South Dakota State University announced on April 30 that its theatre and dance department’s fall production, “Thrill Me,” received four national awards and nine national commendations from the American College Theatre Festival.
The recognition highlights the university’s ongoing efforts to promote excellence in student performance and creative arts. The awards were based on how students performed at a regional conference of the American College Theatre Festival held in Rochester, Minnesota, on Jan. 20.
The cast of “Thrill Me” earned the Distinguished Performance Ensemble award, while actor Jacob Stevens received the Distinguished Performance in a Play award. Jamison Gross was recognized for Distinguished Musical Direction, and Professor W. James Wood was honored for Distinguished Direction in a Play or Musical. According to Wood, associate director of School of Performing Arts at SDSU, “We were thrilled and honored to be invited to the conference for two consecutive years… It’s not often that I make a sports analogy, but this is the theater equivalent of making it to the playoffs.” He also said, “These awards are a tremendous honor to the students and our entire department, who put in hundreds of hours on this production in the fall as well as in January. It affirms what we are hearing from incoming students — SDSU is a great place to study theater in South Dakota.”
In addition to these honors, several individuals involved with “Thrill Me” received meritorious commendations from the festival’s National Committee for areas such as intimacy direction (Melissa Hauschild-Mork), scenic design (Thomas Alpers), lighting design (Nick Teal), pianist (Anna DeGraff), performance (CJ Richards), production design, ensemble work, collaboration efforts supporting other productions, and musical direction by Wood.
“Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story,” staged at SDSU in November, tells the story of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb—two men infamous for committing one of history’s most notorious crimes during the 1920s. Other cast members included Noah Larson and Nick Forster; additional members of the production team were Lewhat Tesfaldet, Alex Raether, Reilly Sazdoff, Thomas Alpers, Nick Teal, Samantha Clark, Mollie Moore, Journey Johnson and Dontaevian Aldridge.
Beyond performing arts achievements like those seen with “Thrill Me,” South Dakota State University is home to significant academic units such as its College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences—the largest unit at SDSU by faculty size and space dedicated to teaching research outreach activities while ranking second in student enrollment according to its official website. The college works toward strengthening communities through sustainable changes across agriculture sectors according to its official website.
Facilities within this college support teaching research outreach—including partnerships with SDSU Extension South Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station according to its official website. The college has also been recognized as Promoter of Year by North American Limousin Foundation for 2025 according to its official website. As part South Dakota State University—with ties entities like Agricultural Experiment Station Extension—the college aims address problems opportunities through research foster learning environments empower sustainable change agriculture natural resources youth families communities according to its official website.
