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Julie Smith resigns from DSU after seven years

After seven years at Dakota State University, Liberal Arts Associate Professor of History, Julie Smith has resigned. Smith will leave DSU July 27 for University of North Carolina-Pembroke in Pembroke, NC, where she will join the history faculty as an Assistant Professor. Pembroke began as a normal school to teach Lumbee Indians and is now a multipurpose university in the state system.

“There is no history department, per se, here and I have longed to join history colleagues for several years,” said Smith. “I am looking forward to being a part of a department with a major. In addition, I will also be supervising secondary education history majors. I'm really looking forward to being more active in the preparation of K-12 teachers.”

“Julie Smith has been an outstanding history professor at DSU,” said Dakota State Dean of Liberal Arts, Eric Johnson. “In addition to her excellent teaching, she has brought significant use of computers to the teaching of courses in the social sciences.”

Smith will also be moving closer to her family. “Most of my family is still in Pennsylvania and I will be within a day's drive of them. I am really looking forward to seeing them more frequently.”

Smith started at DSU as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor last June. She says she will miss the DSU community and the many opportunities she’s had here.

“I have had some wonderful opportunities to learn about teaching with technology and to play a part in developing new ways to use technology in the classroom,” Smith said. “It is just time for me to move onto a bigger school with less technology to teach others what I have learned here.”

“I have made some friendships and have worked with some of the best colleagues a person could ever hope to have. I will miss those friendships and those colleagues,” added Smith. “But I will also miss the students. I truly enjoyed the students I have had in my classes. For the most part, the students here laugh at my jokes, suffer with my writing demands and produce some original ideas about history in the process. I will miss the technical sophistication of the students and their ability to find new ways to complete assignments.”

 In the immediate future, Smith plans to publish some of the grants she worked on while here at DSU.

“In that way, I'll still be a part of DSU for a few more years until I have a body of research from UNC-Pembroke that will complement the work I've done here,” said Smith. “But I will also be attending conferences and teaching, so in some ways, my life won't change significantly from what it has been at DSU.”