Category: Education

“We develop predictive models to help make smart business decisions,” Burton said. “So, the mathematics and statistics learned at SDSU, the applied and theoretical courses are directly applicable to our work. It was a great experience to work at Capital Services while going to school and to take the theoretical knowledge learned in classes and apply it sometimes in the same day at work through Capital Services.”

The fellowship provides tuition for the two-year graduate program as well as a stipend.

The relationship began in 2007 following a conversation between Capital Services president and CEO Chuck Hendrickson and Dr. Kurt Cogswell, head of the department of mathematics and statistics and a professor at SDSU.

The department was looking for a more focused approach to career readiness and regional relevance to the program, Cogswell said, and the support from Capital Services proved an ideal match.

“The first two fellows were extremely successful,” he said.

Those were Dr. Alfred Furth, who now serves as senior vice president of Capital Services, and Tom Brandenburger, now an assistant professor at SDSU.

Since then, other students have gone on to leadership roles at Capital Services and a wide variety of other areas businesses.

“You get really smart people that participate,” Cogswell said. “Then the financial support of Capital allows these people to focus on the task at hand rather than having to work second jobs to support their education.”

The business “provides an outstanding professional development environment for a year or two that gives them the sort of preparation you can’t obtain in a classroom,” he added. “And our faculty provide a really outstanding academic environment. So, we have got all the components put together and it is proven to be tremendous for our department, for the graduate fellows and we hope it’s been good for the region.”

Growing as graduates

For Burton, the fellowship led to a full-time job in 2012 and a promotion in 2018 to his current role as portfolio analytics and risk director.

The Yankton native had gone to SDSU knowing he liked math but not sure what major or career to pursue. After learning about the opportunities in the field and experiencing an internship at Capital Services, he found his future profession and now helps mentor other fellows.

“And growing up in Yankton, it’s nice to be close to family and Sioux Falls is a good-size city. There’s a lot of opportunity but not a lot of traffic, and the culture in the Midwest is very familiar to me so I’m happy to stick around.”

Bares, a Springfield, S.D., native, arrived at SDSU equally uncertain about what her future held. She began a graduate fellowship at Capital Services in 2009, graduated in 2011 and was hired full time. She spent two years there before returning to SDSU for her PhD, which led to her current role at Sanford Health.

After working with Sanford’s Profile program for her dissertation, she was hired in 2017 as a biostatistician and now is a senior biostatistician.

“We are a service that provides statistical help to researchers at Sanford Research and physician-initiated research throughout Sanford Health,” she said.

“It seems like it’s not really a typical path to go from the credit card industry to health care, but I really think the fellowship was great to be going through coursework and have a place to apply it sometimes in the same day. Some of what I learned at Capital applies to the health care system and some of the data we work with at Sanford. And … I’m able to bring new and innovative ideas to analyze data.”

Both graduates’ experiences meet broader goals for higher education, industry and economic development, Cogswell said.

“In the state of South Dakota, finance and health care are two very key players for our economy, and the methods Ryan and Valerie learned can apply pretty much across our economy,” he said. “You see our students taking those same methods and applying them in precision agriculture or in manufacturing or in hospitality or in transportation or sports analytics. The methods are fairly universal. The choice of career is up to the student.”

Building on success

The Capital Services fellowship program has been so successful, it is growing. The company and SDSU recently finalized a new three-year agreement that started June 22 and runs through fiscal 2023.

It will provide funding to two current faculty members and three graduate students, an increase of one student and one faculty member from what had previously been financed.

“We’ve been delighted to partner with SDSU for more than a decade in helping to develop some of the brightest minds in the Midwest. With the new agreement, we are able to increase the number of opportunities that can be provided,” said Furth, one of the original fellows now in leadership at Capital Services.

The new fellow will focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence with assistant professor Cedric Neumann, an internationally recognized expert in this area, as the named scholar.

“I think that it is a tremendous opportunity for our students and for local and regional businesses to work together on challenging problems that will have a positive impact on the economy of the region,” Neumann said.

The agreement, which kicked off June 22 to cover fiscal years 2021-23, is the type of partnership the university hopes to further develop with industry, Cogswell said.

“The beauty of the machine learning methods we’re developing and instructing students in area so applicable in so many areas of South Dakota’s economy,” he said. “It’s invaluable. Capital’s commitment to this and the effort they invested in developing graduate fellows has been remarkable. Many of these people stayed at Capital and have done tremendous work, but there is no expectation they will stay at Capital. For a company to have that altruistic approach is extremely admirable.”

