Summary 2023 — South Dakota

State Contact

Innovative Programming

We headed up the first ever SD Education and Agriculture Conference held in partnership with SD State University in Brookings, SD, one of our land grant universities.

We received our copyright to the toursd online program and made edits to the material offered online.

We helped establish 4 more teaching gardens in SD, bringing the total to 25 gardens underneath the GroundWorks Connect umbrella.

Major Program Impacts or Outcomes

The TourSD online program is in almost all 4th grade classrooms and in nearly each of the Native American Reservation schools, multiple private, homeschool, and colony schools. This program is seen as the premier and only way to deliver both social studies and ag standards in multiple grade levels.

The SD Education and Agriculture Conference brought agriculturists together with educators for 2 days listening, sharing, and learning from one another. A second conference was green lit with SDSU.

Soil health education lesson development was begun in conjunction with multiple statewide agencies. This was embraced wholeheartedly.

Program Leader Biosketch

Cindy Heidelberger, is the executive director of GroundWorks Connect, an education and agriculture non profit in SD. She is also the co-founder of the program now spanning 14 years. Cindy serves on the SD Ag in the Classroom Program Advisory Team, is the director of YES! (youth eating smart) Summer Camps, is a member of the Steering Committee for SD Grasslands Education Initiative as well as a board member of Sioux Falls Thrive-advocating for food security in the area. She holds a BA in Communication Studies & Theatre & English Education from SDSU, is a licensed 5-12 Language Arts/Speech teacher, and possesses a Master's of Divinity in Pastoral Care & Counseling/Community Development from Sioux Falls Seminary. She will be Commissioned a Provisional Deacon in the United Methodist Church in the Dakotas Annual Conference in June.