Campus Update December 2015
Mychael Bruce (junior, San Tan Valley, Ariz.), Stephanie
Miller (senior, Esko, Minn.), Jenna Coghlan (senior, Valley
City, N.D.) and Malik Jackson (senior, Las Vegas, Nev.) all
earned the awards, representing their respective VCSU
fall sports: football, volleyball, women’s cross country
and men’s cross country.
VCSU group takes plunge for Special
Olympics
Fourteen members of the Valley City State University
community, including students, faculty and staff, took the
Special Olympics Polar Plunge on Sunday, Nov. 15, at the
Jamestown (N.D.) Reservoir. The VCSU contingent raised
more than $3,000 for Special Olympics North Dakota.
VCSU participants who jumped into the waters of the
reservoir included Jordan Bushaw, Chris Carpenter,
Tarah Cleveland, Emily Fenster, Kathleen Gallais, Jaycee
George, Shelby Johnson, Marissa Kirby, Gilbert Kuipers,
Brittany Roney, Michaela Scherr, Dean Schroeder, Oscar
Suniga and Jenna Wisk.
The VCSU effort was organized by the university’s
Student Senate, with Tarah Cleveland, senate treasurer,
leading the project.
Four Vikings named NSAA Champions
of Character
Four Valley City State University student-athletes have
been named NSAA Champions of Character by the North
Star Athletic Association.
Champions of Character awards are earned by standout
student-athletes who know, do and value the right
things in all areas of life. The five core values of the
NAIA Champions of Character program include integrity,
respect, responsibility, sportsmanship and servant
leadership.
Each NSAA fall sports head coach nominated a recipient
for the NSAA Champions of Character award.
Sen. Heitkamp meets with Listopad,
New Voices supporters on campus
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp met with supporters of the John
Wall New Voices Act of North Dakota (HB 1471) on the
VCSU campus on Tuesday, Nov. 24.
five terms in the North Dakota House following retirement
after 34 years teaching English and journalism at
Wahpeton (N.D.) High School and Sargent Central High
School in Forman, N.D.
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (right) visits with Sue Skalicky, journalism
adviser at Bismarck Legacy High School, about censorship of
student journalists.
The John Wall New Voices Act protects high school and
college student journalists from direct and indirect
censorship. Since the bill passed the North Dakota
House and Senate unanimously and was signed in to law
in April 2015, advocates in more than 20 states have
been working to replicate North Dakota’s legislation.
Organized by Steven Listopad, VCSU assistant professor
and director of student media, the event brought
Heitkamp together with a group of more than 20 New
Voices supporters in the VCSU Student Center’s Norway
Room and a dozen others via video conference.
Those assembled heard from Masaki Ova, assistant
editor of the Jamestown (N.D.) Sun and one of the
original student authors of the New Voices Act; Lucy
Dalglish, dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism
at the University of Maryland; Mark Goodman, Knight
Chair in Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University;
and Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student
Press Law Center, among many others.
Listopad and Heitkamp also gave comments, with
Heitkamp congratulating the New Voices Act supporters
and offering her support and insight into maneuvering
through Congressional channels for federal legislative
action. “Many great movements have started with
students,” she said.
VCSU’s Listopad received a Hugh M. Hefner First
Amendment Award at a reception at the Playboy Mansion
in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sept. 29, 2015, in recognition
of his efforts in support of the John Wall New Voices Act.
The New Voices Act is named in honor of the late John
Wall, a high school teacher and North Dakota legislator
who died in 2014. Wall, a 1970 VCSU alumnus, served
Larry Woiwode (left) and Gregory Brister, VCSU assistant
professor, pose prior to Woiwode’s Dec. 3 reading on campus.
N.D. poet laureate Woiwode reads at VCSU
Larry Woiwode, North Dakota poet laureate, read from
his works in VCSU’s Theatre 320 in McFarland Hall on
Dec. 3. Woiwode read one of his poems and a selection
from a novel he’s working on; he then fielded questions
from the audience and did a book-signing session.
Gregory Brister, Ph.D., assistant professor of English; the
Lecturers and Readers Committee; and the Department
of Language and Literature hosted the event.
Woiwode’s work has appeared in The Atlantic, Esquire,
Harpers, GQ, The New York Times, and Paris Review,
among others. Two dozen of his stories have been
published in The New Yorker. His work has been
translated into a dozen languages and is included in four
volumes of Best American Short Stories.
A Guggenheim Fellow, a Lannan Fellow, and a U.S. State
Department Traveling Artist, Woiwode was awarded the
Medal of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters for “distinction in the art of the short story” in
1995.
Woiwode published two books in 2011, Words Made
Fresh and The Invention of Lefse (his first juvenile
work); in 2013 he published a book of essays, Words for
Readers and Writers. His work most recently appeared in
the anthology North Dakota Is Everywhere.