How USD Inspires Community Engagement and Public Service
USD students cultivate the skills to make a positive impact in their communities through a broad liberal arts education and co-curricular activities, ranging from voter education drives to volunteer outreach programs.
Developing Leaders Through Active Citizenship
Jordan Bonstrom is the director of the Opportunity Center, one of the main offices on the USD campus that fosters student civic engagement through its programs and activities.
“We have a broad definition of civics,” he said. “We think of civics as more than just being involved politically. Civics at USD is about getting involved and giving back to your communities to make them a better place. And our primary goal is to develop leaders who serve something bigger than themselves.”
Developing student leadership skills is a main pillar of the Opportunity Center, which serves as a central point for student resources at USD, said Bonstrom. The center’s two major leadership programs support this goal by focusing on community engagement.
The center’s First Year Leadership Experience invites students in their second semester of their freshman year to participate.
“Our First Year Leadership Experience develops students’ role as leaders on campus and focuses on how they can be involved in making our campus a better place,” Bonstrom said.
For students in their final undergraduate year, USD’s President’s Senior Leadership Institute expands the idea of community from the USD campus to include the surrounding area and the state.
“The President’s Senior Leadership Institute is a yearlong, cohort model for senior-level students that helps them understand the issues facing South Dakota and gives them the tools to help develop solutions to these issues,” explained Bonstrom.
Students in this program take part in experiences that expand beyond the Vermillion campus.
“The students take a trip across South Dakota. They meet with the director of tribal relations to learn about the Native American experience while on a community identity tour of the Rosebud Sioux Reservation. They also meet with leaders from a variety of fields from across every corner of our state” Bonstrom said. “The group goes to Pierre to witness the legislative process in action by meeting with legislators and attending committee meetings. Throughout the program, alumni who are involved in their communities in many different forms come to Vermillion to speak to our students about what it means to be a servant leader.”
One participating student said the President’s Senior Leadership Institute introduced her to the many ways she can serve her community.
Jordan Kelly is a junior double majoring in elementary education and special education from Council Bluffs, Iowa.
“USD trusts us to have the motivation to be an engaged citizen, and the President’s Senior Leadership Institute focuses on providing us the necessary education to be successful,” she said.
An active member of the Alternative Week of Off-Campus Learning (AWOL) program, where she travels with other students to take part in service projects locally and throughout the country, Kelly said wants to continue to foster similar opportunities when she becomes a teacher.
“After I graduate, I hope to continue in some manner with my work at AWOL, whether that be supporting from afar or making a chapter at whatever school district I end up in,” she said.
This year, a major election provided USD students with ample opportunities to be involved in the democratic process that underlies the concept of active citizenship in this country.
The Opportunity Center worked with various political and non-partisan groups on campus and in the community, including the College Republicans, College Democrats, and the Political Science League, to organize its annual Yotes Vote voter registration program.
“The goal is to help students understand the electoral process and how to register to vote and to get as many students across campus as possible to register, because Yotes Vote,” Bonstrom said.
National Voter Registration Day and Constitution Day fell on the same date in 2024 – Sept. 17 – which also presented a chance to collaborate with the Knudson School of Law and others to bring a group of speakers to campus to talk about election integrity. The day ended with a screening of the film “Undivide Us,” which promotes civil conversation among those with different opinions on social and political issues.
“A big part of civic engagement is being able to have conversations with people who have different views and lived experiences than you,” Bonstrom said. “And that’s also a big part of the college experience – to seek a deeper level of understanding across differences, leading to stronger communities and solutions-oriented leaders.”
Championing Democracy
Another center on campus focuses on USD students and serves as the leading institute for the promotion of civic engagement in the entire state of South Dakota.
The Chiesman Center for Democracy became part of USD’s College of Arts & Sciences in 2018. Founded in 1996 by the estate of philanthropist Allene Chiesman, who graduated from USD in 1936 with a bachelor’s degree in history, the center supports research and civic education activities addressing the issues of democracy, democratic principles and active civic engagement.
