BROOKINGS, S.D. — South Dakota State University student Alaina Jane Hanks, Brainerd, Minn., was awarded the first fully endowed Jack and Marty Marken Scholarship for SDSU Native American Students during the Oak Lake Writers’ Society retreat July 30.



The $600 scholarship was presented by Marty Marken and MaryJo Benton Lee, coordinator of the Flandreau Indian School-SDSU Success Academy, of which Hanks is a graduate. The presentation came before an audience that included Lakota, Dakota and Nakota writers as well as interested people from the region.



The late Jack Marken, former head of the English department, made a number of significant contributions to Native American students at SDSU.



Marken created SDSU’s American Indian Studies Program and the SDSU Native American Advisory Committee and was also involved with the creation of SDSU’s Native American Club. He also co-edited the book “Shaping Survival: Essays by Four American Indian Tribal Women” with Distinguished Professor Charles Woodard and was general editor of the authoritative, multi-volume “Native America Bibliography Series” published by Scarecrow Press.



As the scholarship’s first recipient, Hanks pledged to continue working for academic success and helping fellow Native American students do the same.



“It doesn’t matter where you come from or what you are, you can do good things,” said Hanks on accepting the award.



“I’m really honored to receive this scholarship and to be the first recipient of something so monumental to Native American students here at SDSU. 



“It’s a huge honor, and I really do hope to do good and help other Native students to reach the higher levels of what everybody expects,” she concluded.



Hanks, a member of the White Earth Anisinaabe Tribe, was born and raised in Minneapolis and is a 2007 graduate of he Flandreau Indian School. 



During her years there, Hanks participated in the FIS-SDSU Success Academy, an early and intensive college preparatory program run jointly by the two institutions. She is a sophomore English major and Spanish minor at SDSU. 



After earning her undergraduate degree, she plans to specialize in Indian Law at Kansas University Law School.

 

BROOKINGS, S.D. – Employers looking to fill part-time jobs and internship positions can meet prospective student employees at South Dakota State University’s Part-Time Employment Job Fair Sept. 10 from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Volstorff Ballroom of the Union. The event is co-sponsored by the College of General Studies and the South Dakota Career Center.



The Job Fair is open to all area employers and service agencies looking to promote job openings and volunteer opportunities.



The registration deadline for booth space and to be part of a printed program given at the Fair to students is Aug. 25. The cost to reserve space is $75 for employers and free for service agencies.



Finding workers can be challenging for employers in the Brookings area. Reaching applicants for all of their open positions takes concerted effort.



“This is a chance for employers to tell about their business or agency and meet prospective student workers one-on-one,” said Susan Fredrikson, career development specialist in the College of General Studies.



“It’s not always easy for students either to get around to complete applications at different places at different times, so the Job Fair is a great opportunity for the two to meet each other in one spot.”



For more information or to register for a place at the Job Fair, employers can visit the Web site at http://careercenter.sdstate.edu or call the College of General Studies at (605) 688-4153.

SDSU scientists are working with new materials that can be used to make devices for converting sunlight to electricity cheaper and more efficient.

Assistant professor Qiquan Qiao in SDSU’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science said so-called organic photovoltaics, or OPVs, are less expensive to produce than traditional devices for harvesting solar energy. Qiao and his South Dakota State University colleagues also are working on organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs.

The new technology is sometimes referred to as “molecular electronics” or “organic electronics” — “organic” because it relies on carbon-based polymers and molecules as semiconductors rather than inorganic semiconductors such as silicon.

“Right now the challenge for photovoltaics is to make the technology less expensive. Therefore, the objective is find new materials and novel device structures for cost-effective photovoltaic devices,” Qiao said. “The beauty of organic photovoltaics and organic LEDs is low cost and flexibility. These devices can be fabricated by inexpensive solution-based processing techniques similar to painting or printing. The ease of production brings costs down, while the mechanical flexibility of the materials opens up a wide range of applications.”

Organic photovoltaics and organic LEDs are made up of thin films of semiconducting organic compounds that can absorb photons of solar energy. Typically an organic polymer, or a long, flexible chain of carbon-based material, is used as a substrate on which semiconducting materials are applied as a solution using a technique similar to inkjet printing.

“The research at SDSU is focused on new materials with variable band gaps. The band gap determines how much solar energy the photovoltaic device can absorb and convert into electricity,” Qiao said.

Qiao explained that visible sunlight contains only about 50 percent of the total solar energy. That means the sun is giving off just as much non-visible energy as visible energy.

“We’re working on synthesizing novel polymers with variable band gaps, including high, medium and low band gap varieties, to absorb the full spectrum of sunlight. By this we can double the light harvesting or absorption,” Qiao said.

SDSU’s scientists plan to use the variable band gap polymers to build what are called multi-junction polymer solar cells or photovoltaics. These devices use multiple layers of polymer/fullerene films that are “tuned” to absorb different spectral regions of solar energy. Ideally, photons that are not absorbed by the first film layer pass through to be absorbed by the following layers. The devices can harvest photons from ultraviolet to visible to infrared in order to efficiently convert the full spectrum of solar energy to electricity.

SDSU scientists also work with organic light-emitting diodes. They are focusing on developing novel materials and devices for full color displays.

“We are working to develop these new light-emitting and efficient charge-transporting materials to improve the light-emitting efficiency of full color displays,” Qiao said.

Right now the application for LED technology is mainly for displays. But in the future, as OLEDs become less expensive and more efficient, they likely to be used for residential lighting, for example. The new technology will make it easy to insert lights into walls or ceilings. But instead of light bulbs, the lighting apparatus of the future may look more like a poster, Qiao said.

