DSU alumna Jodi Neuharth to join Academic Hall of Fame
October 23, 2025
Jodi Neuharth (Elementary Education and Special Education ’08) is the first alumna to be inducted into the Dakota State University Academic Hall of Fame.
Neuharth chose to attend DSU for its smaller campus and school size, and for its history as a teacher school.
“At DSU, I was able to grow not only in my education but as an individual,” she said. “I really enjoyed the teachers I had, especially in my educational classes. They got to know me as a person and cared about how I was doing.”
While she didn’t always know she would attend Dakota State, she did know from a young age that she wanted to be a teacher.
“I think I can say I was really born to be a teacher,” Neuharth said. Throughout her childhood, she recalls playing school with her siblings, and sometimes teaching a classroom full of stuffed animals, before babysitting, and teaching Sunday School and Vacation Bible School gave her more experience working with children.
Neuharth began her teaching career in the Baltic School District, where she spent two years teaching reading and mathematics interventions. Then she spent 12 years teaching second grade at the Garretson School District, and today she teaches preschool and junior kindergarten at Freeman Public School.
“I love teaching and seeing how the students learn and grow,” she said. “There is something so magical about kids learning new things.”
While Neuharth has always loved learning, she believes learning should be fun and has created many hands-on activities for her students. She also started developing entire units around students’ interests that fit with the standards she taught.
“I once had a parent tell me that the kids don’t even know they are learning—that I kind of trick them into learning,” she shared.
Two of these units were focused on pioneers and the Arctic. In the pioneers unit, after classroom learning, the students would go to the park for an evening of dressing up in pioneer clothing, dipping candles, roasting apples, making ropes, washing clothes, and more. The Arctic unit started small and grew into a two-week unit in which the classroom transformed into the Arctic, with snow on the walls, while they researched as scientists about penguins, ice, and more.
“It was fun to create an atmosphere of true scientists and focus on a lot of math and data collection,” she said.
The Arctic unit helped Neuharth earn the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science from the National Science Foundation.
“I felt so honored to be recognized at a national level,” she said. “It is validating. Teaching is hard work. Teaching in a way that includes hands-on activities and themes yet still covers the standards is even harder. My students’ engagement and excitement always validated my approach and made it worth it.”
She was excited, shocked, and honored when she learned the news. “This further validates my philosophy that learning can be both fun and effective.”
Those same emotions were present when she learned she would be inducted into the DSU Academic Hall of Fame.
“Never did I imagine that such an exciting and challenging job would lead to being in a Hall of Fame,” Neuharth said. “I am humbled that people see my teaching and want to honor me in that way.”