He's a Jackrabbit. He's a Phoenix. He's a Jackrabbit again. Aaron Johnston thought he was ready to move on from SDSU, but he was wrong. On April 25, Johnston accepted the women's basketball head coaching position at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
It's down to the final three designs in the quest for a new Jackrabbit. There is a link to the options and a survey on the SDSU homepage. The survey allows the participant to rate each option on a scale of 1-5 and make comments. The survey will be available through May 25.
SDSU is now offering a chance for someone else to design the new Jackrabbit. Anyone creatively inclined can go to the SDSU homepage and click on the link for the "Jackrabbit Design Challenge." SDSU is offering a $1,000 prize for the person whose design is chosen by a panel of SDSU judges.
Student Association members, former members and other dignitaries wearing yellow and blue hard hats broke ground with blue and gold shovels at the groundbreaking ceremony for the new SDSU Wellness Center held on April 30. "This marks both an end and a beginning," said Alex Halbach, a former Student Association president to the crowd of about 100 people who gathered just to the west of the HPER Center.
SDSU faculty members narrowly rejected any change to the Academic Senate constitution April 30. 110 faculty members, or roughly one out of five SDSU faculty members, voted to reject the three proposed amendments. "I was expecting the good guys to win, and they didn't," said Del Lonowski, a political science professor, who spoke in support of the amendments at an informational meeting April 25.
"I love SDSU very much," Nancy Neiber, long time coach, associate athletic director of student services and senior woman administrator, said. "It is a part of who I am." Neiber is retiring on June 21, after 25 years of working at South Dakota State University.
After being gone for less than 24 hours, Aaron Johnston walked back into his office on April 27 to begin his second tenure as head coach of women's basketball at South Dakota State University. "The first few days on the job, I guess, is the way to think about it," Johnston said.
Cottonwood Coffee plans to expand its business by opening in a second location closer to campus. Owners Jacob Limmer and Sarah Trone are working to open a "Cottonwood Bistro" in the Brickwood Plaza on Sixth Street. "It will be more like a bistro with the same quality coffee as Cottonwood," Limmer said.
Both KSDJ and the Collegian are experiencing changes in management. KSDJ's new station manager for next year is Carl Deardoff, a junior broadcast journalism major originally from Brandon, S.D. Deardoff began DJ-ing at KSDJ in Jan. of 2006, and that fall he became the station's program director.
Over this last year many things have made the campus more technologically advanced. My State Online, a student online portal, was launched as well as an arrangement with Hotmail to set up student email accounts. Another advancement is wireless access points around campus, a project that has been under way since the previous Students' Association administration.
On-campus Internet users noticed an increase in Internet speed on April 1 after the school increased bandwidth by 38 megahertz per second. Michael Adelaine, vice president for information technology, said bandwidth increased from 62 MHz to 100 MHz, which substantially increased Internet speed for computers hardwired to the network.
Beginning in the fall semester SDSU will offer something for international students that it hasn't really offered in the past - a housing community. The International Residential Campus Community, or IRCC for short, will be located in Bailey Hall as a part of the University Apartments and will offer 15 international students specialized housing to meet their unique needs.