New leadership, refurbished dorm and many honors among CSC highlights

During her 4½ months on campus, Park has continued to set a positive tone and become involved in a myriad of activities. She had been dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Montana State-Billings for about nine years before coming to CSC.

Park replaced Dr. Tom Krepel, who had been the college’s president seven years and is now the assistant to the president at Northern Illinois University. Dr. Joyce Hardy, who had been senior vice president of academic affairs during Krepel’s tenure, left that position during the summer to return to her former duties of teaching science at CSC.

Taking over Hardy’s duties was Dr. Lois Veath, a CSC physics professor who headed the Science Department for 10 years and was dean of the School of Arts and Sciences the past three years. Dr. Kathy Bahr, an associate professor of English, was appointed fill the dean’s position.

As the year ended, it was announced that the college would have another vacancy in a top administrative post. Ed Hoffman, CSC’s vice president of administration the past nine years, will leave at the end of June to become vice chancellor for facilities, planning and information technology in the Nebraska State College System office in Lincoln.

During Hoffman’s tenure, he has provided leadership in at least a half dozen major construction and renovation projects at CSC. The latest was the complete refurbishing of Edna Work Hall, the college’s first full-scale residence hall originally constructed in 1932. The renovated facility, which features 48 suite-style rooms for honor students, reopened as the fall semester was beginning.

Other sizable improvement projects at CSC in 2005 included tuckpointing the exteriors of five campus buildings, establishing computer labs and mediated classrooms in the Hildreth Education Building and Memorial Hall, constructing a half-mile hiking and biking trail on the south edge of the campus and installing the equipment so two more of the college’s buildings can be air-conditioned by the burning wood chips in the boiler plant.

Chadron State has another substantial renovation project planned. The Legislature appropriated $2.6 million to renovate Sparks Hall, previously used for faculty and student housing, into the college’s administrative headquarters.

Both former and current CSC students received several special honors during the past year.

A 1980 graduate, Sherry Shannon Retzlaff of Rushville, was named Nebraska’s Wal-Mart Teacher of the Year, earning $10,000 for use by the Gordon-Rushville Schools, and a 1978 grad, Jane Tangeman Newblom, was first runner-up for Indiana Teacher of the Year as selected by that state’s Department of Education. Also, a 1991 graduate, Teri Nelson Phares of Rapid City, was named South Dakota’s Elementary Physical Education Teacher of the Year.

The CSC Students in Free Enterprise team, which has often ranked high in national competition in recent years for promoting free enterprise practices, had its best showing ever when it tied for fifth in the final rankings and was one of just three teams to place in all five of the special competitions at the National Exposition in Kansas City. There are about 900 SIFE teams in the United States.

Earlier in the year, the Chadron State SIFE team received its second consecutive Nebraska First Lady Award for volunteer service.

Also, the college’s student newspaper, The Eagle, earned second place for general excellence among the Nebraska collegiate news publications and won 12 Golden Leaf wards, including five firsts, in the Nebraska Collegiate Media Association’s annual contests.

In addition, the Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center at CSC won the 2005 Excellence in Publication Award for its exhibit catalog at the Mountain-Plains Museums Association’s annual meeting.

Several students received special honors:

--Ryan Morgan of Ogallala was one of 12 students selected from among about 100 applications for an internship at NASA’s Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston and spent 10 weeks last summer studying the geology of gullies on Mars.

--Jeff Wahl of Chadron was elected chairman of the Nebraska Counseling Association’s Graduate Student Committee.

--Erika Smith of Ainsworth was elected vice president of the Student Section of the National American Pre-Veterinary Medical Association.

--Melinda Sprentall, clarinetist from Chadron, was one of three Nebraskans chosen to perform with the 70-piece National Intercollegiate Band.

The chairman of the CSC Math Department, Dr. Monty Fickel, was presented the Innovative Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Technology Award at the International Conference on College Teaching and Learning in Florida last spring. Another CSC professor, Dr. Robert Duron, was selected the regional winner of the Teaching Excellence Award by the Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs.

Dr. Chuck Butterfield, a CSC agriculture professor, was elected president of the Nebraska Section of the Society for Range Management and Dr. George Watson, a CSC justice studies professor, was elected chairman of the Policy Standards Advisory Council that oversees the Nebraska Law Enforcement Training Center in Grand Island. Watson also was appointed to serve on the Nebraska Crime Commission by Gov. Dave Heineman.

Chadron State hosted several special speakers during the past year.

Jonathan Mooney, who is dyslexic and struggled to get through elementary school but earned all A’s at Brown University, told teachers attending the 16th annual Early Childhood Conference to define students by their strengths and gifts, not their deficits or disorders.

During the Diversity in Education Conference at CSC in October, several speakers, including Nebraska Commissioner of Education Doug Christensen, outlined the need for special programs to help underprivileged students succeed.

Another of the conference’s speakers, Dr. Marshall Hill, executive director of the Nebraska Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education, said the state’s economy would improve dramatically if more youths graduated from both high school and college so they had the tools to succeed in the workplace and not need social services assistance later in life.

Nearly 100 of the region’s law enforcement officers spent three days on campus this fall learning how some of the nation’s high-profile crimes were solved by the array of criminal investigators who spoke.

One of the world’s leading mammoth authorities, Dick Mol of the Netherlands, showed slides and told about helping excavate two woolly mammoths from the Siberian tundra. Another speaker this fall was Ted Kooser of Lincoln, the nation’s poet laureate and a Pulitzer Prize winner.

The past year wasn’t the best for the CSC athletic teams in terms of wins and losses, but CSC wrestlers ranked second academically among NCAA Division II teams and the volleyball team won its third consecutive Team Academic Award given by the American Volleyball Coaches Association. The Eagles were the only Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference team to receive the volleyball honor in 2005.

Two women on the CSC track and field team were conference champions and earned All-American honors at both the National Indoor and Outdoor Meets. They are Jacqueline Wells of Albion in the weight throw and shot put and Emily Volkmer of Kearney in the triple jump.

Tailback Danny Woodhead had another spectacular football season, finishing second in both rushing (176.9) and all-purpose yards (215.3) per game while earning numerous all-star honors, including offensive player of the year in the RMAC.

The rodeo season was a bittersweet one for CSC senior Jennifer Nelson of Hartford, S.D. She won the Central Rocky Mountain Region’s breakaway roping championship and was leading the event at the National College Finals in June when he faithful horse, Pickle, mysteriously died just minutes before she was to make her final run. She grabbed another horse, caught the last calf and still finished third in the final standings. The cause of Pickle’s death was investigated, but never pinpointed.

A CSC cowboy, Talon Cooper of Shoshoni, Wyo., won the region’s tie-down roping champion and Dustin Elliott, the national collegiate bullriding champion while attending CSC in 2001, finished fourth in the PRCA bullriding standings for 2005 after winning the championship the previous year.