Apr. 5—BEMIDJI — After being snowed out last year,

Bemidji State University

brought back its annual Student Achievement Conference on Wednesday.

With the event kicking off in the Beaux Arts Ballroom, an opening ceremony laid the groundwork for the rest of the day as themes of creativity, innovation and inspiration permeated the campus.

Such themes displayed themselves as students put together more than 160 presentations — 21 oral presentations, 44 posters and 96 online posters via virtual platform, Gather — on topics and research they have conducted throughout the past year.

BSU Professor John Perlich read BSU’s Land Acknowledgement statement before the Ojibwe Nation Drum Group played a song to start off the morning. BSU and Northwest Technical College President John Hoffman then delivered opening remarks.

“I’m excited and honored to be here with our students for our Student Achievement Conference,” Hoffman said. “An adage has been shared that if you don’t know where you’re going, you will never get there. Students, you know this particularly well because your projects reflect goals that you have set for yourselves.”

Hoffman assigned all attendees with a task to seek other opportunities and not limit themselves based on the adage he initially shared.

“I’d like to put a little spin on the old adage,” Hoffman said, “because if you always know where you’re going, you’ll never end up somewhere else. I’d like to invite you to listen throughout the day and to develop a habit of listening for opportunities that will find you.”

BSU student Jenika Moen shared a poem, “Northern Lake,” after which student Blake Staines performed “Il lacerato spirito” by Giuseppe Verdi. Lee Norman, a 1974 BSU graduate, presented his keynote speech that paralleled Hoffman’s earlier comments.

Currently residing in Kansas City, Mo., Norman earned his social work degree at BSU and medical degree from the University of Minnesota.

Norman has six decades of experience with the U.S. Air Force and Army under his belt. He returned from a U.S. Army deployment to the Middle East in 2018 where he was the 35th Infantry Division Surgeon overseeing the medical care of over 12,000 soldiers encompassing three named operations.

After serving in the USAF as a family physician, flight surgeon and combat medicine instructor, he practiced medicine in Seattle for 20 years. He has served as a chief medical officer for over 26 years, most recently at the University of Kansas Health System.

He currently is a clinical faculty member at the KU School of Medicine. He served for three years as secretary for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and assumed the role of senior state health official where he led Kansas’ coronavirus pandemic response.

Reflecting on the twists and turns of his professional life, Norman emphasized a willingness to take risks that led to the meanders of his career.

“When I’ve made a mistake along the way, it was typically for not taking advantage of an opportunity or sticking with something longer than I should have,” Norman said. “When somebody says to me, ‘Secretary Colonel Doctor Mr. Norman, what are you?’ I always say that I’m a family doctor.

“I’ve done that for 45 years and along the way, have had other opportunities.”

Such a sentiment paved the way for student presenters to showcase their own opportunities following the opening ceremony.

Breaking out into various locations across campus, attendees listened intently to a wide variety of presentations on a range of topics.

One presentation, “Using the Shingobee Headwaters Aquatic Ecosystems Project for understanding of hydrologic systems,” came about as a result of grant funding from 100,000 Strong in the Americas, whose innovation fund allowed collaboration between BSU and the Catholic University of Manizales in Colombia.

BSU student Trevor Wozniak, presenting in person, worked alongside Manizales students — joining Wozniak via Zoom — to put together their project.

Both respective groups took advantage of study abroad opportunities in each other’s countries over the past year, a seamless process despite their distance once adding the final touches on their presentation.

“This was a pretty flawless experience, getting to go to Colombia and doing the work with them,” Wozniak detailed, “and having them come to BSU for a full semester was really nice.”

BSU professor and the group’s sponsor Miriam Rios-Sanchez — originally from Colombia herself — expressed appreciation for the way the project turned out and the opportunity to bring Colombian students to the Northwoods.

“Having four Colombian students here for a semester was a dream come true,” Rios-Sanchez mentioned. “There were lots of challenges, but I think it was worth it.”

On the artistic front, White Earth Tribal College student Joy Tasmia shared her collection of poetry, “Rain and Thunder.” Delving into poetry as a young child, Tasmia gradually learned to speak with confidence when presenting her poems aloud.

“My family would always say, ‘Keep your spine straight, have a confident air, you know who you are.’ So I tried to carry that throughout my childhood,” Tasmia said. “When I took a public speaking class, they were saying ‘If you mess up, you know your speech. You know more than anyone in the audience. You’re teaching the audience.'”

Displaying their skills and knowledge at the conference is just one way Tasmia and others will have made their mark as they work past college graduation.

“There aren’t that many folks who graduate from college,” Hoffman left off. “These students are already among the elite within the elite of a very special institution in an important region. Now, more than ever, we need them.”