December 9, 2021
Ryan Leimkuehler recognized as Professor of the Week
Ryan Leimkuehler, assistant professor at Hale Library, was recognized as Professor of the Week at the Dec. 8 men's home basketball game.
Faculty Senate, the Office of the President, K-State Athletics and the Division of Communications and Marketing wish to recognize his contributions to K-State.
Leimkuehler was the 2021 recipient of the Brice G. Hobrock Distinguished Faculty Award for K-State Libraries. Annually, the award recognizes outstanding librarianship and superior accomplishments among the K-State Libraries faculty.
He was the first university records manager at K-State, and his efforts have expanded greatly on what others began. He has solidified his role on campus as an essential partner in records and information management, or RIM, activities, and he is a recognized expert at K-State and is known among records managers and archivists in the state, region and nation. Further, he has found non-directed service opportunities at national, regional, state, university and library levels, and his research and creative activities remain robust with presentations, instruction and publications. All this has happened amidst library disaster recovery and a public health crisis.
Leimkuehler has been on the University Records and Information Management Committee since he arrived at K-State, and for most of this time, he was the primary minute-taker while also leading discussions about records retention schedules and electronic recordkeeping plans. In 2020, he began chairing the group and keeps it active in developing and reviewing policies, as well as continuing his work with schedules and plans. As a result of his work, K-State likely has been the most active state agency in improving records and information management practices and guidelines.
Further evidence of Leimkuehler's leadership and communication comes from his involvement with the following university projects in recent years: Data Governance Committee, Data Dictionary and Data Warehouse subcommittees, ImageNow Administrators Group, ImageNow Student Records Implementation Project Working Group, EU GDPR — European Union General Data Protection Regulation— Implementation Task Force, and Academic Records Group. Each of these projects has involved multiple campus units and he has built good working relationships with participants in each of them.