In her 46th year of teaching, Sharon Klein remembers the first computers incorporated into her curriculum and the introduction of the internet.
Now, artificial intelligence (AI) is streaming into her classroom.
When the English teacher first encountered ChatGPT in 2023, “cheating” was her first thought, but she has changed her mind.
Sara Vollmer is living out her dream.
“You can’t not love the ranch,” she says.
The Leonard native met her husband, Troy Vollmer, while both were obtaining animal science degrees at North Dakota State University (NDSU).
“We both had the same advisor,” Sara recalls. “(The advisor) told Troy, ‘I’ve been to Wing, Troy. You best find a wife before you leave Fargo.”
Troy, it turns out, was a good student.
The story of a professional chef in New York City moving to small-town North Dakota for love seems the perfect plot for a Hallmark Christmas movie.
Except it’s not so far-fetched for Sheri Shockman.
When Sheri joined an online dating service about 15 years ago, she was not looking for a relationship. Rather, she wanted to help a loved one who had fallen victim to an online scam.
“I went on (the online dating site) to find this scammer. Instead, I found my husband,” she says.
This fall, students returning to school will say goodbye to summer and their cellphones.
In April, Gov. Kelly Armstrong signed into law a bill banning student cellphone use in the state’s public schools.
The law requires cellphones to be secured during instructional time, from the start of the school day to dismissal, or “bell to bell.” It does not include school-owned devices such as laptops and tablets used for educational purposes, but covers a variety of personal devices, including smartwatches and tablets, that could distract students during the day.
North Dakota’s new law banning student cellphone use in public schools took effect Aug. 1. North Dakota Living turned to students to ask their thoughts on the cellphone ban.
Each year, electric cooperatives from across the country sponsor high school sophomores and juniors to participate in the Electric Cooperative Youth Tour. The all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C., immerses students in the democratic process, teaches them about cooperatives and includes a full itinerary of monuments, museums and historic sites.
Kennedy DeLap has a little more hardware to lug with her camera bag.
The Bismarck native and North Dakota Living photojournalist was crowned Miss North Dakota 2025 on June 7 at the Bakken Auditorium in Williston.
“They put the crown on my head, and I just couldn’t believe it,” DeLap says.
She fully expected to be at work the following Monday, editing photos and dicing through interviews from a recent assignment in Medora. But instead, she was being interviewed by the Williston Herald about her new job as Miss North Dakota.
Like a warm hug, laughter echos through the dining room as a group of ladies gathers for coffee, gleefully cajoling cookies from the kitchen staff inside the Mott Health Care Center (MHCC).
The scene is the culmination of a mighty community effort.
“Perseverance is never giving up and never losing hope” was once scripted onto a wall of the physical therapy room in the center. That seems appropriate.
Just like the prairie depends on different grasses, wildflowers, insects, birds and animals to keep the land thriving, your body needs a rich variety of microbes to stay healthy. There is an invisible ecosystem inside you made of bacteria, fungi, viruses and many other microbes. It’s called the microbiome – and it’s doing much more than you think.
“What’s to eat?” our kids would say when they were younger and living at home.
Actually, they still say that when they visit.
When our son was a rapidly growing teenager, he sometimes made multiple trips to open the fridge within 30 minutes.
“The food hasn’t changed since the last time you checked,” I’d say.
When I went to retrieve some food from our basement food pantry, I’d pick up a box of crackers. My hand would fly upwards at no resistance. The box was empty.
The city of Dickinson reimagined a downtown site – a former banking center – to create a vibrant outdoor space for the community.