In preparation for Bob Tereshinski’s forthcoming retirement from Mount Marty College, officials have wasted no time naming his replacement.

Suzy Kalsow, who has served as the associate vice president for academic affairs and the dean of graduate and professional studies for nearly two years at Buena Vista University, in Storm Lake, Iowa, will take the reins as MMC’s vice president and Dean of Academic Affairs beginning July 1.

Prior to her current position at Buena Vista, Kalsow had served as the university’s dean for the school of education. Before arriving at Buena Vista, she taught seventh and eighth grade English and physical education for 17 years. She also served as a curriculum director and worked in education consulting.

“In my current position (at Buena Vista), I oversee each of the 16 satellite campuses we have and I’m also in charge of online education,” she said. “I also coordinate all of the graduate programming we offer here.”

Kalsow said she enjoys working with people who, in many cases, are going back to school as an adult to get their degree.

“I enjoy seeing older students and adults changing their lives through education,” she said. “We have programs set up with community college and offer opportunities for people to get their education in their home area, while still working and having families. That is so rewarding for me to be a part of.”

Kalsow added that the next step in furthering her career is a position as vice president — one that she’ll have at Mount Marty.

“I had been looking at the VP position after having had the associate vice president position at Buena Vista,” she said. “The size of Mount Marty was appealing to me, and I also like the Benedictine connection there that serves as a clear philosophy for the school.”

One of the new challenges awaiting Kalsow at MMC are the health care programs.

“Even though it’s a new area and a new challenge, I’m still interested in learning all about the health care programs,” she said. “The fact that MMC has two satellite campuses outside of Yankton that offer opportunities for students was also intriguing to me.”

Kalsow said one of the biggest differences between MMC and Buena Vista is the emphasis Buena Vista places on its satellite campuses. She added that people at Mount Marty have a sense of who they are, and the grounding principles are clear at the college.

She noted that one of the things she will do before she gets on campus is understanding the education requirements for South Dakota and how they compare to those in Iowa.

Kalsow added that the other programs are similar to what she’s been working with at Buena Vista and are not as much of a challenge for her as the health care programs are.

“After 14 years at Buena Vista, which is also my alma mater, part of me thought I might stay there until I retired, but this seemed like the right opportunity for me,” she said. “After I applied and interviewed, it wasn’t as hard to leave Buena Vista because I was impressed with the people at Mount Marty.”

She added that she is focused on getting results by building relationships, and said she deeply cares about the culture of an organization and how it does business.

“I want to get to know the individuals and build relationships with everyone at MMC, including having one-on-one time with people,” Kalsow said. “I care about what we do and how we go about making decisions and how we include people in the decision-making process. I want to find out what is happening at MMC currently, the strengths of the college and will get to do some strategic planning while at MMC.”

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In response to increasing food costs, the Yankton School District’s (YSD) child nutrition supervisor has teamed up with the nutrition supervisors in the Brandon Valley and Harrisburg school districts to cut food costs.

“I had talked about partnering with Brandon Valley for several years, but we wanted to pick up a third school, as well,” said Sandy Kramer, YSD’s child nutrition supervisor. “There was a new food director at Harrisburg, and we talked to him about it and he became very interested.”

The three child nutrition supervisors began brainstorming on the program in the fall of 2011, and decide the following spring to do their bids together. This school year was the first of the partnership.

“We figure together, we’ve spent more than about $2 million in food,” Kramer said. “YSD and Brandon Valley both saved about 3-5 percent, and Harrisburg saved a little bit more because they hadn’t done a bid before.”

The districts will again partner this year, and they are currently taking bids for food service providers. The bid opening will is set for May 17.

“We’re also looking at combining other things, including doing some staff trainings together,” Kramer said. “We could just get one speaker to come in for all of our staff members.”

She added that it has been nice to share things with the other supervisors, and the three can divide things up with the USDA food guidelines changes.

“So far, we’ve been very compatible,” Kramer said. “Each of us has had to give up something’s that we’ve liked to use, but we never give up on the quality of the product we provide. For us, it’s quality versus price.”

In addition to the benefits for the districts, the food brokers also like the partnership.

“Without the partnership, the brokers would probably come around and stop at each school to show a product,” Kramer said. “We can contact one broker and they can do all the food samplings for each district at one time.”

