Dakota State University

Dawn Bonham '92

Elementary Education (BSE)

Dawn Bonham has come full circle.

This is her 30^th year in teaching, but she has started a new position in a new school with a new group of students.

“Many people who are 30 years into their career want to stay where they are, but now I’m learning all brand-new curriculum, and that’s ok,” she said. “I keep learning that way.”

Learning new things is what she’s been doing for the last three decades.

She started college at SDSU, an early childhood education major; she was also part of the co-op education program and earned her elementary education degree at Dakota State. “DSU gave me the foundation to teach students,” she said. Dwayne Pecks, the student-teacher director at the time, emphasized the importance of teaching the student, not the material.

This idea that “people matter most” is the concept they instill in the students at her new school, Jefferson High School in Sioux Falls (SD), where she is the Applied Arts Department Chair.

“I’m so fortunate to have the opportunity to come here [to Jefferson],” she said, where she will teach five classes, and oversee the applied arts department, which includes a number of elective subjects -- computers, Family and Consumer Sciences, business, woodworking, auto, welding, and ROTC.

Bonham said, “there is such a wide variety in applied arts, but we welcome the chance to pull together as one. I’m so excited for the opportunities we have here, to teach what I teach and have the leadership role that I have.”

Her journey to this place in her career began at Bonesteel Fairfax (SD) Elementary after graduating from Dakota State in 1992. When former Governor Bill Janklow brought a Technology Teaching and Learning (TTL) Academy to South Dakota schools in the early 2000s, she took the basic and advanced TTL.

Bonham calls this “a pivotal point” in her career, and she credits Dakota State with making it possible.

The leading-edge technology classes she took at DSU provided an “awesome foundation” for the TTL classes. In turn, “TTL opened the door for opportunities in what I could do,” including teaching technology and serving as a technology coordinator throughout her career.

After 10 years teaching elementary school in her hometown of Pierre, SD, she was ready for a change. “I was looking for more,” she said, and her technology experience provided that new opportunity, a position in the Sioux Falls School District teaching career and technical education (CTE).

“It was probably the change I needed to keep me in education.”

She moved to Sioux Falls, taught CTE for 11 years at Patrick Henry Middle School, and loved it, but when the applied arts chair position presented itself at Jefferson, she took it. “It should be a fun year,” she stated.

Her advice for students is to “believe in yourself, it makes all the difference,” she said.

“I’ll try anything once,” she said, and wants to let students know “there’s a lot of opportunities out there, and you don’t know what you can do until you try.”

For her new students at Jefferson, “I hope the students appreciate the new school and take advantage of their opportunities.”

Elementary Education (BSE)

Natalie Van Wyhe '20

Exercise Science (BS)

A lifelong long dream of becoming a firefighter has come true for Natalie Van Wyhe. A May 2020 graduate, Van Wyhe was inspired by her father, who served as a volunteer fireman in her hometown of Canton, SD.

“When I walked into Dakota State, I told them right away what my plans were and they were very helpful getting me there,” Van Wyhe said.

She completed her exercise science degree in just three years so she could get on the 2020 hiring schedule for firefighters in Sioux Falls, SD.

Van Wyhe appreciated the small program size, which allowed her to form close relationships with her professors. Exercise Science faculty members Kari Hall and Dr. Scott Staiger both had a positive impact on Van Wyhe.

Hall helps students pair up with tutors if they’re struggling with science classes, and encourages students to find what they are good at and capitalize that throughout the program, Van Wyhe explained.

Staiger helped her get an internship at the Madison Community Center, where she worked as a personal trainer and group fitness instructor.

Hall and Staiger also let Van Wyhe build assignments and projects around her goal of becoming a firefighter. This let her have a more individualized plan, while many of her classmates focused on athletic training and physical therapy career goals.

“Both of the professors have been good about checking in on me and where I’m at with my dream,” she said.

Additionally, Career and Professional Development assisted her with building her résumé and creating cover letters.

“Dakota State has been a huge asset in getting me hired and feeling more comfortable even just with interviews,” she shared. Her education at DSU prepared her for the process of becoming a firefighter.

The application process for firefighters opened in July 2020, followed by a civil service exam. After Van Wyhe passed the exam, she moved on to the interviewing process, followed by the physical ability test, which is done to make sure that the applicant is physically ready for the demands of the job. Next, she had to complete drug testing, a background check, and a medical exam. Finally, Van Wyhe got the offer in November 2020 and attended a 16-week training academy.

In mid-May, she graduated from the program and immediately began working – taking medical calls, fire calls, whatever comes in.

In addition to her job as a firefighter, Van Wyhe coaches cross country for Canton High School and has a personal training business, Tenacious Training. Her degree and internship helped prepare her to run her own business and work with clients.

