Greetings from the SDSU Dairy and Food Science Department!
July is bringing warmer temperatures, and also reminders that the fall semester will be starting before we know it!
June was an exciting month for our department. We had an amazing turnout for Dairy Fest Day on the Farm this year, including over 1500 people touring
Crosswinds Jerseys near Elkton, SD and serving almost 90 gallons of our SDSU ice cream! We also had nearly 200 people tour the Davis Dairy Plant on June 6 before they headed out to the Day on the Farm. Thanks for all those that helped at, sponsored and attended the event!
Thanks also to all of our alumni and friends who joined us at our SDSU reception at the American Dairy Science Association (ADSA) Annual Conference in Milwaukee, WI. We had a great turnout at the reception and our department also had 16 poster presentations, 1 symposium presentation, 8 oral presentations, and one faculty member chaired a session at ADSA. We are so proud of our first place undergraduate quiz bowl team and their coach at ADSA! Congratulations to them! Many of our students, staff, and alumni helped with the I-29 Dairy Youth Extravaganza in Watertown, SD in June. Thanks to Dillon Sparrgrove (Dairy Production BS student) for leading the fitting workshop and thanks to our Dairy Production alumnus Kelsey (Erf) Vanderwal for judging the show, as well as to all those who helped with and sponsored the event.
Some of our faculty, graduate students and members of our Food Science Club participated in the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) expo and annual meeting in Chicago, IL in early July as well.
We are currently searching for a new manager for our Davis Dairy Plant. More information on that position opening is included below. Please share that opening with anyone that might be interested and please also consider applying yourself to help us to continue to provide excellent student training, research, and service opportunities through the Davis Dairy Plant.
Thanks to all of you for your support in sharing information about our new two-year degree, as well as our BS and graduate degree opportunities with any prospective students. We appreciate all the support that so many of you provide to our department. Please contact me if you would like to visit about our department. I would be happy to visit with you!
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to any one you think might be interested.
David A. Thompson Endowed Department Head & Professor
NEW!
Associates Degree in Dairy Technology
In addition to the current undergraduate degree programs offered by our department (B.S. degrees in Dairy Production, Dairy Manufacturing and Food Science), our department was recently approved to offer an Associates of Science degree in Dairy Technology. Students can start enrolling now and can start classes in the fall of 2026. There is a dairy production track that is completely stackable with our dairy production B.S. degree, so that students could get their A.S. degree in two years and then stay another two years and get a B.S. degree in Dairy Production. We also have a Dairy Products track of the A.S. degree that is completely stackable with the Dairy Manufacturing B.S. degree that they could complete in an additional two years. We are working on developing more materials to provide information about the program that we can share when they are ready, but we wanted to share this information with you now so that you could share with any prospective students that you know of who might be interested in this program. Please contact Dr. Londa Nwadike if you have any questions.
South Dakota State University (SDSU) Dairy and Food Science department is offering an exciting career opportunity as a Manager for the Davis Dairy Plant. This position will manage all operations of the dairy plant, supervise dairy plant staff, purchase supplies and ingredients, and coordinate maintenance and repair of equipment and the facility. This position is located inBrookings, SD. This position is a 12-month, full-time, benefits-eligible position.
Our Dairy Manufacturing alum, Bekki Flesner, has had a tremendous career in the dairy food industry. Learn what inspired her to study Dairy Manufacturing and build a career consulting for new food product development!
What inspired you choice in career and education? "I didn't realize how you could eat food for your job! I took an "Intro to Dairy" class at SDSU and then had an internship with Kemps ice cream, and that locked in the career path." -Bekki
Tell us about your roles in the food industry. "I started as an Account Manager with Ecolab, then moved to a R&D Food Scientist at Target, than a R&D Scientist at General Mills. I currently own my own business as a consultant, for R&D Food Sceince" -Bekki
Share your experience with the job market in dairy manufacturing. " When I graduated, I had 7 job offers? Currently, there has always been a job available, when I've looked! I now have the flexibility that I desire, for my family as well. I love what I do. It's a great career field." -Bekki
What advice do you have for students exploring careers and education in dairy and food sciences? "Look for number, type, and starting salaries for jobs available. Pursue as many internships as possible!" -Bekki
Favorite SDSU memories:
Community assistant in the resident halls, being a member of the PRIDE marching band, and life-long friends.
Recruitment Updates & Opportunities
Share your story as an Alumnus or Industry Representative, inspire the next generation!
~A message from Cheyenne Edmundson, SDSU DFS Recruiter
This June I traveled to Rochester, MN for the first time to support a youth career camp where we made ice cream in their Career Technical Education kitchen. This event was focused on 7th & 8th graders to encourage them to pursue extracurriculars in agriculture or family/consumer science courses. Dr. Clifford Hall and I did a dairy food workshop for about 30 7th-12th graders through University on the Prairie, a program by Cottonwood Co. 4-H in Minnesota as well as a one-day camp for 4-H in Winner, SD. I also attended a NW Iowa Dairy Farm open house to promote our new two-year degree. The WI FFA Convention was also on our June calendar! Now having access to SLATE, a new CRM platform used by Admissions, I can send formal emails to prospective students ahead of key events, generate new leads, and more importantly track them with notes and suggestions for follow up. This puts me in a system that is more conducive to communicating with admission counselors and tracking our impact through our recruitment efforts and other reps across campus.
