Founders of the Institute for Regional Studies Back row: H. Dean Stallings, E. A. Helgeson, Rudolf Ottersen, Kenneth Kuhn. Front row: Wm. C. Hunter, G. Ernst Giesecke, & O. A. Stevens, 1950. (DNo77.12)

About the Institute for Regional Studies

History

The Institute for Regional Studies, founded at North Dakota State University in 1950, stimulates and coordinates the activities of NDSU in regional scholarship.

The activities of the Institute fall into four categories: collections, publications, outreach, and the Center for Social Research. The research collections of the Institute are administered by the archives staff of the NDSU Libraries. The publication programs are housed in the College of Arts , Humanities, and Social Sciences. Outreach activities involve various units of the University and include radio and television production, public programs, and oral history. Finally, the Center for Social Research, established in 1976, exists to facilitate such social-science research as conducting focus-group research and computerized telephone surveys.

The mission of the Institute for Regional Studies is to foster understanding of regional life through research on, teaching about, and service to those regions with particular import to North Dakota State University . These regions include the Red River Valley, the state of North Dakota, the Plains of North America (comprising both the Great Plains of the United States and the Prairies of Canada), and comparable regions of other continents. In keeping with the land-grant university tradition, the Institute seeks not only knowledge, but also application.