Exercise Science (BS)

Matthew Ingram

Assistant Professor of Communication Studies

As an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, Matthew Ingram is dedicated to helping students gain professional communication skills they can use throughout their lives.

His dedication to teaching is bolstered by his own desire to learn and improve through professional development. Over the past year, Ingram completed the Association of College and University Educator’s (ACUE) Effective Practice Framework certificate, a series of four courses, each six-eight weeks long.

“I was able to engage with a community of faculty-learners from all over the globe, try out new teaching practices backed by current pedagogical research, and embrace online learning and teaching with enthusiasm,” he shared.

The four courses from Effective Practice Framework are: Creating an Inclusive and Supportive Online Learning Environment; Promoting Active Learning Online; Inspiring Inquiry and Preparing Lifelong Learners in Your Online Course; and Designing Student-Centered Courses Online. The completion of these courses earned Ingram a Certificate in Effective College Instruction.

He described the process as “one of the most valuable pedagogical experiences I’ve had this past year.”

The courses had two tracks – one for face-to-face instruction and another for online learning. Ingram chose online due to the impact of COVID-19.

“One of the most important things I learned from ACUE across the courses is really building a connection with students, talking with them, and having more collaboration,” he said.

Throughout the courses, Ingram was able to try out different techniques in his classes. An example of something he will be implementing in his future courses is micro-lectures of seven minutes or less. He described this as especially beneficial for online students with varying schedules.

He will also be focusing on transparency in the classroom, so students know how assignments will be graded, what students can take away from the assignment, and how it relates to the entire course.

Additionally, he will be focusing on making sure every student takes something away from the class, no matter their background.

For example, with the general education course requirement “Fundamentals of Speech,” every student will come in at different levels of preparation. Over the summer, he had adult learners, traditional college students, and high school students in the course.

“We all communicate at a basic level, but we’re really working on the art of communication and being more effective,” Ingram explained.

The variety of backgrounds of his students this summer encouraged him to design assignments that allow for opportunities and options. For instance, Ingram allows students to select speeches that reflect their interests and passions. And for online discussion forums, he offers multiple discussion prompts to pick from when engaging in online conversations. Giving students the ability to make choices and have a say in the types of assignments and ways they engage in the course aims to help students persist in online learning by feeling inspired and motivated.

“ACUE helped me navigate one of the most challenging academic years for students and faculty as we’ve worked hard to help students adapt to new forms of learning (hybrid, online, co-modal), fostered flexibility and understanding, and helped work with our campus community to help students persist in their education,” - Matthew Ingram

The training is already paying off with positive student feedback from his recent courses. Students shared appreciation for how knowledgeable and responsive Ingram was throughout his courses, the inclusive, kind, and safe environment he maintained, and the timely constructive feedback he provided. One student added that the course helped them see the type of teacher they want to be.

Ingram will be sharing what he learned from the ACUE courses through a Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) workshop session and a session through the College of Arts & Sciences at DSU this fall.

In addition to the four courses, Ingram is completing a course on inclusive teaching for equitable learning through ACUE.

BUSINESS: MARKETING (BBA)

Alexis Kulm '23

Cyber Operations (BS)

DSU’s GenCyber camp piqued Alexis Kulm’s interest in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) so much so that she decided to attend Dakota State University and major in cyber operations. In the future, she hopes to work in digital forensics at a private company.

Kulm, a junior from Sioux Falls, SD, chose cyber operations because the major sounded the most interesting. “I was excited to learn all things ‘cyber.’”

The professors at DSU have made learning all things cyber enjoyable for Kulm. The small campus environment and helpful faculty have made a difference for her. This has also taught her to always ask for help.

She is particularly thankful for her relationship with Dr. Ashley Podhradsky, who has made quite the impact.

“She has been a wonderful mentor and is always willing to do everything she can to help,” she said.

Outside of the classroom, Kulm recommends students get involved with clubs and organizations on campus. Each year Student Affairs sponsors an activity fair, where clubs can introduce themselves to students.

“Being involved can give you a sense of community and involvement with the campus, and you can make new friends,” she said.

She is a member of CybHER, which is dedicated to empowering, motivating, educating, and changing the perception of girls and women in cybersecurity.

Other advice Kulm has for current and future students is to go to campus-held events, which are free and fun.

“If you’re an incoming freshman keep your door open the first couple of days,” she added. “It’s a good way to meet people since they can introduce themselves to you and get conversations started.”

Cyber Operations (BS)

Mandy Parpart

Director of Student Engagement and Leadership

“The joy of this job has always been that people have allowed me to make the job what I wanted it to be,” adding new things every year to make it fresh, and to connect with colleagues and students.

