Campus News 2020

Bridging the education gap and providing access to more students is what SMSU is offering 18 first-year students who have enrolled in the Mustang Pathway Program (MPP), which began on Monday, July 13.

Fatou MS Kinteh, a senior Political Science major from The Gambia, has started a non-profit called Fatou Gaye's Memorial Foundation in memory of her grandmother.

Commencement exercises for approximately 565 SMSU undergraduate and graduate students was to have been held May 9. Due to COVID-19, that ceremony has been postponed to the fall semester (at a date to be announced). That leaves SMSU seniors like Sariah Cheadle and Melinda Lopez with mixed feelings during finals week.

Fadumo Ismail, a first-generation college student from Marshall, has been named the Class of 2020 Outstanding Senior at Southwest Minnesota State University.

SMSU alumnus Tom Berg is, literally, a race chaser. That's the reason for the growing success of his Racechaser.net blog, which chronicles anything racing at seven tracks he frequents during the season from his home base in Fargo, N.D.

Southwest Minnesota State University has been named the 2020 "Safest College Campus in Minnesota" by YourLocalSecurity.com.

The creation of a new garden on the SMSU campus will better utilize a current empty space and add an exciting new element to the east entrances to the Fine Arts Building.

SMSU 2020 alumnus Austin Domeier recently won the ninth annual Minnesota State Conference of Undergraduate Scholarly and Creative Activity Conference poster presentation, in the category of Science/Engineering.

SMSU alumnus Clarence Hightower felt "outrage" when he first viewed the George Floyd video. "I did not understand how one officer could participate in that climate, and have three additional officers stand by and watch," he said about the video that showed Floyd laying on the ground, handcuffed, with a Minneapolis policeman's knee on this neck. Floyd died as a result, and the event has triggered anti-police protests in Minnesota, across the country, and around the world.

The application deadline for Class XI of the Minnesota Agriculture and Rural Leadership (MARL) program is April 24, and program Executive Director Olga Reuvekamp is anticipating another outstanding group of ag leaders when the class kicks off its 18-month cohort in November, 2020.