04/14/21
K-State Current - April 14, 2021
K-State Current is a weekly news update for the Kansas Board of Regents to apprise the Regents on a few of the many successes and achievements made by K-State faculty, staff and students.
K-State News
College of Education summit brings together nearly 120 to discuss rural education achievements, concerns
Randy Watson, Kansas commissioner of education, addresses the 2021Rural Education Summit: Homegrown Solutions, sponsored by the Kansas State University College of Education's Rural Education Center and conducted virtually on March 26.
Approximately 120 educators attended the 2021 Rural Education Summit: Homegrown Solutions, conducted virtually March 26 by the Kansas State University College of Education's Rural Education Center. Focusing on rural school districts, the summit centered around three key issues: recruitment, reinforcement and retention.
The eight member districts of the college's Rural Professional Development Network were recognized at the summit: USD 220 Ashland, USD 379 Clay County, USD 482 Dighton, USD 474 Haviland, USD 215 Lakin, USD 480 Liberal, USD 438 Skyline and USD 240 Twin Valley. Educators with districts from as far away as Alaska, Indiana, Illinois and Tennessee, as well as throughout the state of Kansas, attended the summit.
Kansas Commissioner of Education Randy Watson shared "The State of Rural Education in Kansas: Recruiting and Retaining Teachers throughout the State," and K-State's Tuan Nguyen, assistant professor of curriculum and instruction, presented his research on rural education.
Twelve sessions addressed topics connected to recruitment, reinforcement, and retention during the half-day event. Among the presenters were representatives of the Rural Schools Collaborative and the National Rural Education Association. Topics addressed included STEM, community food needs, and agriculture in the classroom.
Director of the Rural Education Center is Spencer Clark, associate professor of curriculum and instruction. Assistant director of the center is Lori Goodson, assistant professor of curriculum and instruction.
"Spencer and Lori are doing an incredible job of bringing together educators and administrators from rural communities and addressing challenges they are all facing," said College of Education Dean Debbie Mercer. "With research-backed data, district leaders can effectively deal with issues in a way that's unique to their community and schools. I appreciate Spencer and Lori's efforts to continue this dialogue, unite rural districts — here in Kansas and across the country — and support the education of all rural students."
In addition to the summit, the rural center just launched an e-newsletter "Rural Crossroad: Connections" and is working to bring summer STEM programming to fifth- through eighth-grade students in rural
K-State completes successful migration of websites to the cloud
Since the fire on the roof of Hale Library in May 2018, the Division of Information Technology (IT) has undertaken the goal of modernizing our data center with a cloud-first strategy. One of the largest projects was moving more than 800 K-State websites to the cloud.
Staff from the Division of Communications and Marketing and IT have spent countless hours planning, preparing, testing, and retesting. While some tweaking continues, the move is a great success. The benefits of moving to the cloud include disaster recovery/business continuity, scaling, resiliency, and reduced downtime.
After the Hale Library fire, bringing the K-State websites back up took some scrambling and all-nighters. Moving the websites to the cloud assures access to K-State’s web presence even in the face of a disaster. The cloud also allows us to scale quickly. Imagine a website that gets massive amounts of traffic — such as utility websites after an outage. With this migration, K-State can scale up faster to ensure that traffic to a website is accommodated.
“By moving to the cloud, we are better prepared for crisis situations or those times when we need to scale rapidly,” said Jeff Morris, vice president for communications and marketing. “For example, when the Hale Library fire occurred, we were forced to migrate our entire website to the cloud under duress. This required extraordinary effort over four days. With the latest migration, we have much more redundancy should a disaster such as a fire occur. One lesson we learned is that access to mission-critical applications is curtailed if the main website is down. In addition, we have the ability to rapidly increase our bandwidth for times when there are dramatic spikes in web traffic.”
“This major initiative has allowed us to take one more step towards realizing our cloud-first vision,” commented Gary Pratt, CIO. “Knowing the significant issues we experienced during the Hale fire, we knew that we had to take advantage of a very negative situation and modernize our data center systems. This approach allowed us to put in place better, more resilient enterprise systems.”
To learn more about K-State’s move to a cloud-first strategy, view the IT Strategic Plan.
K-State Faculty Highlights
New Coffman chair to focus on effective hybrid teaching formats, practices
Jason Bergtold is turning the challenge of teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic into an opportunity to help his students and his fellow faculty members at Kansas State University.
As K-State's 2021-2022 Coffman Chair for University Distinguished Teaching Scholars, the professor of agricultural economics will spend the next year studying how new teaching platforms, styles and techniques for remote and hybrid teaching that he and his fellow faculty members adopted because of the pandemic will impact teaching and learning into the future. He plans to share what he learns during a series of workshops on teaching scholarship.