“If I have some crazy idea, people are willing to jump on board and we make it happen.” If there are challenges, “we focus on what we can do, and come up with solutions.”

Parpart started at Dakota State 19 years ago as Assistant Director of Student Activities and Residence Hall Director and is now the Director of Student Engagement and Leadership.

Throughout the years, “I have been lucky enough to have many mentors in my life who believed in me and pushed me to take on leadership roles. Because of that, I strive to create opportunities for students to become better leaders, and encourage them to do more than they thought they could.

Students don’t have to have the title of leader to make an impact. “People can lead from all parts of an organization.” In fact, “there’s no real recipe to be a successful leader,” Parpart said.

In fact, “leadership is a mix, and your personality has to be included because you have to be that genuine person, with a little bit of vulnerability so people know you’re still human.”

This can make leadership a difficult concept, so Parpart started a DSU chapter of the National Society of Leadership and Success in 2015. Through a step-by-step process, students develop goals through peer groups which encourage and help them on steps to achieve those goals.

“If students are ready for a challenge, I will support them and keep challenging them, but if that’s not something they’re interested in, I will help them where they are,” she said.

She meets students where they are, quite literally, at a number of campus events. That’s one of the things she enjoys about the job.

“I like that every day is different,” she said. “I like the excitement of the start of school, the traditions with orientation, Homecoming, Family Weekend, and Day of Service, so I get to dabble in a lot of really cool things.”

There are cool opportunities for students, too.

“Students can get so much more out of their college experience if they put something into it,” she said, by joining a club, getting involved in residence life events, or in the community.

Parpart models this in her personal life. She works part-time at Valiant Living, a Madison, SD non-profit organization that serves people with disabilities. She started the job to pay some bills, and now says it has changed her life in ways she could never have imagined, even though it’s just a part-time job.

“It fills my cup.”

Originally from Delano, MN, Parpart graduated from St. Cloud State and has a master’s degree in strategic leadership from Black Hills State, but she has grown roots at Dakota State.

“It’s impossible for me to leave.” She can’t even answer the question of what she will do in another 19 years or so when she could retire, but after some thought said she will try to find ways to make a difference.

“I don’t ever see myself being still and not giving back to the community in some way.”

Sammy Drummond '21

Physical Science (BS)

Throughout his time at DSU, recent graduate Sammy Drummond definitely made an impact. He was a successful student-athlete, excelled in the classroom, and was a vital part of DSU’s expanding culture of undergraduate research.

“Sammy has been a delight to mentor,” said Dr. Michael Gaylor, Associate Research Professor of Chemistry. “His passion and drive for achieving the highest levels of research and scholarly productivity has been unprecedented in my research tenure at DSU.”

Gaylor was able to treat Drummond as he would an experienced graduate student during his 1-year stint in the Gaylor Lab conducting. The research focused on the origins of life chemistry in support of a large grant award to DSU from the National Science Foundation and South Dakota EPSCoR. Gaylor noted that Drummond “always generates interesting and provocative data sets that continually spawn ever more exciting and novel avenues of research inquiry for our team.”

Through his research with Gaylor, Drummond has been a recipient of multiple academic awards, multiple research grant awards, lead author on 15 conference papers, and two papers just accepted for publication in the high-impact international peer-reviewed journals Astrobiology and Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres. And he is the first author on a manuscript in the final stages of internal review for submission to the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, according to Gaylor. “Such sophisticated and impactful contributions to the scientific literature by an undergraduate student are truly remarkable (and rare),” he added.     

In addition to working with Gaylor, Drummond completed physics research with Dr. James Maloney, focusing on shielding (protection from radiation) on future NASA missions. NASA is considering different options for propulsion to Mars, and with different methods come different issues, he explained. “It relates to the new propulsion methods, and how we can protect the spaceship and also astronauts from those new issues,” Drummond said.

Maloney and Drummond utilized an automated process to run simulations based on different shielding parameters, allowing for quicker processing of data. They developed a program that picks out the best results from the simulations and then generates new parameters based on those results, Drummond shared.

This research experience has prepared him for the next step in his education.

“This has been very useful for me to understand how research actually works in the real world, in an academic setting, rather than just in a classroom lab,” he said. He is also appreciative of Dakota State’s small program size, which allowed him to develop really close relationships with his professors.

Drummond, a physical science major at DSU, was accepted to 11 graduate programs across the country, including Dartmouth. In August he will be moving on to earn his PhD in chemical engineering at the University of South Carolina. With his education there, he hopes to become a leading scientist in an emerging field and deal with the major problems of our time, like energy issues.

“The demand for energy is obviously increasing and we have to make decisions about how to improve our efficiency,” he said.

He hopes to help solve problems related to the energy field, so he can provide his future family with the ability to live a high-quality life.