She said she has already been approached by superintendents, business managers and school board members from other districts about the advantages of partnering up.

“We really wanted to get a year under our belt before we began to promote the partnership and push other districts to consider it,” Kramer said. “After we get done with our bid opening in a few weeks, we will contact other schools and say they need to think about it.”

One of the reasons Kramer chose to partner up with Brandon Valley and Harrisburg is because the three district’s are similar in size and are close to each other geographically.

“We’re all on the same side of the state, and we figured with the way the trucking routes go down the interstate, we would be in a good position to partner up,” she said. “You have to take into consideration that transportation is a big cost for distributors.”

Kramer said there are a lot of schools in other states that are teaming up to cut food costs, but this is the only partnership in South Dakota.

“We may try to do trainings for some schools and educate them about the partnership and how we got started,” she said. “It’s not as difficult to get started as many districts might think it would be. Partnering up with other schools could benefit both small districts and larger ones.”

You can follow Andrew Atwal on Twitter at twitter.com/andrewatwal

GAYVILLE — The votes are in, and Gayville-Volin’s dream of a new track is a big step closer to reality.

After receiving more than 51,000 votes in a three-week period, Gayville-Volin secured a $25,000 grant from State Farm to help construct a new track.

The Gayville-Volin track came in third out of the 200 finalists.

“We applied for the grant last year, but were not one of the top 200 finalists to be chosen,” said Amy Gustad, who helped promote the cause throughout the community. “With this grant, we are closer to reaching our fundraising goal and making the project a      reality.”

Gayville-Volin is still working towards its goal of $350,000, and this grant gets them closer to that goal.

“We are hopeful to break ground this spring, with the project being completed in the fall,” Gustad said. “We have enough money to get started, and some future fundraising events we have planned should get us close to our fundraising goal.”

Fundraising events planned include a golf tournament and fun run. Officials are also planning a “Track-A-Palooza” event in the fall, which is slated to be their biggest fundraising event remaining. The “Track-A-Palooza” event will feature raffle items, and a live and silent auction.

“We’re also looking for donations from members of the community to help us reach our goal,” Gustad said. “We have never had a track in Gayville, despite having strong cross country and track and field programs at the school. We’re hoping building a track gets more people excited about the program.”

She added that the track will also help promote a healthy lifestyle within the community, and older residents can use it for exercise. The track will also be used by gym classes throughout the school day.

“Right now, kids are training on the streets surrounding Gayville, and the roads are torn up because crews have been doing work on them,” Gustad said. “It’s not a safe environment for kids to be training on. Oftentimes when middle school kids go to track meets, for some of them it’s the first time they’ve ever stepped on a track.”

You can follow Andrew Atwal on Twitter at twitter.com/andrewatwal

When a Mount Marty College faculty member traveled to a conference on getting philosophy into K-12 schools, he never knew it would turn out to be the basis of a new book.

Nick Shudak, director of the masters in teacher education program and assistant professor at MMC, is a contributor and editor of the new book “Philosophy In Schools: An Introduction for Philosophers and Teachers.” The book is aimed towards helping philosophers and educators bring philosophy into the K-12 classrooms.

“People often tend to think of philosophy as this difficult college-level subject matter that is out of reach, and maybe even out of touch, for K-12 students and teachers,” Shudak said. “This volume, rather, looks at philosophy as a way of being and thinking that is perfectly fit for what goes on in the K-12 schools and curriculum.”

He added that he thinks it’s important that people in the area get some insight into the type of academic and scholarly work that is being done at a college in their backyard.

The book is in collaboration with two other nationally recognized professors. Sara Goering is a professor at the University of Washington and the director of the Northwest Center for Philosophy for Children. Thomas Waternberg is a professor at Mount Holyoke College and has an award-winning website that contains information on philosophy for K-12 schools.

“The Philosophy for Children (P4C) is a movement that tries to get more philosophical thinking and skills into K-12 schools,” Shudak said, “It’s a pretty sizable movement that has been going on for around the last 30 years. One of the difficulties it has faced is when people ask questions like, ‘How do you do it and what do the models look like?’”

He added that philosophy is an eternal and enduring conversation about questions that have been asked for thousands of years on the subjects of justice, goodness and beauty. He said there is already numerous topics in K-12 curriculum that revolves around those questions.