But the majority of students coming through the program now stay in South Dakota rather than leaving for just elsewhere after graduation, he added.

“For me that’s the most personally satisfying part,” he said. “I love to see our graduates succeed anywhere, but I hate to see them go off to the coasts. And as of the last dozen years, two-thirds of our department’s graduates have stayed in South Dakota, which is remarkable because they have opportunities across the globe.”

Want to learn more about the Capital Services fellowship and related career opportunities? Visit SDSU’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics online https://www.sdstate.edu/mathematics-statistics

The School of Health Sciences, founded in 2007, is the fastest-growing school at USD with 2,400 students among 13 major degree programs:

• Addiction counseling and prevention
• Dental hygiene
• Health sciences
• Medical Laboratory Science
• Nursing
• Occupational therapy
• Paramedic
• Physical therapy
• Physician assistant studies
• Public health
• Social work

Nearly two-thirds of graduates over the last decade have remained in South Dakota.

“The long-term demand for healthcare professionals is going to continue to increase nationwide and in South Dakota,” said Haifa Abou Samra, dean of the School of Health Sciences.

“it’s expected to range anywhere between 11 to 29 percent depending on the discipline or profession.”

In-demand jobs

The dental hygiene program in the School of Health Sciences is so sought after that only about one in two applicants is accepted, and there’s steady demand for graduates.

It’s a unique program, allowing students to staff dental clinics in Sioux Falls and Vermillion serving those in need of dental care, as well as patients on reservations and in prisons.

“I became aware of the value of community involvement through my service as a student in community clinics,” said Hannah Poppens, a Brandon, S.D. native and USD graduate.

“I also benefitted through my work in those clinics, because I learned to serve a variety of patients and that helps me now as a practicing professional.”

Poppens now works in a Sioux Falls dental office, where she landed a position months before graduation.

“My practice offers patient-centered care,” she said. “That’s very important to me, and that’s something my dental hygiene professors taught us to deliver.”

USD’s unique addiction counseling and prevention program also is producing in-demand graduates.

Leon Leader Charge has an especially powerful story. The Parmelee, S.D., native and member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe earned his bachelor of addiction counseling and prevention at USD and now is working on his master’s there. He now works with an organization called Tribal Tech that works with tribes nationwide to create and implement substance abuse and mental health programs and curricula.

At USD, “I learned hands-on science,” he said. “I was taught evidence-based, prevention-based science. Because of my education and training, I am able to help people in my own community, and I’m also able to travel to tribal communities around the country and have a national impact. I am grateful for those opportunities.”

Students like Brooke Miller also know there are jobs waiting after graduation. With one year left in her nursing program, she already has one secured with Avera in her hometown of Pierre.

“It’s just been a whirlwind. Nursing’s been great,” she said, adding she loves the clinical experience students receive and the small-group settings they enjoy with professors to go over what they’re learning.

“We get to go into different hospitals, different settings and work hands-on with patients,” she said.

She will have completed two internships by the time she graduates – one last summer at the South Dakota Women’s Prison and one this coming summer in a hospital setting learning labor and delivery.

“I’m very excited about that and to get that degree,” she said. “And then I’ll be working in South Dakota and giving back to my community. I’ve always loved that small town community, and I want to give back.”

While Miller will be returning to her roots, other USD nursing graduates are recruited nationwide.

“Last year we had students who went to Arizona, Colorado, Mayo Clinic, Philadelphia, so national employers compete for our students,” Samra said.

“And we have more interested nursing students than we have the capacity to admit. We aren’t able to admit all the qualified students who apply, because of space limitations.”

To better accommodate demand for these and other health services programs, USD is hoping to replace an aging facility with a modern 45,000-square-foot building that will add contemporary classrooms, simulation and lab spaces.

“It will allow us to expand these programs, admit students who are wait-listed and fuel the workforce, because there will be more graduates available to employers,” Gestring said.

And employers definitely are interested in partnering to secure students. The School of Health Sciences leverages affiliations with more than 1,000 businesses and organizations that offer students work experience while in college.

Biomedical programs take off

Education, research and industry all are coming together in Sioux Falls, where USD is growing its undergraduate and graduate programs in biomedical engineering. The department is part of the College of Arts & Sciences, and students often take courses both in Sioux Falls and Vermillion.

The growing biomedical field integrates engineering and medicine to address challenges in health care, exposing students to everything from medical device development to digital software-based analysis of medical images.

“It’s really an emerging industry in South Dakota,” Gestring said. “Our bachelor’s program is still very, very new but we do have nearly 20 students in that program. And our PhD program is full. We cannot accept very many, as it’s a very demanding curriculum.”

