S.D.'s SUSEL/Sputnik moment

By Journal Editorial Board | Sunday, October 21, 2007

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As Tad Perry likes to say, SUSEL is South Dakota’s “Sputnik moment.”

Perry is the executive director of the Board of Regents and, as such, plans for the future of the state’s higher education system. That future got a lot brighter when the National Science Foundation chose Homestake Mine in Lead as the preferred sight for a proposed national underground science laboratory.

But just as Sputnik, the Soviet unmanned satellite that beat America into space 50 years ago this month, forced America to step up its science and space programs, SUSEL may be a wake-up call for South Dakota universities.

Perry hopes the challenges and opportunities presented to the state by SUSEL will spur funding for the research science budgets of our state universities. The potential for partnership between SUSEL and science and technology curriculums at West River universities such as South Dakota School of Mines & Technology and Black Hills State University is great. Right now, however, that potential is limited by a lack of laboratory space, outdated facilities and underfunded post-doctoral science programs at our state universities.

Scientific laboratories at our state universities are too few, too small and too old. Beyond that, our schools are far from having the “critical mass” of professors, post-doctoral students and other research personnel in numerous scientific disciplines that SUSEL will demand if it is to become a place of great scientific advancement.

Congress has provided early funding for science lab start-up expenses and federal funds support lots of other research at our universities, too. The Defense Appropriations Bill includes money for military-related research at the School of Mines: $400,000 to study the way improvised explosive devices explode in different soils and develop countermeasures for IEDs; $500,000 to develop better small, unmanned aerial vehicles and sensors for use, instead of humans, in select combat situations; $300,000 for the continued development of see-through armor for military combat vehicles that will be both strong and light; and $400,000 to develop technology that will shield Air Force rockets from sound pressure to help avoid damage to payloads during launch.

That kind of federal money is essential to scientific research at Mines, but the state must do its part, too.

More state funding for science-research laboratories and staff is an investment in the future that the 2008 Legislature must be willing to make in all our higher education facilities.

Fifty years ago, Sputnik led to the creation of NASA and, ultimately, man’s walk on the moon.

We think South Dakota is at its own “SUSEL moment.”