Blast #10-015 happened on the afternoon of February 23rd. It removed 2,385 tons of rock from the 300′ bench. (Video taken & edited by Mike Morgan)

Students can now sign up for the first summer class program at the new Crazy Horse Memorial university student living-learning center opening in June.

The University of South Dakota kicked off the student recruitment campaign on Monday, Feb. 15. The application deadline is April 30 for a limited number of openings.

Read below for more details:

USD accepting applications for Crazy Horse summer program

VERMILLION, S.D. – The University of South Dakota is now accepting applications for the inaugural Summer University Program at Crazy Horse Memorial. Classes begin in June and run through mid-August.

USD and the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation announced this educational initiative during Native American Day ceremonies last October at the historic carving in the Black Hills.

The nonprofit Foundation since 1948 uses private donations and not government taxes in its educational and humanitarian mission to honor the historic traditions and living heritage of all Native Americans.

The students and classes will be housed in a new $2.5 million facility, provided to the Memorial by the T. Denny Sanford Foundation. The ongoing operations of the university student living and learning center will be funded from investment revenues produced by the $5 million Crazy Horse Memorial Centennial Endowment established by Muffy and Paul Christen of Huron and managed by the South Dakota Community Foundation.

USD is selecting the program’s faculty and curriculum. While the program is designed with external funding for Native American students, all applicants will be considered for the select number of student positions. The deadline for students to submit applications to USD is April 30.

“This is an extraordinary opportunity for American Indian students to take college preparatory classes and introductory freshmen courses,” said Keith Moore, chief diversity officer at USD. “The Indian University of North America at Crazy Horse Memorial provides the first step in helping American Indian students prepare for college and a career. We are honored at USD to assist students with achieving their goals and dreams.”

Students enrolled in classes during the 10-week summer program can sign up for courses in English, math and American Indian Studies. They can earn from six credit hours up to 12 college credits from USD. Crazy Horse will sponsor scholarships to qualified Native Americans to pay for tuition and books, and offer paid student internships in various staff positions at the Crazy Horse Welcome Center/Studio complex for visitors.

Even though Crazy Horse has hosted university-accredited classes for more than a decade, this will be a first in South Dakota—developing a curriculum that celebrates the spirit of Crazy Horse.

“It’s the goal of the program for students to learn more about Crazy Horse, the man,” said Laurie Becvar, dean of the Graduate School and Division of Continuing and Distance Education at The U. “We will explore beyond his reputation as a decorated warrior and as a courageous leader, to help the students learn the values he considered necessary for creating better opportunities for themselves.”

To apply for this opportunity or to learn more about USD’s partnership with the Crazy Horse Memorial, please visit www.usd.edu/summer-school/crazy-horse.cfm.

About The University of South Dakota

Founded in 1862, The University of South Dakota is designated as the only public liberal arts university in the state and is home to a comprehensive College of Arts and Sciences, School of Education, the state’s only School of Law, School of Medicine, School of Health Sciences, the accredited Beacom School of Business and the College of Fine Arts. It has an enrollment of more than 9,600 students taught by 400 faculty members. More information is available at www.usd.edu/press/news.

About Crazy Horse Memorial
Dedicated on June 3, 1948, the nonprofit Crazy Horse Memorial honors the cultures, traditions and living heritage of North American Indians. Lakota chief Henry Standing Bear and other tribal elders invited sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to create the Black Hills memorial. Now, the Ziolkowski family, the nonprofit memorial foundation and their supporters are fulfilling the dream and the promise by continuing the world’s largest mountain carving, providing educational and cultural programs, sustaining a growing collection of Native American artifacts, art and crafts, and developing the American Indian University and Medical Training Center. Details can be found at www.crazyhorsememorial.org.

“The Lakota elders had a dream. Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski had a vision. His family now has a mission.”

So begins writer Bill Wagner’s story for the Record Searchlight of Redding, Calif., and the Scripps Howard News Service (see story here). A news reporter for 45 years, Wagner and some members of his family most recently toured Crazy Horse Memorial in October 2009. Versions of his article have so far appeared in newspapers and their online sites from California to Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and Florida to Indiana.

Here is video showing the beginnings of the building that will become Crazy Horse Memorial’s student living & learning center! (Video shot & edited by Mike Morgan)

Journalism is changing as so is the annual April gathering at Crazy Horse Memorial that encourages Native American students to consider careers in news reporting.

The 11th annual event will switch from a three-day conference to a week-long workshop geared for high school juniors and seniors.

Click Here for more on the Crazy Horse Journalism Workshop.

Crazy Horse hosted more than 100 Northern Cheyenne tribal members and their supporters during a rest stop while on this week’s 400-mile Fort Robinson Outbreak Spiritual Run.