The Coffman chair was created in 1995 to highlight K-State's commitment to excellence in undergraduate teaching and learning. Each chair is an acknowledged leading teaching scholar and is provided the time and resources to conduct a research project or develop programs to improve educational methods at the university. Recipients retain the title of teaching scholar throughout their career at K-State.
"The previous year has greatly impacted how I approach teaching my classes," Bergtold said. "Because of the pandemic, I offered all of my classes using hybrid formats: remote livestreamed, recorded lectures and in person. In addition, I changed how I approached organizing and engaging with students, as all instructors had to do."
The past year's experiences have changed how Bergtold said he will teach in the future. He plans to incorporate effective hybrid frameworks and approaches into his classes moving forward.
"The Coffman Chair for Distinguished Teaching Scholars provides a unique opportunity to develop approaches and tools that will help students better engage and improve how they learn," Bergtold said. "Being the Coffman chair will allow me to develop research and offer teaching scholarship workshops to examine and highlight some of the most effective practices we adopted during the pandemic and how we can use them to better the learning experience moving forward for all involved, especially our students."
Teaching and engaging students in the learning process is a passion of Bergtold's and it shows. He has been honored for his teaching at the college, university, professional and national levels. His awards include the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2018 Food and Agricultural Sciences Excellence in Teaching Award; 2016 Outstanding Teacher Award for Less Than 10 Years of Experience from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association; the 2015 Outstanding Teaching Award for Less Than 10 Years of Experience from the Western Agricultural Economics Association; and the 2014 Presidential Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from K-State. The College of Agriculture has honored Bergtold with its 2019 Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award as well as selecting him as its commencement speaker in 2015 and 2018.
Bergtold teaches at all levels, from an introductory ag econ and agribusiness class for 125 to 230 students to graduate courses. In the large introductory course, he uses a framework with two hours of lecture and one hour of lab each week. The labs use interactive, hands-on active learning activities that allow students to apply economic principles directly and learn the concepts firsthand.
In his upper-level courses, Bergtold uses applied problem-solving and engagement, with students doing projects based on real-life economic and management problems.
Active as a researcher, Bergtold has recently focused more on teaching scholarship and providing undergraduate research opportunities. He leads a study across six land-grant universities examining undergraduate students' experiences, challenges and enrollment decisions during COVID-19. Results from the study will help faculty, administrators and policymakers make more informed decisions regarding the challenges facing students when such crises occur.
He is principal investigator on a research project examining the influence and roles of students' peers in and outside the classroom to better understand social dynamics in the classroom and better help undergraduate students academically succeed. With a K-State Global Food Systems seed grant, Bergtold was part of a faculty team — with Audrey Joslin and Marcellus Caldas from the geography and geospatial sciences department — teaching a course on how to conduct interdisciplinary research that involved undergraduate and graduate students in an interdisciplinary research project about wildfire and agricultural lands. Students participated in data collection, qualitative and quantitative analysis, and writing research publications and reports. He also has served as co-director of a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates project on bioenergy from 2014-2018.
At the professional level, Bergtold is the inaugural editor of Applied Economics Teaching Resources, a new journal sponsored by the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
Bergtold earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Colorado State University and a master's in agricultural and applied economics and doctorate in economics from Virginia Tech University. He joined the K-State faculty in 2007 and was promoted to associate professor in 2012 and to professor in 2018.
K-State Student News
KKSU-TV reporters and JMC education abroad students honored at the KAB Awards
Highlighting their work during the COVID-19 pandemic, reporters from KKSU-TV’s student-led Channel 8 News and MHK All-Day and JMC education abroad students earned seven first-place awards among 12 total awards for undergraduate television news at the 2021 Kansas Association of Broadcasters awards. Wildcats brought home more than twice as many awards as any other school that entered. Awards included five for student reports gathered and created from JMC’s Education Abroad trip to London in March 2020, pictured above.
KKSU-TV reporters were awarded first place in three long-form broadcast categories, including top collegiate newscast in Kansas. One of those first-place awards, top public affairs program, was created entirely remotely during the lockdowns in May 2020. Individually, students won in the categories of hard news package, enterprise package, complete news feature, and sports feature, with a second-place showing in the sportscast category — links are included below.
Much of the reporting honored was done during pandemic lockdowns, as students continued to report from their isolated areas from around the state and country. For instance, JMC senior Bailey Mathews won first place in the Sports Feature category for a story on how exercise can help mental health, which was shot and edited in her apartment during lockdown.
