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College of Business and Natural Sciences Vision:

The College of Business and Natural Sciences at Black Hills State University (BHSU) will be a premier, student-centered school, where students can fulfill their potential in a liberal arts and sciences setting. The School will create an efficient, service-oriented culture that is responsive to the needs of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and society. 

The College of Business and Natural Sciences consists of two schools with 55 faculty and staff. Our class sizes are kept low to facilitate classroom discussion, individual attention, and mentoring. An indication of the quality of teaching in the College is the fact that our students scored higher than the national average across all business disciplines on recent national exit tests.

The College offers a wide range of academic programs, from Accounting and Management to Engineering Technology and Tourism & Hospitality Management, and from Biology and Chemistry to Environmental Physical Science. All programs are built on a strong foundation of liberal arts and sciences.

Faculty members are actively engaged in applied research and publication. This keeps them on the cutting edge of their disciplines and enables them to infuse their lectures with freshness, insight, and relevance. Most of this work is funded by grants and research projects.

Faculty research projects recently accepted to be published:

• “Networking and the Success of Entrepreneurial Ventures” will be published in an upcoming issue of the International Journal of Management & Enterprise Development (IJMED). -Dr. Ken Schallenkamp
•  “Does Job Testing Harm Minority Workers?  Evidence from Retail Establishments” The article was published in the February 2008 issue of The Quarterly Journal of Economics.- Dr. David Scarborough
• "Development of polymorphic micro-satellite markers for the smooth green snake (Opheodrys vernalis)" Submitted to Molecular Energy Notes, Dr. Shane Sarver, Dr. Cynthia Anderson, Mr. Forrest Cain, Dr. Brian Smith

To advance the research and public service elements of its mission, the College also supports:

• Center for Business, Entrepreneurship and Tourism, which conducts research on and provides technical assistance to South Dakota’s tourism industry
• Center for Economic Education, which promotes economic literacy for South Dakota K-12 teachers and students
• South Dakota Center for Enterprise and Opportunity, which works with people throughout the state to assist them in reaching their goal of establishing and successfully managing their own businesses.
• Center for the Conservation of Biological Resources, exists to support genetic and genomic research that is important to the Black Hills and Great Plains regions with a focus on priority problems and needs expressed by various agencies and organizations region-wide.