Rollyn Samp awarded honorary doctoral degree

Dec. 22, 2022

This paid piece is sponsored by Dakota State University.

It’s now Dr. Rollyn Samp.

The well-known Sioux Falls attorney was awarded an Honorary Doctoral Degree of Public Service at Dakota State University’s fall commencement Dec. 10.

Throughout his life, Samp has had an immense influence on individuals and organizations across South Dakota and the nation. At commencement, however, the focus was on his impact on Dakota State, particularly in the early 1980s.

This was a time when DSU was struggling to find an identity, and there was a consideration to close the Madison institution.

Samp took a plan to then-Gov. Bill Janklow that instead of closing DSU, the university should change its focus to include computer instruction in all majors. This would fill a need for technology-savvy individuals in education and in business, particularly to train employees for the growing credit card industry in Sioux Falls.

DSU President José-Marie Griffiths told those at the commencement ceremony that Samp proposed DSU “should be a ‘knowledge college,’ an institution devoted to the melding of education and technology to build something bigger and grander than had existed before.”

“He possessed the foresight and understanding to see that future Dakotans would need a college that specialized in technology,” she said. Legislative action in 1984 instituted the mission change, which created this technology-centric university.

“DSU may not be in existence today if not for Mr. Samp and his role in convincing Gov. Bill Janklow not to close the school,” Shantel Krebs wrote in a nomination letter for the honorary degree. The 1998 DSU alumna is founder and director of the Avera Academy and CEO of the Miss America Organization.

Samp recalls the conversation he had with Janklow about the idea.

“He invited me to breakfast at JerMel’s in Sioux Falls,” a former downtown restaurant known as a place for politics.

“We sat there most of the morning, and he told me he was going to close USD-Springfield and Dakota State in Madison and turn them into the men’s and women’s minimum-security prisons,” he said.

The following discussion was one of their few arguments, Samp said.

He knew Janklow also had an idea to wire all the schools in the state — an initiative that came to fruition in 1996 — and he asked Janklow who would teach the teachers to use that technology.

“He got a funny look, then said ‘Tell me your idea,’” so they grabbed a couple of napkins and outlined the key points for turning Madison into the “knowledge college.”

Samp said: “I knew we couldn’t do it halfway. We needed to commit to making this the leading high-tech university in the Midwest that would be a resource for business and education.” This relationship would take the state into high tech, providing opportunities so that “people with a business in Ipswich could compete with those in New York City,” Samp said.

Marshall Damgaard, a former USD political science professor and the official Janklow archivist, recalled this in his nomination letter.

The proposal would not “just sprinkle in a few courses or even add a new department but change the fundamental mission of the entire institution,” he wrote, thereby creating “a fundamentally new culture that married education and technology, both of which would be product and process. Even today, it sounds a little bizarre” and fell somewhere between leading edge and bleeding edge.

Damgaard wrote that “not even ‘Wild Bill’ Janklow would attempt to change the mission of a century-old college. Yet Rolly persisted.”

Samp proposed involving Citibank, and “somehow, Rolly was convinced the world’s biggest bank would be motivated to invest talent, time and money into a tiny school in a small town in South Dakota. Who knew? Rolly knew,” Damgaard wrote.

“I think Gov. Janklow embraced Rolly’s plan because Rolly clearly had done his homework,” Damgaard continued. “So it was that Rolly Samp, triggering the butterfly effect, joined Bill Janklow and Dakota State at the crossroads between past and future, time and space.”

The platform party for the Dakota State fall commencement included DSU administration, Board of Regents representative Tony Venhuizen, keynote speaker Shantel Krebs and honorary degree recipient Rollyn Samp.

Samp’s support of Dakota State capabilities continued after the mission change. In the late 1990s, he helped with South Dakota’s high-speed network connectivity by advocating for an upgrade to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earth Resources Observation and Science Center, or EROS, to be connected to the national network. He then pushed to have the network extended to DSU. This made the university one of the first and most wired campuses in the country at that time, and this became the backbone for the institution’s current fiber.

“By using his vision of the future to connect those in business, education and government, Rolly created a new dynamic in South Dakota, a vibrant culture melding business acumen, educational excellence and innovative technology,” Griffiths said.

Griffiths often says that this tiny school in a small town in South Dakota is now a cyber powerhouse of the Plains with cyber incorporated into programs of study across all four colleges. Today, all education majors graduate with their technology endorsements. Fine arts students study English for new media, and digital arts and design. DSU does offer technology degrees in fields such as cyber operations and information systems, but it also innovates and blends programs. One example is the Cyber Leadership and Intelligence degree, which incorporates cyber systems with world cultures and international politics. DSU also holds three distinctions from the National Security Agency as Centers of Academic Excellence in cyber education, cyber research and cyber operations.

Samp is not surprised how Dakota State has risen over the past 38 years.

“DSU is now exactly what I’d hoped for,” he said, “and I think it will just keep getting better,” given the school’s leadership. “President Griffiths is the best thing that happened to South Dakota since I-90 and I-29,” he said.

After receiving the degree, he said: “I spent my life with words, but there’s not a word for how I feel today about this honor. I appreciate it, but more I appreciate what’s happened to Dakota State University.”

He offered the newest DSU graduates some succinct advice: “I would ask you, wherever life takes you, use your God-given talents to be useful.”

For other examples of Samp’s usefulness throughout his life, click here.

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Rollyn Samp awarded honorary doctoral degree

This Sioux Falls lawyer was a driving force behind Dakota State University’s mission change — and now has an honorary doctorate.

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