Beth Barnes, director of the School of Journalism and Telecommunications, is a finalist for the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences position at South Dakota State University.

Barnes, who has been at UK since the summer of 2003, is one of three finalists for the SDSU position.

She said she was eligible for the position because the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication is one of the larger programs within the College of Arts and Sciences at SDSU.

Barnes said she thought her international experience and fundraising experience were two important reasons SDSU was interested in her as a finalist.

SDSU is not quite as big as UK, Barnes said, and has about 12,800 students total for graduate and undergraduate. It is a land-grant university like UK and has many first generation college students.

“In a lot of ways, it reminds me of UK,” Barnes said, “just in a slightly smaller scale.”

She will travel to Brookings, S.D., next week for an on-campus interview. Brookings is about an hour north of Sioux Falls, S.D.