“The questions then become, how can we help teachers look at their already existing curriculum a little bit more philosophically?” Shudak said. “Most of what teachers do is already philosophically-laden, so these topics exist all around them.”

He added that one way teachers can get philosophy into the classroom is through literature groups when talking about protagonists and antagonists. The philosophical aspect of this would be why are these people in disagreements.

“It’s important because these philosophical thinking skills help go deeper into questions of everyday life,” Shudak said. “It’s not always one answer, and sometimes there isn’t an answer. It’s just a way of going deeper into questions.”

He noted that kids are naturally disposed to wonder, enjoy puzzles and play, and if educators can take the ancient saying that philosophy begins in wonder seriously, then it makes sense that there can be better efforts made to bring students in contact with philosophy.

“Teachers talk about the importance of critical and creative thinking, and about the necessity of 21st century skills, and philosophy is a wonderful midwife for making those things happen in classrooms,” Shudak said. “This book brings together K-12 educators, teacher educators and trained philosophers who discuss and describe their efforts at making curriculum a bit more philosophical — there is really a bit of everything in this volume.”

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Mount Marty College is giving its students yet another degree option from which to choose.

In response to statistics from the United States Department of Labor that show health care administration being a career that is expected to go at an above average rate over the next decade, officials at Mount Marty College are adding health care administration as a new business administration degree emphasis.

The degree emphasis will begin for the fall 2013 semester, and students who are juniors and lower will be eligible for the program.

“We’ve been working to develop this program for about a year,” said Joe Sejnoha, associate professor of business. “The health care field is going to continue to grow because baby boomers will be getting older, so there will be more of a demand for health care facilities for those individuals.”

Bob Tereshinski, vice president and dean of academic affairs at MMC, said the program has potential to work well with Avera Sacred Heart Hospital (ASHH) across the street from campus.

“(Joe) Sejnoha brought up the comment that it would be nice to be able to have a hands-on process for the health care administration emphasis with the facilities Avera has in the community and in the region,” he said. “We would use the facilities for a six-hour internship with our students who are involved in the emphasis we’ve created.”

Sejnoha said there is also the potential to use some of the executives at Avera Sacred Heart as faculty members for the program.

“We’ve had several meetings with Pam Rezac (president/CEO of Avera Sacred Heart Hospital) and a pivotal point of those meetings was to be able to have the capabilities of utilizing the staff members at Avera as guest speakers and possibly adjunct faculty members,” Tereshinski said. “We also found out that there are a number of other retired individuals in the community that can help us by serving as guest lecturers, as well.”

Rezac said the partnership between Mount Marty and Avera with the new emphasis will not only help out students but will also help Avera, too.

“Health care systems such as Avera need to recruit talented, dedicated people to join the health care management and administrative teams to assist us in providing high-quality, accessible health care services to our communities,” she said. “In addition, health care delivery is rapidly changing, and the expectations of patients demands a higher level of expertise in managing health care’s valuable and limited resources.”

Rezac added that the health care administrative team views the partnership with Mount Marty as a great opportunity to contribute its knowledge and expertise to the health care administrative profession.

“The partnership will also help to enhance the retention of current Avera Sacred Heart employees who may view the new health care administrative course offerings as a way to advance their own career options,” she said. “Together, ASHH and MMC can maximize resources and combine our talents and expertise towards this mutual goal.

“Also, it should not be overlooked that both entities foster strong faith-based settings for learning, teaching and developing well-rounded and educated health care professionals.”

Career options for students who choose to add the health care administration emphasis to their degree program include working in management at a health care facility, clinic or hospital.

Tereshinski said the addition of the health care administration option adds yet another option to the choices students at MMC have.

“This gives us another avenue for our business administration majors,” he said. “This gives us a different track for our business administration students to take for when they graduate. The emphasis makes things more specific for the job market and employers, and also makes our graduates more marketable for the workforce.”

Rezac said the evidence she’s seen points to their being serious shortages of health care professionals sometime in the near future.

“The partnership is a natural fit for both ASHH and MMC, and will benefit the people of our region through the promotion of high quality health care services,” she said.

You can follow Andrew Atwal on Twitter at twitter.com/andrewatwal