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2025 Visionary Plan

As K-State's 2025 strategic plan comes to a close, our strategic planning efforts continue as Next-Gen K-State. See the latest updates on the Next-Gen K-State website.

Theme 2: Undergraduate Educational Experience

Goal

Build a connected, diverse, empowered, engaged, participatory culture of learning and excellence that promotes undergraduate student success and prepares students for their professional, community, social and personal lives.

Strategic Action Plan (pdf)

Latest news

Read more K-State 2025 news

Activities and Accomplishments

  • The university achieved its highest-ever freshman-to-sophomore retention rates, progressing from 81% to 87% over the past decade. We are well on the way to reaching the 2025 goal of 90%.

  • The six-year graduation rate reached record highs with a 12-point increase since K-State 2025 was launched. Advancing from 56% to 68.4%, we are nearing the 2025 goal of 70%.

  • The university set records for multicultural student enrollment and highest freshman ACT averages.

  • Expanded student success performance targets were established in 2021 to include four-year graduation and sophomore-to-junior retention rates, with additional targets for student populations by race and ethnicity, international, Pell recipients and first- generation students.

  • Investments were made across the university to support improved student success, including in tutoring, peer mentoring, academic advising, diversity, undergraduate research, transition and career coaching programs.

  • Record numbers of students participated in student success programs such as K-State First during the past decade, resulting in better academic performance and higher graduation and retention rates for participants. For example, over 16,000 students experienced K-State First classes; participation in our expanded living/learning community system, or CAT communities, increased 277%; and students taking the First Year Seminar increased 45%.

  • The student convocation program was reinstituted to welcome new students to the university as they embark on their college experience.

  • The Honors House opened as a living/learning facility for Honors Program students.

  • A competitive grant program launched to expand undergraduate research provided financial support to 500 students through the Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Inquiry.

  • The First Scholars program was launched with funding from the Suder Foundation to better support our large population of first-generation students. K-State earned the NASPA designation as a First-Gen Forward Advisory Institution.

  • Undergraduate students studying abroad increased 66% over the past 10 years. With 16% of our graduates having at least one education abroad experience, K-State is exceeding the national average by 5%.

  • World culture/study abroad programs have been integrated into 80% of our undergraduate degree programs.

  • The Textbook Affordability Program supported the creation of free or low-cost textbooks, reducing the burden of textbook costs for more than 10,000 students annually and an estimated savings to students of $7M since 2015.

  • Financial assistance to students was increased through new or expanded institutional, college and departmental scholarships and need-based aid. Over the past four years alone, funding was raised for 676 new scholarships through philanthropy.

  • The university’s first Strategic Enrollment Management, or SEM, plan was completed and is in its fourth year of implementation. This student-centered plan reaffirms our land-grant commitment to access, affordability and student success.

  • Our institutional scholarship model was adjusted to better balance merit- and need-based awards and aid for students. The university piloted retention grants, reallocated funding to provide need-based aid to current students, increased need-based aid awarded to incoming freshmen through the Freshman Wildcat Grant by 48%, and expanded the number of available need-based housing scholarships for students living in residence halls.

  • Our tuition and fees model was restructured and simplified for all learners and communications to students and families about cost of attendance were improved.

  • Recruiters and academic advisors are using new tools to communicate with and support potential and current students, including a new customer relationship management and SSC-Navigate. These technologies are assisting us in becoming a less-siloed university community in recruiting students and promoting student success.

  • K-State's first student omsbudsperson was named to be an advocate for any K-State student experiencing a campus climate concern.

  • The Morrison Family Center for Student Well-being was launched as part of the JED Campus initiative to promote the holistic well-being of all students.

  • Kansas State University continues to be the leading public university in the total number of nationally competitive scholarship recipients, including the Truman, Rhodes, Marshall, Goldwater and Udall scholars.

Leading the Way

For more than 10 years, K-State First, the university's hallmark transition program, has been proving that a great college experience really does start with a great first year.

Since its official launch in the 2010-2011 academic year, K-State First has facilitated engaging, high-impact and high-quality learning experiences for first-year students and has focused attention on research-based best teaching practices, such as learning communities and first-year seminars.

Four programs make up K-State First: First-Year Seminars, small classes for first-year students with lots of interaction and hands-on learning; K-State First Book, the all-university common reading program; CAT Communities, where small groups of students with similar interests take courses together — and sometimes live together; and Guide to Personal Success, the first-year mentoring program. More than 16,000 students have taken K-State First courses over the past decade and student participation grows each year. Surveys show students enjoy K-State First programs with the most common responses including praise for the active, engaging learning environments; the small class sizes; the boost the programs give to their academic success and in obtaining their degrees; and much more.

And the results: Improved student retention and graduation rates on a nearly annual basis that exceed those of the undergraduate population as a whole.

In its next 10 years, K-State First will continue to seek the best ways to make learning more exciting, relevant and accessible to students and offer new kinds of learning communities to appeal to the next generation of college students.