The six public universities, two schools and system governed by the South Dakota Board of Regents made more than $189 million of budget requests to the Board in its meeting Thursday.
The Board will make final decisions on all budget requests in their August meeting.
Executive director Brian Maher explained in Thursday’s meeting that the board office will take all the proposals and condense them into a list of one-liners to look at a high-level overview of all the numbers.
Regents make the final decisions on spending in higher education, in all areas across the state’s campuses, in areas from nursing to beef production.
Within the Regents’ office, finance officials said Thursday that they had to refine universities’ requests of more than $484 million backlogged maintenance and repair projects to just over $61 million this year.
Other budget priorities may be part of bills passed in the upcoming 2022 legislative session.
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South Dakota State University
South Dakota State University requests more than $23 million.
SDSU wants $7.5 million in one-time funds to cover the costs of remodeling 11,000 square feet of leased space at Southeast Technical College where SDSU offers a bachelor’s in nursing in Sioux Falls.
SDSU is also requesting $2.82 million in one-time funds to improve HVAC systems in the Agricultural Engineering Hall, and more than $1.9 million in one-time funds to purchase a high-performance computing cluster and high-velocity data storage.
Another $6 million request in one-time funds will update the SDSU Cottonwood Field Station into a modern range beef cattle operation and replace outdated and deteriorating facilities.
SDSU also wants $600,000 in one-time funds to go towards planning at the SDSU Meat Laboratory to address the state’s need for increased meat processing training and education, and another $150,000 in one-time funds for extension training for small meat processors.
Funding for the meat lab would help pay for planning of renovations and expansions of the lab. An updated and expanded facility is needed for safe slaughtering, processing, handling and storing of meat animals and meat products.
When asked what a new meat lab might cost, rather than the costs of planning for expansion, SDSU President Barry Dunn said university officials would leave the meeting Thursday and come back with a plan for what the new facility might cost at-large.
Feed mill renovation could also be addressed by more than $2.8 million in one-time funds.
Both SDSU and Dakota State University also requested $1.25 million in one-time funds to set up the framework for a partnership between the two universities for precision agriculture at SDSU and cybersecurity at DSU.
The reasoning for the partnership is that agricultural producers are becoming more vulnerable with advanced precision agriculture technology and farm information management systems in the crop and livestock sectors.
There’s potential for an agriculture-based supply chain disruption, similar to recent ransomware attacks, that could manipulate information affecting agriculture markets or tamper with automated agricultural platforms impacting planting, spraying and harvesting equipment.
University of South Dakota
The University of South Dakota wants the Board of Regents (BOR) to invest in USD’s Sioux Falls facilities, Coyote Business Consulting, law enforcement training, artificial intelligence capabilities, the anatomy lab, medical school technology, the future of the law school and more.
USD wants a total of more than $24 million in one-time funding for all of its goals.
$6.5 million would go to USD’s Graduate Education and Applied Research (GEAR) Center in Sioux Falls to renovate the administrative building. The choice was either to construct a new building for $20 million, or spend $6.5 million on renovations, President Sheila Gestring said in the meeting.
Another $8.25 million will go towards investment in law enforcement training, which will give criminal justice students the opportunity to complete South Dakota’s Law Enforcement Training in the summer after their junior or senior year.
The funding specifically will create an endowment to be given to the South Dakota Community Foundation, which will help support the recurring costs of the partnership and create a long-term commitment between USD and South Dakota’s police organizations, creating a classroom-to-agency pipeline of South Dakota law enforcement.
There’s an “extreme need” for law enforcement jobs in the state, Gestring said, noting the university recently tried to hire an officer on campus and only saw two applicants.
Another $1.68 million will go towards Coyote Business Consulting, a free business consulting service led by student teams and faculty advisors, Gestring said.
Additional funds of $1.7 million could invest in USD’s AI capabilities; another $1.35 million would go towards the Sanford School of Medicine, and $2.6 million could go towards the USD Knudson School of Law.
USD also requests $2.7 million in state funding over five years towards the Norbeck Family Civics Initiative to cultivate student, faculty, state and national leadership collaborations that promote civic engagement and preserve the history of civic culture in South Dakota.
