Dickinson State University

Dickinson State University was founded in nineteen eighteen as Dickinson Normal School, a teacher-training institution serving the rural communities of southwestern North Dakota. Normal schools were the standard mechanism for professionalizing rural education across the Great Plains in the early twentieth century: two-year colleges that certified teachers and sent them out to one-room schoolhouses scattered across townships that could not otherwise attract trained educators. The Dickinson institution grew into a four-year college and eventually a full regional university within the North Dakota University System.

It sits on a campus of roughly one hundred acres on the west side of town, known informally as DSU. The school's Blue Hawk athletic teams compete in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. The university has historically served as a cultural anchor for the broader southwestern North Dakota region, offering continuing education and professional development for a population spread across a very large and sparsely settled landscape.