The 11th annual run honors tribal ancestors who fled Fort Robinson, Nebraska, in January 1879, to avoid being forced to reservations in Oklahoma. Soldiers killed most of the escapees, but others made it back to traditional tribal lands in southeastern Montana.

The runners are mostly students, in fifth through 12th grades, attending schools in Ashland, Busby, Colstrip, Hardin, Lame Deer and St. Labre schools on or near the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana.

The group toured the Crazy Horse visitor complex and received a complimentary lunch at Laughing Water Restaurant.

For more about the run, go to www.yellowbirdinc.org

Contractors continue advancing this week on the foundation for Crazy Horse Memorial’s first university student living-learning center.

Meanwhile, the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation Board and delegates from the University of South Dakota are to meet Thursday, Jan. 21, to discuss details for this summer’s pilot education program in the dorm-classroom structure. Classes are scheduled to run for 10 weeks from early June to mid-August.

A seven-man J. Scull Construction team from Rapid City has completed concrete footings and walls for most of three sides on the complex. Tuesday’s concrete pour completed a large footings section for the fourth side.

Separate crews of Crazy Horse personnel and from Site Work Specialists are extending water lines to the site from two sources and building a pump house.

The $2.5 million project was funded by T. Denny Sanford of Sioux Falls and the ongoing operations will be funded by annual investment proceeds from a $5 million endowment, the open Crazy Horse Centennial Fund, established by Huron couple Donna “Muffy” Christen and her husband, Paul, with the South Dakota Community Foundation.

Crazy Horse Memorial personnel are in Pierre this week at separate outreach events.

On Wednesday, Jan. 20, cultural center educator Belinda Joe will participate in Native American Day at the state Legislature. Programs in the Capitol Rotunda from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. will include members of her Lakota hand games team from Rapid City Central, the Lakolkiciyapi powwow dance and singing group from Central, the Dakota Boys Drum Group of Fort Thompson  and the Pierre Indian Learning Center drum group.

Crazy Horse communications director Ace Crawford, creative director Linda Uphoff and Susan Beesley, assistant manager of Laughing Water Restaurant, also are in Pierre attending the annual Governor’s Conference on Tourism.

The Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009, edition of CBS Evening News with Katie Couric spotlighted Crazy Horse Memorial as part of the network’s continuing “The American Spirit” series.

Atlanta-based correspondent Mark Strassmann, producer Daniel Steinberger and photographer Max Stacy were at the Memorial for a day in November. They interviewed Memorial president and chief executive Ruth Ziolkowski and her son Casimir “Cas” Ziolkowski, who is the foreman of the mountain carving crew. The CBS team also recorded a mountain blast, scenes of the Memorial’s grounds and the surrounding Black Hills. Excerpts of interviews sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski did with CBS 60 Minutes in 1977 also were used.

Strassmann, a 30-year broadcast news veteran, in an e-mail after the broadcast said he hoped to convey to viewers the scale and spirit of the Memorial’s ambitious project.

“Time and again, I’m always struck in stories I do by people who by sheer force of will or personality — or both — make big things happen,” Strassmann said. “But even by that standard, the story of the Ziolkowskis — Korczak in particular — stands out. This is a family that has literally moved a mountain. To me, carving the Crazy Horse Memorial is a story about many things. But most of all, it shows the American spirit alive and in action: visionary, daring, determined, resilient, and self-sufficient. We’re all living in a time when America needs those virtues from one coast to the other.”

Strassmann knows about traveling the country and world, logging 110,000 flying miles between assignments this year alone. Before coming to Crazy Horse, he reported on Mexican drug cartels establishing Atlanta as a distribution hub, and is in Las Vegas working on a story about the Southwest’s deepening water supply problems.

The Evening News averages 6.76 million viewers and Couric is the 2009 winner of the Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in Media. She received the Freedom Forum honor during October ceremonies at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion.

The “Crazy Horse monument rising” story is spreading to a world audience via the CBS News Web site and by Internet social networking links. And according to reporter Michal Sznajder, TVN24 in Poland plans to rebroadcast the story later this week. Polish media have long been interested in the mountain carving project started in 1948 by Korczak, a Polish-American born in Boston.

The Rapid City Journal reports that a new long-distance competition, the Run Crazy Horse marathon and half marathon, will be held next fall.
Veteran marathon organizer Jerry Dunn of Spearfish is teaming with race director Emily Wheeler to organize the October run from Crazy Horse Memorial to Hill City.
Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore National Memorial were previously featured for four years in a different marathon that has been discontinued.
For more, see Journal reporter Jeff Budlong’s report here.