* Language clinic gets $222,098 expansion grant 
* New student senate president
* Almost an academic trifecta
* Jeppson new social, natural sciences dean
* MSU launches Economic Education Center

 "My first goal will be to develop a variety of teacher contacts in regional schools to let them know about our economic center and encourage them to use it," Dobis said. "This fall we hope to have a Web page developed and this winter we should host our first economic challenge event for regional high schools."
 Next year he intends to offer some refresher workshops on economics for teachers, with tuition partly underwritten by the Minnesota Economic Education Council. And that will be followed by evening workshops on personal finance and money matters that will be open to the public.
 Teachers who want to participate in the center’s activities are encouraged to contact Dobis at (218) 236-4029.

The 48-year-old mathematics professor has been serving as acting dean for the past two years pending a national search.

Jeppson, who chaired MSU’s mathematics department for four years, came to MSU in 1981 after earning his doctorate from Montana State University. He’s a specialist in differential equations, approximation theory and numerical analysis.

As dean, he’ll oversee 10 academic departments and 90 faculty in the College of Social and Natural Sciences.

Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, Jeppson is also an ordained minister and Bishop of the Fargo First Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He and his wife Joyce have four children.

MSU SPEECH-LANGUAGE CLINIC
GETS $222,098 DAKOTA MEDICAL
FOUNDATION GRANT TO EXPAND
Moorhead, MN…..Moorhead State University’s speech, language and hearing sciences department has received a $222,098 grant from the Dakota Medical Foundation to expand its clinical services.

The MSU Speech/Language/Hearing Clinic, an adjunct of the university’s academic program, provides therapy to the public using a combination of student clinicians and faculty supervisors. The services range from treating common articulation and hearing impairments  to other dysfunctions ranging from stuttering to  aphasia.

The largest chunk of the grant, $133,881, will staff and equip a specialty clinic to evaluate and treat clients with central auditory processing disorders (CAPD). About 3 percent of children and more than 10 percent of older adults are affected by CAPD, which distorts auditory signals to the brain.

"As sound moves from the ear to the brain, somehow that  auditory signal gets scrambled," says Arne Teigland, an MSU speech/language/hearing sciences professor who co-wrote the grant proposal with colleague LaRae McGillivray. "As a result, people with this disorder have difficulty interpreting what they hear. The message gets distorted during processing."

The MSU clinic will also work with teachers and schools who have CAPD students.

"Older people have auditory processing disorders partly because of degeneration of the nervous system," Teigland said. "Unfortunately, we can’t detect CAPD with a standard hearing test. It’s a processing problem. But in the elderly, the disorder is often dismissed as a product of hearing loss."

Another $79,463 from the grant will help expand MSU’s Regional Assistive Technology Center, which provides technical help and consulting services to people with speaking disabilities. The center also purchases augmentative communications equipment for short-term loans and offers demonstrations and technical assistance on the equipment. The grant will provide equipment and some staffing to help RATC director Marie Swanson.

Most insurance companies will not reimburse the cost of augmentative devices unless the individual has tried the technology for a reasonable period of time. The more expensive computer devices cost over $6,000 each. MSU’s loan program is available to regional schools, agencies and individuals.

The final $8,754 portion of the grant will fund a new Parent-Child Communications Program for parents of children who have language disorders. It will be coordinated by Louis DeMaio, also an MSU speech/language/hearing sciences professor. The program will teach parents how to communicate with their children in the most effective way that will stimulate language development.

SISSETON JUNIOR  ELECTED
PRESIDENT OF MSU’S
STUDENT SENATE
Moorhead, MN....Stephanie McCleerey, a junior political science major from Sisseton, S.D. , was elected president of the Moorhead State University student senate in a campus election last week.
 The senate represents the student body in the government of the university. Its activities are student centered and range from academic and social to consumer and legislative concerns.
 McCleerey  is a 1996 graduate of Sisseton High School and the daughter of  Steve McCleerey and Janise Thode. She has two semesters experience as a student senator.
 Sara Maday, a junior English major from Fairmont, Minn., was elected vice president.

But dad dropped the ball.

Blame it on calculus.

Linda Pagenkopf and her daughter Kerri will graduate from Moorhead State University on Friday, May 7. Her husband Howard, however, will sit in the audience, a missing leg from the family tripod.

"We were hoping to all graduate at the same time," said Howard, a 55-year-old fluid power technician at Case Corporation in Fargo. "I just couldn’t handle calculus. That forced me to change my major in midstream, kind of plucking my academic career out of the ruins. But I’m just 12 credits shy of getting my degree in university studies."

In truth, it could have been a family foursome. Their daughter Heidi also graduates this year from Hawley High School.

Although they fell short of a family tie, the Pagenkopfs aren’t complaining. "Despite all the juggling and confusion, it’s been worth it,"  said Linda, a social work major who’s already landed a job as a child protection worker for Becker County Human Services.

Talk about a hectic lifestyle. The family lives on a 40-acre farmstead 35 miles east of Moorhead on the Hawley-Rollag line. Besides their two daughters and Tony, an adopted son now a 10th grader at Hawley High, the family supports a couple horses and cattle, a goose and a passel of dogs and cats.

On top of that, Howard worked full-time at Case, taking classes part time; Linda worked full-time at The Family Village Services while going to school full-time; and Kerri worked two part-time jobs as a full-time health education major.

And throughout their college careers, the Pagenkopf family trinity commuted the 70-mile daily round trip separately, each having conflicting work and school schedules.

"I thought that year of the blizzards would do us in," Howard said. "School was open and we were stuck out here. Frustrating, but we did it."

The collegiate confusion began when Case Corp. transferred Howard to Fargo after closing its Wassau, Wisc., plant in 1993.

A meat cutter by trade, Howard compiled some credits at the University of Wisconsin when he was younger. But after hurting his back to the point where he couldn’t bear the cold and heavy lifting as a butcher, he studied electrical mechanics at  a Wassau technical school. That got him a job at Case’s Wassau plant.

Linda, meanwhile, stayed home to raise the children, then worked odd jobs before starting a therapeutic foster care service at home.

In Fargo, she discovered, her human services career was pretty much blunted unless she got a degree.

"When we first visited MSU’s campus," Kerri said, "mom was much more excited than I was. I couldn’t control her she was so anxious to start."

Said Linda: "Never in my life did I ever expect to go to college, never mind completing it."

The real question is why dad, with a good job and just beginning to enjoy the comforts of being a fifty-something, wanted to deal with the rigors of academia? "I didn’t need it," he said," I just wanted to set an example for myself and my family."

Countered his wife Linda: "I think he just didn’t want us to show him up."

The Pagenkopfs, who just celebrated their 25th anniversary this winter, will celebrate their graduations at the homestead, expecting about 100 relatives in from Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa.

Just because he fell a few laps behind in this  scholastic Triple Crown, Howard hopes at least some of these relatives will return next year when he crosses the graduation stage  for his…tertiary degree.