Army Administration School (Brookings, S.D.)
The Army Administration Schools, Enlisted Branch No. 3 at South Dakota State College was organized December 3, 1942. As the name implies, the school originally set out to train clerks for general army administration duty in the Air Corps. A total of eleven such classes were graduated. On May 19, 1943, the classification course was added. The course consisted principally of classification subjects, however, some administration subjects were included for those students also. A total of six classes were graduated from this section of the school.
The Army Administration School students enjoyed jointly all of the facilities of South Dakota State College with the college students. The Army Administration School completely occupied the Central Building, Old North Building, East Men's Hall, West Men's Hall and Wecota Annex. An exchange was maintained in East Men's Hall for the convenience of the men. The health of the command was administered by local doctors; thus releasing medical officers for other duties.
A great deal of emphasis was placed on close order drill and orderly movements of the students from class to class. Retreat parades were a weekly event and several were in honor of dignitaries who visited the campus. Open and closing exercises were held in the college auditorium for each class. The personnel of the school assisted in the fall harvest of 1943 in the surrounding farming communities of Brookings, which was facing a shortage of civilian help for harvest needs.
Professor Emerita Mary Peterson Arnold was born in December of 1947. She wrote for the Mitchell Daily Republic while studying at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell as the city desk reporter and women’s editor. She then spent four years (1973-77) as a reporter for the Vermillion Plain Talk after getting her master’s degree in English from the University of South Dakota.
Arnold was a high school journalism teacher and newspaper and yearbook adviser in Minnesota and Iowa until she joined the faculty of the University of Iowa in 1986. While there, she earned her doctorate in mass communications and directed the Iowa High School Press Association and summer workshops. She was also a professor at Ball State University, in Muncie, Indiana, where she directed that school’s American Society of Newspaper Editors’ High School Journalism Institute. From 1989 to 2004, she was on the board of the Student Press Law Center, serving as president.
From 1996 to 2001, Arnold managed the Newspaper Association of America Foundation in Washington, D.C., where Arnold managed high school journalism and youth outreach programs. There, she helped establish a student newspaper and youth editorial program. She then moved the journalism department at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. She taught journalism classes and directed a high school journalism workshop for two years. Arnold also started doing consultant work writing books for the Media Management Center at Northwestern University She wrote a series of four books on women employed at top levels of management in news organizations.
Dr. Arnold was hired by South Dakota State University in 2002 as head of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication. She retired in 2017.
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
Athenian Literary Society (South Dakota State College)
The Athenian Literary Society was first organized in 1888, as a branch of the literary society known as Lyceum. The Athenians were chartered by the last session of the Dakota Territorial Legislature in 1888. At that time, membership was limited to men only, but this restriction was soon removed and women were admitted with full membership privileges. The purpose of the Society was to develop its members in oratory, debate, and extemporaneous speaking and to promote social activities. The weekly meeting consisted of essays, debates, extemporaneous speaking, declamations, games and music.