"Our faculty and students produced excellent programming under some of the most makeshift methods I have ever seen," JMC Director Steven Smethers said. "I salute them for their resourcefulness and perseverance."
Education abroad students from JMC who were in London during the early days of the pandemic in March 2020 chronicled the events overseas at that time. JMC senior Macy Berning won first place in the Hard News category for her story on the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic in London. As the pandemic started to become an international incident, Berning changed her focus to find the story going on in the capital city.
"It means so much to be recognized for the hard work and time that was put into creating this story," Berning said. "It was worth all of the late nights and endless emails and phone calls making sure information was accurate and thoughtful. As a graduating senior, getting this award during a difficult time makes me very proud to be a part of this program at K-State."
Fellow education abroad participant senior Bailey Short took home the Enterprise Package first place for her piece on how the coronavirus was already affecting London tourism at the time. The program "London Calling" produced by the students took home first in the documentary category.
Andrew Smith, a professor of practice of journalism at JMC and news director for KKSU-TV, led the program to London, coming back as the first COVID-19 patient in the area.
"The students really worked well in some difficult conditions in London, as the pandemic was just starting," Smith said. "We didn’t know where it would end up, but we wanted to document it as best we could. The students’ dedication to journalism during tough times shows just how dedicated the upcoming set of Wildcat journalists are."
"Providing unique intercultural learning opportunities for our students is an important foundation of our program," Smethers said. "The fact that Professor Smith led our students to create award-winning reporting from London is an extra special honor and provided an opportunity that will greatly enhance their careers and their lives."
All the K-State KAB Undergraduate Television Award winners are below, with links to their work.
Public Affairs Program
First: Kansas State University – MHK All-Day: May 1, 2020 – Sarah Wallace, Kaylie McLaughlin, Anna Christianson, Dawson Wagner, Molly Hackett
Link: https://youtu.be/gbPQVix9SYU
Complete Newscast 3 DAYS/ WEEK OR LESS
First: Kansas State University – MHK All-Day March 6, 2020 – Sarah Wallace, Kaylie McLaughlin, Anna Christianson, Monica Diaz, Molly Hackett, Miriam Chamberlain
Link: https://youtu.be/arm-CUtcdUA
Hard News Package
First: Kansas State University – COVID-19 in London – Macy Berning, Adam Cook
Link: https://youtu.be/GIgcDu1r8YE
Honorable mention: Kansas State University – Kansas State Prepares to Re-open – Katy Fink
Link: https://youtu.be/M68TRhvTdyU
Enterprise News Package
First: Kansas State University – London Tourism as a Pandemic Approaches – Bailey Short
Link: https://youtu.be/XwsYhwsOUHM
Honorable mention: Kansas State University – London Calling: Food for Thought – Miriam Chamberlain, Katy Fink
Link: https://youtu.be/nzbzRLTJitM
Complete News Feature
First: Kansas State University – Pandora Ice Cream – Dawson Wagner
Link: https://youtu.be/Dmio7kOSnkQ
Honorable mention: Kansas State University – Wild in the Streets: The London Busking Scene – Katy Fink, Miriam Chamberlain
Link: https://youtu.be/u0hqxFHktK8
Complete Sports Feature
First: Kansas State University – Helping Mental Health Through Fitness – Bailey Mathews
Link: https://youtu.be/bZcoYmxqi8Q
Second: Kansas State University – Kansas State’s Lacrosse Culture – Logan Mantz
Link: https://youtu.be/MKlAb_29Ouw
Sportscast
Second: Kansas State University – MHK All-Day Sportscast: Dacey Hagedorn – Bailey Mathews, Dacey Hagedorn
Link: https://youtu.be/1yJPBtE1Fho
Documentary
First: Kansas State University – London Calling: A Channel 8 News Special Report – Macy Berning, Miriam Chamberlain, Jacob Hall, Bailey, Short, Katy Fink, Luis Villarreal
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWDX_ncrO1A
Ethan Copple, senior in industrial and manufacturing systems engineering, was awarded first place in the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers South Central Regional Conference paper competition hosted by Oklahoma State University March 27. He received this award based on both his technical paper and presentation.
Copple’s conference paper, "Rural Healthcare Access in Joyabaj, Guatemala: A Methodological Inquiry to the Value of Mixed Operations Research and Anthropological Studies," was inspired by his 2018 travel to Joyabaj, Guatemala, through the Chapman Scholars Program where he studied health care access from both a technical, systems engineering and human anthropological point of view. His paper primarily focused on the operations research component where he examined optimal staffing distribution based on population.
This award qualifies Copple to represent the IISE South Central Region and compete for national honors at the IISE 2021 Annual Conference and Expo May 22-25.