South Dakota Mines

09/09/2026

Chalk the Walk 2026 Invites Communities Across South Dakota to Spread Messages of Hope on World Su***de Prevention Day

What began as a simple effort to share messages of hope and kindness on the South Dakota Mines campus has grown into a statewide movement encouraging communities across South Dakota to remind people that they matter, they are valued and they are not alone.

People across the state are invited to participate in Chalk the Walk 2026 on Thursday, Sept. 10, World Su***de Prevention Day, by filling sidewalks, walkways, and gathering spaces with messages of hope, encouragement, kindness and support.

The initiative began in 2020 by the university’s Veterans Club, in partnership with the local Department of Veterans Affairs, to recognize Su***de Prevention Month and create visible reminders of hope throughout campus. Over the years, the effort expanded beyond campus, with businesses, schools, nonprofits and community organizations across Rapid City joining together in the effort to spread positive messages.

While Lost&Found, the organization that helped coordinate the event in past years, has dissolved, communities across South Dakota are continuing the meaningful tradition.

Learn more and see participating organizations here:
https://www.sdsmt.edu/news/releases/2026chalkthewalk.html

09/08/2026

It’s your world and we’re just living in it 🌍

09/06/2026

09/05/2026

We’ve been hearing some buzzing around campus lately…and unfortunately, it sounds like those pesky little yellow jackets from down the road.

You know what that means, Hardrockers: It’s time to squash the swarm!

The 141st Black Hills Brawl is coming October 17, and while our football team will handle business on the field, we need the rest of the Hardrocker family to handle business during Blitz Week.

Save the date! From October 11–18, every gift made to South Dakota Mines at https://www.blackhillsbrawl.com/ counts toward the Donor Challenge against BH. The school with the most donors wins. Yes, this is technically philanthropy. It is also, in our opinion, pest control.

Your gift supports our student-athletes AND helps us send a very clear message to the yellow jackets: buzz off.

So gather your classmates. Call your old roommate. Text that Mines friend you haven’t spoken to since 2012. Find the person in your family who still has a Hardrocker sweatshirt from college and tell them it’s time to put it to work. We need donors, and we need a lot of them.

Grubby has been briefed. The fly swatters are standing by. Let’s squash the swarm!

09/01/2026

For the better part of a century, people have been trying to understand dark matter. This invisible substance makes up roughly 85% of the mass in the universe but has never been directly detected. Determining exactly what it is remains one of the biggest questions about our world.

Now, a new analysis from the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment has recorded a single particle interaction that researchers have great difficulty explaining with known background signals from normal matter. The result does not yet meet the statistical threshold required to claim a discovery, but is the most compelling hint of dark matter reported by the experiment to date.

“This time of uncertainty as to whether this event is some sort of background or the first hint of dark matter is very exciting,” said Richard Schnee, Ph.D., head of the physics department at South Dakota Mines. Schnee is among the world's leading researchers on radon mitigation for ultra-sensitive physics experiments such as LZ. Schnee led the design and build team for a critical system that removed radon from the LZ cavern. “All of us in the LZ collaboration have been trying to figure out what kind of process other than dark matter could possibly give rise to an interaction like this, high-energy, single-site interaction far from the detector edges, and with signals consistent with a recoiling nucleus.”

LZ is an international collaboration of 250 scientists and engineers from 39 institutions, including Mines. The detector is managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and operates nearly one mile below ground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in South Dakota. The experiment uses 10 tons of ultrapure liquid xenon to search for dark matter and is optimized to look for WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles.

Read the full story here: https://www.sdsmt.edu/news/releases/2026LZresult.html

09/01/2026

TEST - This is a test of the Mines Campus Alert system - more info: https://www.sdsmt.edu/student-life/health-and-safety/public-safety/emergency.html

08/31/2026

“GO ROCKERS” 🪨

Add more Freshman advice or what you’re excited for this year in the comments 💙

08/28/2026

What a good week to be a HARDROCKER 💙⚒️