K-State Current - August 25, 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
K-State Recreational Services celebrates 100 years
The Chester E. Peters Recreation Complex on Kansas State University's Manhattan campus is home to the university's Recreational Services, which is celebrating 100 years of recreational services to the university community.
Kansas State University Recreational Services is marking its 100th year of providing recreational opportunities to the K-State community with a celebration open to all.
Campus celebrated this accomplishment on Tuesday, Aug. 24, at the Chester E. Peters Recreation Complex on the Manhattan campus. Students, faculty, and staff enjoyed cake and ice cream, participated in inflatable obstacle courses, met Willie the Wildcat, saw the K-State Marching Band and won prizes and giveaways. Other activities included a bouldering wall competition and sand volleyball tournament. Visitors were able to sample group fitness classes that evening.
The celebration was a part of the Fall K-State Week of Welcome.
Over the past 100 years, K-State Recreational Services has kept the K-State community playing, competing and moving. The physical education department began intramurals with 33 men's basketball teams in November 1920. In a few years, other sports were added, such as track, baseball, wrestling, soccer, swimming and horseshoes. In 1924, women's intramurals were introduced with volleyball.
More intramural sports were added in 1951 when Ahearn Field House opened and activities moved to its new gym. In 1980, the Recreational Services office moved from Ahearn to its permanent home.
With the effort of Chester E. Peters, vice president for student affairs, K-State became one of the first universities to open a $3.3 million stand-alone student recreation facility. Just 15 years later, students voted to expand. New strength and training spaces were added and by the early 2000s, personal training, sports clubs and the challenge course were available. The students voted to expand the facility once again in 2012 to include cardio and weight rooms, an extended running track, multi-activity spaces, lounges, mind and body studios, a climbing wall and a juice bar. The Outdoor Rental Center received a new facility and renovated outdoor courts.
Today, K-State Recreational Services continues to strengthen friendships and bonds, and keeps the campus healthy and thriving through physical activity. Recreational Services is committed to creating and growing programs to promote the well-being and mental health of its students, staff and the K-State community.
Advancing leadership, engagement and honors to build a signature land-grant experience
Dear Colleagues,
I am writing today to share some organizational changes I am making within the provost's office to better position leadership, engagement and the university honors program for innovation and growth across the university and to advance a distinctive "signature" K-State land-grant educational experience as a differentiator for student recruitment.
Over the past year, a planning group led by Gregg Hadley, director of extension, and Tim Steffensmeier, professor of communication studies, was charged to consider how to build on the foundation set by the Center for Engagement and Community Development, or CECD. The group submitted its report in the spring. Acting on its recommendation, I am establishing an office of engagement within the provost's office, specifically in the Staley School of Leadership Studies.
An academic unit that serves the university and reports to the provost, the Staley School has a proven record of incubating and growing successful academic programs and community partnerships. Its organizational culture of collaborating with colleges, other campus units and community stakeholders in service learning and engaged work positions the Staley School well to advance the vision for engagement set out in K-State 2025 Theme Four: Engagement, Extension, Outreach, and Service to "be a national leader and model for a re-invented and transformed public research land-grant university integrating research, education, and engagement." Leadership and engagement explicitly linked in this way highlights our university's land-grant identity and offers opportunity to integrate engagement into the student experience as envisioned in K-State 2025.
I am also reassigning the University Honors Program to the Staley School. Like leadership studies and engagement, the University Honors Program is universitywide, working collaboratively with all colleges. Since the 2013 K-State 2025 Theme 2 Implementation Plan, it has been a stated university goal to strengthen the university honors program to attract high-achieving students. An honors experience connected with leadership and engagement will differentiate the K-State honors program, and attract and engage this student population in powerful and engaged learning experiences that prepare students to lead on global challenges. The Staley School has the academic infrastructure and administrative capacity to advance the honors program's current plans while envisioning new growth. The Office of Student Success will continue to collaborate with the honors program to enact its mission of enriching and supporting the student experience.
It is our hope that by positioning leadership and engaged learning together with the University Honors Program, we can develop a signature land-grant student experience to be launched for recruiting students next spring for fall 2023. As an academic unit with a history and baked-in culture of student recruitment and engagement, the Staley School can serve as an effective central partner with our colleges to build and deliver that differentiating K-State student experience.
