Welcome to Northern State University

Northern State is one of the country's premiere residential institutions with outstanding students, great faculty and staff, and state-of-the-art facilities. No matter what you are looking for, you'll find it here at Northern State. I invite you to visit and experience our beautiful campus.

Ours is a unique institution where students are provided the opportunity to engage with the best of academics, cultural arts and athletics. It is also a place where international cultures come together for the purpose of exploring the very finest elements of an undergraduate or graduate education. NSU has one of the highest guaranteed scholarship programs in the region, and the best in the state of South Dakota. The Wolf PACT scholarship offers incoming freshman a four-year guarantee based solely on a student’s ACT score.

The professors at Northern State are committed to presenting academic materials in a challenging but intimate environment with a faculty to student ratio of 18 to one. Your classes here will be small and dynamic with many opportunities to be involved outside of the classroom. NSU is a campus with designated areas of excellence in E-learning and international business – we are truly a place where you can learn along with students from around the globe.

At NSU learning happens in class, libraries, labs, study groups, the Student Center, athletic events, in clubs and on the campus green. There are a wide variety of learning communities, internship opportunities and study abroad programs available to our students as well as an abundance of clubs and organizations, extra curricular activities to compliment academic life.

Northern State is the home of the Wolves, where some of the best athletes participate in Division II athletics in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference. With the strong support Aberdeen and our surrounding communities, our men’s and women’s basketball programs ranked number one in attendance for the 2008-09 season. We also celebrated with head coach Don Meyer, this past January, as he became the winningest coach in the history of men’s college basketball.

NSU has the best fine arts programming in the upper Midwest. Our programs allow students to experience a wide range of artistic mediums as they develop a critical understanding of art, music and theater. Members of our fine arts faculty are nationally and internationally recognized artists and musicians. Combine that with abundant studio space, rehearsal halls and behind the scenes amenities, and a new musical theater major, the NSU School of Fine Arts is the place to be.

Our graduate programs are among the best in this area, and enrollments have been growing steadily due to the exceptional programs that we offer.

Northern is a place where you can truly be yourself; we are an institution that is dedicated to allowing you to explore and create to the absolute limits of your imagination. I urge you to begin your explorations right now.

Be You. Be Us. Be Northern!

James Smith, President
Northern State University

Fall Opening School Convocation Address (in PDF).
Select Year:  2009