Julia Hellwege, Ph.D., associate professor of political science, directs the center. She explains that civic engagement encompasses a broad range of activities that citizens can undertake to address public issues and improve their communities.
“Engaging in your community can be done in a variety of ways,” Hellwege said. “We can elevate our democracy in ways such as going to vote and becoming an informed voter and participating in the formal parts that make a democracy. But a democracy isn’t fully a democracy without all the things that make us feel like we matter, that we are efficacious, and that we are a community. So that also means that we need to be able to engage in community conversations. It means helping your neighbor. There are a lot of parts of civic engagement that are political. But there are a lot of parts about civic engagement that are about community building, so that we feel more connected to one another.”
Participating in civic activities as a college student can set the stage for continuing these behaviors after graduation and throughout adult life.
“The younger that you are when you start becoming engaged in the community, the more likely you are to continue to do so,” Hellwege said. “Setting and instilling those values and habits early on and continuing to foster them in early adulthood – when it’s easy to stop doing the things that your parents told you to do – makes it really important for having that democratic engagement continue into our adulthood.”
The Chiesman Center supports student activities that include sponsoring speakers and events, hosting an annual public service colloquium that showcases the final outreach projects of political science and criminal justice students, and providing faculty research grants that offer financial assistance to employ student researchers.
Two undergraduate students serve as Chiesman Center research assistants. Waverly Patterson, a senior political science and sustainability double major, is one of these students.
Originally from Royal Oak, Michigan, Patterson describes herself as passionate about the political process, especially state-level democracy. At the Chiesman Center, she has worked on projects, including administering a statewide poll with South Dakota News Watch, organizing the Chiesman Democracy Conference and working on a project with Clay County.
“I believe it’s essential for college students to be engaged citizens,” Patterson said. “While balancing academics and civic responsibilities can be challenging, I feel that USD and my professors provide helpful resources, such as volunteer opportunities and community partnerships, to support involvement both on and off campus.”
Max Mickelson, a senior economics and political science major from Sioux Falls, also works at the Chiesman Center. At the center, he has assisted in coordinating South Dakota’s participation in the national K-12 Kids Voting USA project and has helped perform a community survey in Hot Springs, South Dakota.
Mickelson sports impressive community involvement credentials.
“I am a sergeant in the South Dakota Army National Guard and do a significant amount of volunteering for Feeding South Dakota, as well as work on political campaigns,” Mickelson said.
Mickelson said USD supports and promotes community and civic involvement.
“USD gives us the resources to take part in our community,” he said. “They bring speakers to campus, facilitate volunteer opportunities, host voter drives, and support things like the Chiesman Center.”
“I feel that it is important for college students to be engaged citizens; we have an even greater stake in the future of our communities than older generations,” he added.
Building Careers in Public Service
In the fall of 2024, two alumnae came to campus to talk about their work as public servants at a panel of USD Truman Scholars hosted by the College of Arts & Sciences. The Truman Scholarship is the nation’s premier graduate scholarship for students pursuing education and careers in the public service sector. Since 1986, 20 USD students have been named Truman Scholars.
Clarissa Barnes, M.D., MBA, won the Truman Scholarship in 2003, when she was a junior at USD majoring in chemistry and political science. Barnes currently serves as the chief medical officer for South Dakota Medicaid and as a hospitalist at Avera in Sioux Falls. She is also a clinical professor at the USD Sanford School of Medicine.
Barnes, originally from Yankton, jumped feet first into academics and extracurricular activities when she arrived at USD.
“I had two majors, and I was very active in the music department,” she said. “I was also pretty active on campus in a variety of activities and clubs. In particular, I focused a lot of time on the Residence Hall Association and eventually became president.”
Barnes said her time in the Resident Hall Association was a useful introduction to working as a group to improve a community. “It was a good way to learn some of the leadership and governance experiences I would need later on,” she said.
These experiences at USD set up Barnes to pursue her game plan of earning a medical degree, working in public health and one day heading the Centers for Disease Control. “I had small goals,” she joked.