The first week of July I tabled at the National Leadership Conference for FCCLA high schoolers and was nominated to speak on careers in food science, a growing interest amongst FACs educators- view our presentation here. We are also engaging at the South Dakota Career & Technical Education (CTE) conference at the end of July, presenting in front of Ag/FFA instructors, FCS/FCCLA instructors, and career counselors in the state.
I'd like to connect with YOU! If you'd like to learn more about our recruitment goals and share ideas, I plan to host virtual connections this July before the busy season starts. Please consider joining and reviewing the proposals below prior to joining. I am estimating an hour and a half, but feel free to join and leave when it works best for you.
The documents below outline our statistics and our goals going into 26-27 academic year, if you would like more information on how you can help us leading into One Day for State on September 10th please email, call or text me.
The SDSU Dairy Quiz Bowl Team attended the annual American Dairy Science Association's annual conference in Milwaukee, WI on June 22nd-23rd, and won first place overall! This is the first ever win for an SDSU ADSA Quiz Bowl team! They competed against universities including Penn State, Georgia, NC State, Florida, Tennessee, Illinois, Iowa State, Virginia Tech, Cal Poly. The team included (L-R) Logan Guilette, Dillion Sparrgrove, Hayley Daubert, and Wyatt Zehr. Congratulations to the Quiz Bowl Team!
2026 NMPF National Dairy Leadership Scholarship Program
The National Milk Producers Federation Board of Directors selected five graduate students, conducting research that benefits dairy cooperatives and producers, to receive scholarships as part of the 2026 NMPF National Dairy Leadership Scholarship Program. Scholarship recipients include:
Vaishali Poswal, a doctoral candidate studying Dairy Manufacturing at South Dakota State University. Her research focuses on environmental listeria persistence and biofilm formation in dairy microbial communities, as well as development of an antimicrobial peptide bio-sanitizer for enhanced control.
2025 MN IFT Student Scholarship Recipients
MNIFT held their annual Macy Award and Student Recognition night on April 23rd at Como Park Conservatory in Saint Paul, Minnesota awarding about $27,000 in scholarships and travel awards to many students including 7 SDSU students. 6 of those students are from the Dairy and Food Science Department, shown below. Congratulations to all the students involved!
Ph.D. Graduate Scholarship Winners
Priyamvada Thorakkattu
MS Graduate Scholarship Winners
Khushi Dubey
Saloni Chauhan
IFT FIRST Travel Award Winners
Ting Mao
Priyamvada Thorakkattu
Sumi Regmi
Saloni Chauhan
Sharad Bhattarai
John Brandt Memorial Scholarship Winners
Congratulations to Alice Souza e Castro ($25,000) and Vaishali Poswal ($15,000) who were both awarded the John Brandt Memorial graduate student scholarship from Land O’ Lakes. John Brandt is credited as the founder of Land O’Lakes in 1921. It is a huge honor that both the Dairy Production and Dairy Manufacturing winners this year are from SDSU.
Undergraduate Research Grant
Congratulations to Tyler Townsend, a Dairy Production major from Chicago, IL whose undergraduate research project “Adoption of precision technologies for health and reproductive management on South Dakota dairy farms” was recently awarded funding by the SDSU College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences undergraduate research fund. His mentor on the project is Dr. Tony Bruinje.
Events & Calendar
Dairy Drive Football Game - September 19, 2026
Join us for a chance to win a cooler!
We would like to invite everyone to join us for tailgating on September 19th from 1pm-5:30pm for the Dairy Drive football game. The game starts at 6pm at the Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium. We have partnered up with multiple companies in the dairy industry once again to put together a chance to win a cooler filled with goodies from the participating companies. To win the cooler, we will have a punch card to take between tailgating spots of Dairy and Food Science, Valley Queen, AMPI, Prairie Farms, and Bel Brands. Once a punch has been received from all of these companies you will be entered into a drawing for the cooler. The Dairy and Food Science tailgating spot will be by the Alfred Dairy Science Hall. We will be serving ice cream and providing Davis Dairy Plant tours. All other companies will be tailgating north of the Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium. We will also have a dairy calf to visit in that area.
SDSU CAFES Career Fair - October 7, 2026
The SDSU College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences Career Fair will be held this year on one day only- Wednesday, October 7 from 10am-4pm.
Calendar
July 12-15: Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) expo and annual meeting- Chicago, IL
July 29: Central Plains Dairy Foundation golf tournament- Dell Rapids, SD
July 29-30: Midwest Dairy Foods Research Center (MDFRC) Annual meeting- Roseville, MN
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View all previous newsletters here. If you would like to read the newsletters sent out previously to students those can be accessed here.
