University Leadership Honors

At their core, endowments are essentially a celebration of our people: the people guiding and instructing the next generation of Jackrabbits, the people who invest in our premier standard of education, and the people who will be touched by transformational funding today, tomorrow, and generations into the future.

In 2022, South Dakota State University introduced a new way of recognizing our people by hosting the inaugural University Leadership Honors event, a collective investiture ceremony honoring the holders of endowed faculty positions at SDSU.

Defined as gifts invested to support a university’s growth, endowments are perpetually funded financial resources that serve to advance knowledge and fuel innovation. The prestige of endowed faculty positions lends credibility with national peers, heightening appeal for high-caliber faculty from around the globe. They also help to bolster research efforts, allowing SDSU to capitalize on opportunities as they emerge and foster educational experiences that might otherwise not be possible.

Endowments also represent a critical element of fundraising campaigns, like Bold & Blue: The Campaign for South Dakota State University. When the campaign was first conceptualized in 2017, State was home to 13 endowed faculty positions. While Bold & Blue has an overall goal to raise $500 million for SDSU, it also aimed to bolster endowed positions by reaching the landmark of 50 by the conclusion of the campaign.

As of the second annual University Leadership Honors ceremony on September 21, 2023, SDSU had commitments in place for 53 endowed positions, successfully catalyzing commitments for 40 endowed positions since the beginning of Bold & Blue – a landslide of progress in just six years. Each position represents a vast horizon of opportunity for each honored faculty member, with resources to open doors and expand possibility.

“These are dollars [endowed holders] can invest in their research, their college, or their department," explained President Dunn at the 2023 ceremony. "Those resources can pay for graduate assistants, travel, and buy laboratory equipment. All because an individual, company, or organization chose to make that investment.”

In addition to being key factors of campaigns, endowments are the result of philanthropic funding from donors who believe in SDSU’s limitless capacity for innovation, progress, and growth. The University Leadership Honors ceremony is an opportunity for State to recognize the tremendous generosity behind named positions, as well as the game-changing faculty and staff who fill the positions and set out to transform lives for current and future Jackrabbits.

In the past and in the early days of Bold & Blue, individual investiture ceremonies were held to honor endowed faculty positions and their new holders as they emerged. As the momentum of the campaign grew and the ceremonies became more and more frequent, the time came for SDSU to think a bit bolder in recognizing these pivotal positions – and the University Leadership Honors ceremony was born.

While commitments are in place for 53 positions, 12 faculty and staff who are holders of the most recent endowments were honored at the event.

Those twelve honorees represent seven different colleges. Three different donors are responsible for the gifts to support seven of the latest endowed positions, and two of the positions are even funded by former university faculty and leaders.

Our people are our reason to celebrate, and the next chapter of SDSU would look very different without the donors and scholars who make named positions possible.

As new endowments come to fruition and the Jackrabbit family continues to collaborate in fueling our bold future, the University Leadership Honors ceremony is our opportunity to honor how far we’ve come and just how far we have the potential to go.