Sioux Falls resident Tim Hartman is one of USD’s first biomedical engineering undergraduates. He began by earning an associate’s degree in integrated science, taking courses in Sioux Falls, and decided to progress into the undergraduate program.

“I’m more of an equipment kind of person than working with patients, and this allows me to do that,” he said. “I work with high-tech microscopes and I’m working in a lab now where we’re making software for imaging and I’ve found I really like that.”

He could see himself pursuing a graduate degree and focusing on bioinformatics or computational biology – areas where he knows expertise is needed in the medical field.

“It’s a numbers field – a way to replace subjective human insight with automated computer analysis, and you can also incorporate machine learning,” Hartman said.

He had considered going to college out of state, but was impressed by USD’s vision for its Sioux Falls presence – which includes the Graduate Education and Applied Research Center, or GEAR Center, where he takes some of his classes and receives hands-on experience. The planned USD Discovery District adjacent to the property will allow for further commercialization of innovations and provide students with early career experience.

“There’s a lot of investment being made in biotech in the Sioux Falls area,” he said. “It would be awesome if this became like the Silicon Valley of biotech. That’s a vision I could latch onto.”

He’s not alone. USD anticipates more student interest as the biomedical program and its industry partnerships continue to grow.

“It’s an incredible opportunity having the GEAR Center right there on site,” Gestring said. “We have had several businesses, startups, incubate there and really get a start. And one of the future tenants of the Discovery District is currently in that building and waiting for the construction of the new facility.”

Students increasingly are remaining in the state to apply what they learn, she added.

“We’re finding our graduates stay in South Dakota,” Gestring said. “We’ve had 20 PhD graduates and 12 of them are leaders in the state right now.”

That also meets a broader goal for USD, she added: Preparing the state’s future leaders, regardless of the degree program they complete.

“It’s important for USD to always provide those community leaders,” Gestring said.

“From the state’s attorney office to the superintendents of schools to the leaders in health care and throughout the business community, many of them have gone through USD. And these also are active volunteers on nonprofit boards, school boards and city governing boards. The most important thing for USD is to continue that tradition of providing leaders to communities.”

Originally Published by SiouxFalls.Business

As the University of Sioux Falls class of 2019 received its diplomas this month, the school’s president, Brett Bradfield, knows each person could migrate out of his or her field seven or eight times during the career ahead.

Preparing students for that unpredictable future means continually honing the education provided and increasingly working closely with industry to connect and equip students for the workplace.

“It doesn’t necessarily take a complete retooling. You take majors that have always been solid, but you reconsider how they fit into the current paradigm of the employment needed in our community,” Bradfield said.

“We believe our liberal arts portion of our education ensures that many of the so-called soft skills and important dispositional attributes employers are looking for beyond specific job skills are present in our students.”

The approach was a success for 2016 graduate Teagan Molden and Howalt+McDowell Insurance, a Marsh & McLennan Agency LLC company, thanks to an internship after Molden’s junior year.

“I wouldn’t have even known about Howalt if not for USF and the staff there,” said Molden, who came to the university from Minnesota and was a standout on the NSIC championship basketball team.

She gained hands-on experience at the firm, going out on client calls and organizing a LinkedIn training for the entire office.

When she returned to USF her senior year, she continued working part time.

Bradfield knew a bond had been built between student and employer when he walked into a basketball game and saw the Howalt+McDowell executive team there cheering on Molden.

“They had been so pleased with her in their office; they told me that evening their intent was to hire her.”

Molden now has spent three years at the firm as an adviser in the client employee health and benefits department.

USF has a strong record of similar success.

Of the students in the class of 2018 who responded to a survey, 99 percent had found full- or part-time work or went to graduate school.

Many come from USF’s undergraduate and graduate business programs, which include degrees in finance and accounting; its three nursing programs, which include an MBA in health care management; and its education program, which offers undergraduate and graduate degrees.

“Most of our nursing students will already have job offers before they graduate,” Bradfield said. “We have great success, and we consider it an honor to support the city, state and region that supports us.”

USF began the 2018-19 school year with record enrollment, counting about 1,550 students among undergraduate, graduate and adult learning programs.

New offerings include a concentration within the media studies major in social media marketing, as well as a certificate program designed for those already working.

“There’s a very large market for that, and we’re in that with both feet as a university,” Bradfield said.

The school also weaves in what he calls “the hidden curriculum.” It’s an emphasis on skills especially valuable in the workplace.