response to injustice, followed by protests, and sometimes property damage. Here it is:

We, the members of the clergy of Bradford Community Church Unitarian Universalist, are outraged at the violence perpetuated in the name of law enforcement on our people of color throughout our nation’s history and yesterday in Kenosha in the case of Jacob Blake for whose life we now pray.

Despite the fact that we cannot condone violent response to injustice, we understand and appreciate the anger and frustration that fueled the events of last night. While we are relieved that our church home mostly survived the inferno in the lot next door, we affirm that we would rather lose 100 buildings than one more life to police violence. Some folks have already commented that our decision to display “Black Lives Matter” on our road sign in some way contributed to the fire or that our support of the BLM movement is hypocritical or “un-Christian.” Indeed, all lives do matter to us (that is what “Universalist” means), but given the overwhelming and disproportionate injustice suffered by Americans of color, we are compelled by our faith to speak up and affirm that Black Lives Matter too.

If this is not your faith, so be it, but it is most certainly ours and we ask that all folks be respectful in honoring our sacred calling to speak truth to power, protect the innocent, empower the disenfranchised and promote equity and compassion in human relations.

In the name of love,

Rev. Erik David Carlson

On Behalf of the Bradford Community Church Unitarian Universalist, Kenosha

This aligns with the message of our Catholic mission and faith as well. And, frankly, I could not have said it better. We continue to pray for Jacob Blake, his family, and our nation. We stand together to promote social justice, even as we mourn together the injustices ravaging our country.

At PC, we are here to support one another as we deal with the trauma and agony of these increasingly regular assaults on humanity. One-on-one counseling is available through the office of Rebecca Christiansen. For those in our PC family who wish to come together to grieve and talk through positive ways we can support one another, we will be offering a chance to meet together on WebEx. The date, time and link will be sent out soon.

God Bess!

Dr. L

The right to vote forms the foundation of meaningful participation and leadership.  Most of the South Dakota colleges and universities that women lead today were established decades before women had the right to vote in the United States.  Thankfully, these institutions were open to women seeking college degrees well before ratification of the 19^th Amendment.  It took nearly 70 years to achieve women’s suffrage – and it took another 70 years from that pivotal moment in history for a woman to hold the top leadership position in any of the colleges and universities founded in the 1860s and 1880s.  Four of us are “first” female presidents within the last decade.

Grateful.  There are many who helped pave the path for women to become college and university presidents and other leaders throughout the public and private sector.  We celebrate first and foremost our forebears who supported ratification of the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution.  Their sense of justice and self-worth along with their courage, hard work and resilience, resulted in the largest expansion of voting rights in our country’s history.  Enfranchisement started the long road to changing attitudes about women as full citizens in our democracy who are capable and valued contributors to self-determination.

We also are grateful to female colleagues on our campuses—those who served before us and those with whom we serve today—who were among the “firsts” to lead academic departments, operational functions, governing boards and alumni associations.  Their talents and tenacity paved the path further by demonstrating that women are equally competent and similarly gifted to lead as we partner effectively to develop strategies, manage budgets, recruit and retain talent, make hard decisions, and articulate visions for the future.

Purposeful.  When each of us assumed leadership roles, we were well aware of the trends and challenges in higher education that require more innovation, more partnerships, strategic investments and creative solutions.  We also knew that as women presidents, we would have opportunities within our spheres of influence to address lingering inequities and to empower more women within our organizations and within our broader communities.  Throughout the past decade, we’ve navigated and managed enormous amounts of change to strengthen our colleges and universities, serve more students, and fulfill our institutional missions, all while being intentional and deliberate in fostering the growth and development of more women leaders to overcome barriers that clearly still remain.

The opportunity to lead a college, university, or other organization during good times is exhilarating and deeply fulfilling.  The right to lead during times of crisis is both exhausting and immensely rewarding.  In the year 2020, we have been faced with public health, economic and social crises that have affected our campus communities in ways we never could have imagined.  But women’s struggle for the right to vote also happened amid crises—World War I and the Spanish flu pandemic.  It’s a good reminder of what turbulent times require of all of us.  History is such a good teacher, and provides us critical context.  We will weather the storms and achieve aspirational goals with focus, determination, compassion, and by supporting each other.

Hopeful.  We recognize that the socialization of young women and men is based in part on what they experience and observe in childhood and young adulthood.  This socialization changes with each generation, and we know that the dreams and aspirations of young women today are limitless based on the ongoing progress of the past 100 years.  Many of our women alumni continue to break glass ceilings and become female “firsts” in their chosen professions.  We celebrate them.  We celebrate history while confronting the challenges of the present and looking ahead to the future because our campuses are communities in which young people are prepared to be active and engaged citizens, to contribute in meaningful ways to their workplaces and communities, and to lead. We are inspired by the level of public-mindedness of Generation Z.

In honor of the 100^th Anniversary of the Ratification of the 19^th Amendment, we are promoting the celebratory activities of the Her Vote, Her Voice campaign, including the “Look Up to Her” programming and the lighting of Mt. Rushmore.  We also are planning educational activities on our campuses for Constitution Day, September 17, to reflect on the history of suffrage and voting rights in America and to highlight the importance of active participation in our democratic system of government.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ann Bolman, Western Dakota Tech

Sheila Gestring, University of South Dakota

Dr. José-Marie Griffiths, Dakota State University

Dr. Paula Langteau, Presentation College

Dr. Laurie Nichols, Black Hills State University

Dr. Amy Novak, Dakota Wesleyan University

Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, Augustana University