Feedback for Theme 4: Engagement, Extension, Outreach, and Service
Thematic Goal
Be a national leader and model for a re-invented and transformed public research land-grant university integrating research, education, and engagement.
What is missing that should be added?
What activities or outcomes are no longer needed?
General suggestions and comments
What is missing that should be added?
| State and local (Salina, Manhattan and Olathe) policy makers, parents and the citizenry of Kansas at large increasingly are focused on higher education "return on investment (ROI)." For parents, this often means their K-State investment will yield a strong, stable, and competitive economic future for their children. For state policy makers and the Kansas citizenry, the desired ROI can mean the building of local and state economic prosperity. It seems to me that K-State 2025 fails to address this essential element as one of our goals and, in doing so, we may be sending a message that this is not something that we recognize or appreciate. Additionally, for faculty and students we may be sending a message that this is not a clear part of the land-grant mission that merits reward or endeavor. It is important for us to recognize as well that the higher education vernacular is many times lost on the public. For most men and women traversing the streets of Kansas, "Engagement" is what happens before one gets married. They do not necessarily equate the term with a K-State education providing a foundation upon which their children can build a sound economic future or upon which their state can build sustainable economic prosperity. Words do matter and in this case we might want to choose the words with which we communicate this suggested message. Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback! |
| Develop a SIMPLE system for reporting engagement. The current system that was developed is way too complicated and ill-defined. |
| Engagement - what office is responsible for promoting & coordinating engagement activities across campus? |
| Improve media capabilities and resources. Our extension service and researchers are expected to video and social media on top of everything else they do. There are people who have had videos filmed a year ago that don't have any use for them yet because we only have 1 good video person for extension. There should be at least 2 full time videographers/photographers and they should have student assistants to help organize the media. The extension YouTube channel is highly underused because nobody has time to organize it correctly. A student could easily do this. |
| Outreach - Did you know we have a Unit on campus that provides Conference Services? Why are they not mentioned in Outreach? The KSU Alumni are excited to come back for conferences and to support athletics, we have MISSED several opportunities to take advantage of this since, no one on CAMPUS has been charged with the Lead. Leadership starts at the top. |
| Develop a focus on faculty/staff/student mental and physical wellness |
| I see nothing in this document that includes under-represented audiences such as the many different populations that we have in SW Kansas. Because of the makeup of the local county boards (White, middle-class), the under-served populations continue not to be served, though many counties are Minority-majority. There needs to be an effort to recruit faculty and staff that can be reflective of those populations. Engagement and outreach should mean to ALL people. |
What activities or outcomes are no longer needed?
| This whole plan needs to be simplified down to 3 key areas. If key stakeholders cannot describe the plan in a few sentences then you have already lost the opportunity! |
| It still looks very K-State campus-oriented. I think Extension needs to be highlighted, too. |
General suggestions and comments
| Increase our focus and budget dedicated to lobbying the state legislature. They need to see the economic benefits of investing in K-State. |
| Gee... Did it ever occur to you upper admin brainiacs that KSU is already a leader in many fields of study? Especially Agriculture...Peel away the coats of BS and just recognize that 2025 was solely a means for Schultz to attain his next ladder step in his career. He never had any intentions on sticking around til even 2023..... Yes... the master rain maker flim flam man is working his magic with the same mojo at UW... |
| We need to ask if we have the right people on the bus (Jim Collins "Good to Great"). We have several people in senior leadership across the campus who need to retire since they have lost their vision to bring fresh, innovative ideas to Kansas State University. |
| You don't name our Land Grant mission of Extension here, but it is time to make the state and counties and/or "users" according to those on the conservative side of the political spectrum pay the full cost of all of our Extension activities. It is entirely inappropriate to use K-State student tuition or fees to pay for the cost of our Extension activities. I realize you can make an argument that K-State students benefit, but no all of them benefit. Certainly, many of them receive no greater benefit than any other Kansas citizen, so why are they paying more than all those other Kansans? It is unethical, period. |
| Extension also needs a better website source. There could be more than 100 different apps from our researchers that extension could use. There is nobody on campus to do this for them though. We can't even put an image gallery on our website. If you want us to provide outreach, we need the resources to do so that keep up with this decade. We don't have that. Find us a better web system or upgrade what we have. Hire someone to do web and social media only for extension. If you want us to do apps, hire 1 person to do apps only. Hire someone that will actually form collaboration among the college of ag department communicators and extension efforts and make sure all departments have the resources they need (refill Kim Bird's position). Every department could use a full time communications person with a student helper (maybe a few could be combined, but agronomy, ag econ, and animal science should have a full time person and a student). These people should collaborate with extension media folks though. Everyone hangs out in their own silo too much. |
| This seems to need a lot of people time investment, perhaps additional hiring. It may not be feasible with the current scarce resources. |
| One very important issue is diversity on campus. Leadership don't even call racism by its name when it pops up. Outreach will be better and easier if we are more diverse and better at intercultural competencies. |
| Looks good. Good to see Salina and Olathe included. |
| I wish that the writing of the logic model was more inclusive of all K-State educational programming. |
