SOUTH DAKOTA

The Board of Regents is seeking $75 million in bond authority as part of a $117 million project to upgrade science facilities and research laboratories at the public universities to provide state-of-the-art equipment to students and faculty.

The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation company came up with the Tanka Bar as a modern-day spinoff of a traditional Lakota food called "wasna" that sustained Great Plains Indians during long trips centuries ago.

The brain drain effect, as it’s called in higher education circles, plays a crucial role in the state economically because college graduates look elsewhere for better jobs, leaving South Dakota with a deficit in the pool of college-educated individuals to enter the work force.

We would like to see business, industry and community leaders as well as area legislators, K-12 representatives, students of all ages and faculty in attendance.

South Dakota State University will begin a drive in 2009 to raise more than $100 million to back the school’s expanding role in the state’s economy, its president, David Chicoine, said Tuesday.

The change will allow the state greater leeway to assist expanding businesses, many of which were not eligible for the existing support programs.

"We want to try to create what we would like to be, as opposed to just letting things happen,"

Agricultural biotechnology has created more than 22,000 jobs and more than $2.4 billion in revenue in the United States, according to the South Dakota Biotech Association.