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History
Professor Donald Berg earned a B.A. in History from North Dakota State University in 1964 and an M.A. in History in 1966. He completed a second M.A. at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971 and received his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1976.
Berg served in the U.S. Army from 1966 to 1969, including service in the Vietnam War from 1967 to 1968. During the summers of 1970, 1971, and 1972, he was employed as a seasonal ranger naturalist at Sequoia National Park in California.
He joined South Dakota State University as a professor of geography and history in 1990 and retired in May 2011. He also held earlier appointments at SDSU from 1983 to 1986. Berg taught courses primarily in physical geography, world regional geography, and environmental disasters and hazards, as well as seminars in regional geography, transportation, energy, and illegal drugs. His teaching also included courses in the history of the American West and American Indian history and culture. For more than fifteen years, he provided orientation sessions for students participating in the International Partnership for Service-Learning program.
Berg served as secretary treasurer of the Great Plains Rocky Mountain Division of the Association of American Geographers from 1994 to 2008 and was faculty sponsor for the Delta Zeta Chapter of Gamma Theta Upsilon beginning in 1994. He was the first instructor at South Dakota State University to offer live, real time interactive television courses on the Brookings campus and received two Governor’s Grants in 2000 and 2002 for the application of computer technology to online instruction in physical geography.
His research, professional presentations, and publications addressed topics including Native American casinos, the historical geography of railroads, federal defense and water development programs, and related book reviews and encyclopedia contributions. His later work focused on the historical geography of the Dust Bowl era in the northern Great Plains and the development and significance of the American Indian Reservation system in South Dakota.