Qiao and his colleagues are funded in part by SDSU’s electrical engineering Ph.D. program and by National Science Foundation and South Dakota EPSCoR, the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. In addition Qiao is one of about 40 faculty members from SDSU, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, and the University of South Dakota who have come together to form Photo Active Nanoscale Systems (PANS). The main purpose is developing photovoltaics, or devices that will directly convert light to electricity. Learn more about PANS at a South Dakota EPSCoR Web site, http://www.sdepscor.org/NEW%20PANS/PANS.html.

Qiao’s SDSU colleagues include assistant professor Youngjae You, research assistant professor XingZhong Yan, research assistant professor Hongshan He, assistant professor Mahdi Baroughi, research assistant professor Venkateswara Bommisetty, associate professor Zhong Hu, associate professor Michael Ropp, and professor David Galipeau.

Assistant professor Chaoyang Jiang at the University of South Dakota also collaborates in the research. At the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, collaborators include assistant professor Dimitris Anagnostou and assistant professor Wael Fathelbab.

 

BROOKINGS, S.D. —South Dakota State University French and Spanish Assistant Professor Molly Enz recently returned to South Dakota soil after a three-week American Association of Teachers in French (AATF) seminar in Switzerland and Belgium.



Enz was one of 15 U.S. instructors selected to attend the seminar. She spent the first week in Geneva, Switzerland, and the next two in Liege, Belgium.



While in Belgium, Enz presented a paper on incorporating Francophone art into the classroom at the AATF conference.



The Swiss and Belgian governments provided scholarships so participants could take courses at the countries’ chief universities.



“It seems that Belgium and Switzerland are typically ignored in French textbooks,” Enz explained.



Although she had passed through both countries previously, Enz admitted she knew very little about them before the seminar.



“These are two fascinating countries with rich histories and cultures, and the governments gave us the opportunity to learn so that we could expand our American students’ knowledge,” she concluded.



The 15 teachers took courses in Swiss and Belgian history, politics, music, cinema, art and literature.



The goal was to offer instructors from across the U.S. in-depth insight into Swiss and Belgian culture and cultivate interest in their place in academia, information Enz is eager to pass on to her students.



“I would love to teach a special topics course on Switzerland and Belgium or lead a study abroad group to Switzerland,” she said.



Enz is also interested in taking a group of French majors to at the University of Geneva,’s summer French language institute.  



Her favorite, spare-time excursion was to the tiny Swiss town of Gruyères, (Groo-yair) home of the famous Gruyère cheese, a hard, sweet, but slightly salty, cheese without holes.



“The village was nestled in the mountains, and I felt like I was looking at a postcard,” Enz raved.



“For someone born and raised in central Minnesota, the view of the mountains was just breathtaking!”

BROOKINGS, S.D. —The average South Dakotan doesn’t refer to the anthrax outbreak of 2005 or the dangers of the PRRS virus in swine.

 

That may be because residents don’t know much about them, thanks to the efforts of 60 employees in the Animal Disease Research and Diagnostic Laboratory (ADRDL) at South Dakota State University.

 

The laboratory began in 1887 as an agricultural experiment station committed to investigating diseases in domestic animals, searching for treatments and methods of disease prevention, and researching animal hygiene and physiology.



In 1967, through state funding, the small university research lab became the state’s research and diagnostic laboratory for animal disease.



After a series of laboratory and conference room additions, the ADRDL functions as South Dakota’s state animal health and veterinarian laboratories. As such, the facility belongs to the National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN).



“This means that we do for veterinary medicine what the state public health lab in Pierre does for human medicine,” said Dr. David Zeman, the ADRDL director.



Consequently, Zeman says, the laboratory protects and saves South Dakotans money.



Most people have heard of rabies, anthrax and bird flu but, according to Zeman, few realize that there are dozens of zoonotic diseases, or diseases that people and animals can contract from one another.



The diagnostic half of the ADRDL’s mission focuses on prevention. When a disease outbreak occurs, veterinarians statewide send tissue samples to the lab for scientists to identify and isolate problems.



“The post-mortem work helps us save the rest of the herd and stamp out outbreaks,” Zeman emphasized.



Under their diagnostic mission, the lab serves as the official testing lab for the state Animal Industry Board, the agency responsible for regulating meat-processing plants and interstate and international transportation of livestock. 



ADRDL tests not only ensure that animals entering South Dakota’s herds and food supply are healthy, but also help to keep independently-owned ranches and meat services in business.



The research part of the lab focuses on prevention and includes developing vaccines and potential cures for zoological and zoonotic diseases.



“By doing our work to control and contain animal disease, we’re also contributing to the public’s overall health,” said Zeman.



The lab presently handles roughly 100 cases every day, which translates into 26,000 cases a year or 500,000 test procedures.



Although about two-thirds of the ADRDL’s workload is with food animals, they also serve small animal and pet owners, horse owners, poultry farmers, the state Game, Fish & Parks department, and Sioux Falls and Watertown zoos.



“As the state becomes more urban, we want urbanites to know that we’re their lab, too,” explained Zeman. In fact, many community veterinarians use the laboratory’s resources daily or weekly. 



Like large-animal vets and farmers, small-animal vets can send tissue samples to the ADRDL or, even more conveniently, e-mail pictures, symptoms and queries to the lab staff and view the scientists’ response as soon as it is posted.



Although the lab’s original mission focused on domestic animal disease, a slow shift has occurred as people and animals began to travel farther and more frequently.



“The chances of exotic diseases in South Dakota are greater now,” said Zeman.



“Since 9/11 we have to be concerned that every disease might be something fatal to the people of our state.”



To help combat this possibility, the ADRDL researchers hope to be granted a high containment laboratory addition that will protect employees while allowing them to work efficiently, ensure that potentially dangerous pathogens do not escape the laboratory and enhance the ADRDL’s research program.



More information on the ADRDL can be found at http://vetsci.sdstate.edu.