After medical school at Johns Hopkins University, Barnes spent some time during her residency working in public health in Washington, D.C. She loved the work of applying her expertise to serve the public but determined that she needed more direct health care experience to be most effective.
"There are really great people with great ideas who don’t always understand the operational challenges of what it means to work on the front lines, so after my residency I went to work as a physician to get that practical experience,” she said.
This experience has paid off in her current position making medical decisions for South Dakota’s Medicaid program.
“It’s very gratifying to be able to serve the state and to serve patients using all of my past experiences,” she said.
Working in the public sector is one way to be civically engaged, Barnes said, but she stressed that those who help others, whether in their jobs, in professional associations or in the community, are engaging in public service. “That’s what public service is – identifying something that needs to be done and saying, ‘Well, why not me?’”
Heather Fluit, a 2007 recipient of the Truman Scholarship, shared similar sentiments about the many shapes public service can take.
"I think everybody has a role to play in contributing to their community," she said.
Originally from Sioux Falls, Fluit majored in political science. She regularly speaks to USD students during the political science department’s annual study away trip to Washington, D.C., where she is a partner at the consulting firm, ICF Next. Prior to her current position, she worked in communications for senators, a governor, government agencies and both the U.S. Congress and Senate.
These types of public service jobs are as challenging as they are rewarding, she said.
“I tell students, if you’re working for a member of Congress, or a political administration, or an agency, those public service roles are a privilege to have and ask a lot of your time, your energy and your patience,” Fluit said. “But you get to have a seat at the table. You get to be in the room where interesting and impactful things are happening and being discussed. You get to have some influence and contribute to strategic decision-making for the greater good of the community you serve.”
Fluit said she sees a lot of herself in the political science students who visit the nation’s capital each year. “They can be a little shy and they ask a lot of questions about what it’s like to live in such a big city,” she said.
When she came to USD as an undergraduate, Fluit studied journalism and wrote for the Volante student newspaper while also working the night shift as a production assistant for KELO-TV. In her sophomore year, she studied abroad in Italy, writing about that country’s political system for her Honors mini thesis.
The next two summers brought her to Washington, D.C., where she was a press intern for the late Sen. Tim Johnson the first summer and an intern in the U.S. State Department’s Digital Communication Center the next.
“These internships just completely opened my eyes to the career path that I ultimately went down,” she said.
Fluit credits USD for setting her up for success in public service. Professors like Mary Pat Bierle, who coordinated political science internships when Fluit was an undergraduate, demonstrated the strength of attending a university where the faculty members know and support each student. A connection with a fellow Truman Scholar (1999) and USD alumna Leslie Medema resulted in a Princeton in Asia Fellowship the year after graduation. Fluit taught English at a rural town in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam for one year.
“The professors and the engaged alumni network taught me not to be afraid to raise my hand for opportunities or ask questions or send that cold email,” she said. “I learned a lot of useful skills to bring into public service. And, although I didn’t realize it at the time, a lot of those activities that I participated in at USD were very helpful in the career that I would end up building for myself.”
Motivating to Make a Difference
Current USD senior Julia Stanek is building her foundation of experiences at USD before she graduates in May with a degree in political science and criminal justice. Originally from Sioux Falls, Stanek participates in numerous clubs and activities, but a recent opportunity to organize a forum of local political candidates for Hellwege’s Campaigns and Democracy class was particularly rewarding.
“I loved getting hands-on experience designing logos, mailers, assisting with social media, and then advocating for younger voters to vote,” Stanek said. “I already knew my local candidate ahead of time, but I enjoyed getting to ask her policy, campaign and work-life balance questions.”
Stanek said college students at USD and elsewhere are motivated to make a difference.
“Being engaged is not simply showing up for events in our community or on campus. It’s about the impact we can have elsewhere, what we learn on campus and spread into the community or in our hometowns,” Stanek said. “If we want change in our state over the next 50 years, it starts with us today.”
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