Mines Students Develop Free Tutoring Service RAPID CITY, SD (Feb. 9, 2021) — A new organization created and run by students at South Dakota Mines offers free tutoring to K-12-age students. StudyDakota is the brainchild of Debbie Rankin and Kate Dickinson, both biomedical engineering graduate students at Mines. Rankin began exploring the idea of a tutoring program after volunteering her time for the Homework Helpers program in New York. She shared her idea for a similar local program to her friend and classmate Dickinson. “It was a five-minute conversation that turned into a large project,â€