Kansas State University

K-State 2025 at 10 years

Submitted by Richard Myers and Chuck Taber

Dear colleagues,

This past fall marked the 10-year milestone for K-State 2025, our university visionary plan. A highlight of the fall semester for the two of us was our annual visits to the colleges and major units, where we heard from the deans and vice presidents about the progress made on college and departmental plans over the last decade. We promised at the outset of the K-State 2025 journey that our university strategic plan would not sit on a shelf, but that we would take action collectively across the K-State community. And take action we did. 

K-State 2025 was developed as a 15-year vision with key outcomes defined in five-year intervals in our visionary plan and in the associated plans of our academic colleges, major units and their departments. For 10 years, our students, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, donors, partners, and friends have done amazing work together, making real our commitment to our vision and goals. Throughout those 10 years, we made significant progress — progress made through leadership transitions and during a time of constrained resources and declining public funding support; explosive growth, then decline, in enrollment; a changing higher education landscape, and a worldwide pandemic that is still with us today.

We invite you to read about this progress on the K-State 2025 website, where you can find highlights of key accomplishments of the past 10 years by theme, as well as a dashboard with updated data on our key university metrics. You can also read the 10-year progress reports for our college and major unit plans. Taken together, these reports are truly impressive. 

Records have been set with all-time highs in research expenditures, student body diversity, freshman-to-sophomore retention and six-year graduation rates, doctorates awarded, annual giving, and our endowment pool. Working with the KSU Foundation, we integrated our 2025 plans with our fundraising efforts, raising more than $1.7 billion over 10 years. Beyond specific outcomes and performance measures, K-State 2025 had many positive impacts on "how" we do our work as a university.

K-State 2025 served as a catalyst for change, dialogue, and internal reflection as we developed, then operationalized the plan. In many ways, the dialogue around the plan has been more important than the plan itself. It promoted a culture of transparency, planning, and accountability with aspirational goals. It transformed institutional processes across the institution — education, research, outreach, strategic planning, enrollment, budgeting, human resources, technology, and communications and marketing. It led to new programs, degrees, partnerships and success across all the K-State 2025 themes and goals. Most importantly, it strengthened the bonds within our K-State community as we worked together — the university, the KSU Foundation, the K-State Alumni Association, and K-State Athletics — to achieve shared goals and address challenges.

These 10 years saw many advances for Kansas State University made possible through the efforts of our faculty, staff, students, administrators, donors, alumni and our government, corporate and community partners. Of all the progress made on the K-State 2025 path to success, it is perhaps the engagement of our broader K-State community working together over a period of time to create K-State’s future that is the most important achievement. 

We have evolved as a university over the past decade. The journey has been exhilarating always, and at times, very challenging. We have adjusted plans along the way. But we always kept moving forward — that's the K-State way.

Reflecting back over the past 10 years, the progress has been remarkable. Looking ahead, a foundation has been laid for our new president, Dr. Richard Linton, to build upon as the university moves into the next decade. We have much to celebrate as we look ahead to a bold future for Kansas State University.

Sincerely, 

Richard B. Myers
President

Chuck Taber
Provost and Executive Vice President