Law school dean Neil Fulton said there is no better hub for a discussion of civics and the de
velopment of civic leaders than a law school.
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South Dakota Mines
Mines has four items on its BOR wishlist for a total of more than $20 million of costs.
A complete website redesign and a new content management system would run a cost of $380,000.
Mines also wishes to purchase and renovate the Ascent Innovation Center in Rapid City at a cost of $10 million. Regents pointed out that Mines “owns the dirt” at the building, and that there’s an agreement that only Mines could purchase the building.
$6 million would go to purchase the facility, $2 million would go to renovations, and $2 million would build a 20,000 square-foot high-bay area shell.
The university also wishes to expand its student union, the Surbeck Center, for $1.25 million. It’s a $6 million project, but the remainder is covered by donations.
$4 million would also go toward the purchase of land across the street from the Mines campus and the old foundation building.
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Dakota State University
Dakota State University has a short wishlist for $8 million in one-time funding. It wants $1.8 million to go towards Information Assurance lab repairs and upgrades, and $6.2 million will go towards data center and infrastructure expansion.
Because of “COVID-19 pressure” on the virtual machine environment on campus, DSU experienced VM sprawl, network congestion and hardware failures. The requested items will allow DSU to meet the needs for residential and online course offerings, and help with the functionality and reliability of the machine and hardware environment.
Northern State University
Northern State University wants more than $34.4 million.
The largest wish is $29.5 million in capital funding for a Lincoln Hall addition and renovation of the College of Professional Studies, including the School of Business and Millicent Atkins School of Education.
Space within Lincoln Hall would also be renovated to accommodate NSU Admissions and provide additional space for the SDSU accelerated nursing program
A new Glenna N. Fouberg Student Success Center would be established on campus with $3.5 million, which will design a gathering space and room for conversations, interaction and presentations.
The university also needs $400,000 for a new facilities storage building, and $440,000 for COVID-19 student programming and education space enhancements.
One-time funding of $99,925 and base funding of $491,000 would also support the e-learning high school’s expansion, and startup costs for course development and studios.
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Black Hills State University
Black Hills State University wants more than $10 million.
Needed upgrades to technology made evident by the COVID-19 pandemic include HDMI classroom upgrades, Microsoft security enhancement, outdoor wireless and network storage. All totaled, these upgrades would cost $585,117.
BHSU President Laurie Nichols said Thursday that the recreational facilities at BHSU are “completely inadequate,” and that she believes they are a barrier to recruitment, retention and quality of life on campus.
Therefore, BHSU wants more than $9.5 million to add 20,000 square feet to the Young Center to create a new BHSU Wellness Center. The project includes a budget request of $6,690,254 and private fundraising of $2,845,000. No student fee increase would be seen for the capital project cost, Nichols said.
Nichols also said the budget is “to be determined” for the renovation and addition of plans for nursing West River, but that there is a “significant nursing shortage” in the Black Hills.
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South Dakota schools’ and system’s needs
South Dakota School for the Deaf is requesting more than $10,000 to purchase and subscribe to several Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) talk pedometers to help families accelerate speech language development in infants to children age three.
LENAs use a small recording device to collect, analyze and sort a child’s language environment into multiple categories and analyze variables like child vocalizations, adult words and conversational turn taking.
The school also wants more than $66,000 to replace existing out-of-date items in the audiology department.
The South Dakota School for the Blind and Visually Impaired is requesting $50,000 in one-time funds to purchase and install a security camera system at its Aberdeen campus. The school currently has only one internal camera now.
System-wide, vice president of finance and administration Heather Forney reported to the Regents that the campuses have a maintenance and repair project backlog of more than $484 million.
However, institutions were asked to provide their top deferred maintenance needs with focuses on major infrastructure projects. With this new refined list of needs, the BOR office is requesting no more than $61 million this year for maintenance and repairs.
The system has a second request: $5 million for student mental tele-health needs. The goal is to provide mental health to students to supplement the work of Campus Counseling Centers.
A third request is more than $4.4 million towards network security.