The organizational realignment of the Staley School, an office of engagement and the University Honors Program will be effective in October 2021. I want to thank the engagement planning group, student success and university honors program leadership, and the Staley School for their investment and support of these transitions. I look forward to what we will build together.
Sincerely,
Chuck Taber
Provost and Executive Vice President
K-State Faculty Highlights
Nippert awarded NSF grant to study water and carbon fluxes
Jesse Nippert, professor in the Division of Biology, received a collaborative research award from the National Science Foundation to study the interaction between climate, bedrock and vegetation.
The project will explore how the interaction of plant roots and bedrock has changed water and carbon movement between the land and atmosphere. These fluxes in turn influence climate by altering important factors such as greenhouse gas concentrations. To understand how the land surface will interact with climate in the future, these scientists will differentiate how landscape bedrock and vegetation control water and carbon storage and movement, which locations are most likely to change, and how below-ground properties influence climate conditions now and in the future.
The five-year $412,000 award to K-State, funded by NSF Frontier Research in Earth Sciences, will support Nippert's role in an interdisciplinary project with Pam Sullivan, Oregon State University; Li Li, Penn State University; Alejandro Flores, Boise State; Sharon Billings, University of Kansas; Kamini Singha, Colorado School of Mines; and Daniel Hirmas and Hoori Ajami, from University of California, Riverside.
The project will address two questions: when and to what degree does bedrock exert more controls than roots on subsurface and atmosphere coupling, and what impact does this have on water and carbon fluxes. The broader impacts of this project include training 45 educators, including high school and undergraduate professors, to develop discovery-based learning approaches in their classrooms. The products will be made publicly accessible on the Science Education Resource Center's website on the "Teach the Earth" portal.
The project will leverage existing datasets and collect new data from the NSF Critical Zone Cluster Networks, or CZCNs; National Ecological Observatory Network, or NEON; and the Long-Term Ecological Research, or LTER, programs.
University distinguished professor of music joins new music magazine writing team
Wayne Goins, university distinguished professor of music, has been appointed by chief editor Robert Schryer to be the newest member of the PMA — the Power of Music and Audio— Magazine.
The premier online journal will focus on the human experience and interaction with recorded music and audio. Goins has been hired to regularly submit written material in various formats, including anecdotes, advice columns, new product introductions, essays, interviews, podcasts, YouTube videos and more.
Goins has published several articles as a contributing feature columnist for several magazines, as he combines intense music research with in-depth details of his use of mono, stereo and high-end digital equipment for playback of his extensive music collection in 45s, LPs and CD format.
Faculty in the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance have received Grammy awards and nominations, and Emmy awards; produced recordings on international and national CD labels and published books and journal articles with international and national publishing houses and professional organizations; and performed and presented research in every continent in the world, except Antarctica. The School of Music, Theatre, and Dance is a part of the College of Arts and Sciences. Visit the school's website to learn more about music, theatre and dance at K-State.
K-State Student News
Agronomy doctoral candidate Nida Ghori named 2021 Borlaug Scholar
Nida Ghori, Kansas State University doctoral candidate in agronomy, has been named a 2021 Borlaug Scholar by the National Association of Plant Breeders.
The award program for graduate students is established by the association and funded through the Agronomic Science Foundation. The program looks to develop the next generation of plant breeding leaders who are attending U.S. universities and are looking to enter the workforce in less than two years. One of the other benefits of being a Borlaug Scholar is being paired with a professional National Association of Plant Breeders member who serves as a mentor for one year.
Ghori joined K-State as a Fulbright scholar in 2017. She is working on map-based cloning of Hessian fly resistance gene in wheat under the direction of Guihua Bai and Allan Fritz from the agronomy department. During the past four years, she has received several travel grants and awards to present her research at national and international professional conferences. She is looking forward to her graduation in 2022.
"To see my name linked with Borlaug and identified myself as one of the best students in my field is a great honor for me, Ghori said. "It will provide me an opportunity to groom myself as a researcher and establish new connections with other great scientists."
Ghori received the award at the annual meeting of the National Association of Plant Breeders, Aug. 15-19, hosted by Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
