During his time as university president, Richard Myers '65 has made an impact on Kansas State University that will last many years into the future, even after he retires and closes the door to his office in Anderson Hall for the final time later this year. 

The search process for the next president of K-State has already begun. Here's what you need to know:

1. When will a new president be named?

Myers announced that he plans to retire at the end of 2021. He is K-State's 14th president and has been with the university since 2016. A specific date when a new president will be named has not yet been determined. 

2. How will the next president be selected?

The Kansas Board of Regents has appointed 25 members to a search committee that will assist and advise the Board in the search for the next K-State president. (Note: The nine-member Kansas Board of Regents is the governing board of the state’s six universities and the statewide coordinating board for the state’s 32 public higher education institutions.) The search committee includes representation from university students, faculty, staff, alumni and members of the Manhattan, Kansas, community.

3. Who will lead the search committee?

K-State alumnus Carl Ice '79 will serve as chair of the search committee. Ice is the retired CEO of BNSF Railway, and was recently appointed to the Board of Regents by Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly.

4. Who is serving on the committee?

• Mark Hutton '77 (vice chair), founder of Hutton Construction
• Glenn Caldwell '70, retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel
• Shari Crittendon, K-State general counsel
• Michael Dowd, K-State student body president; studying animal science and global food systems leadership
• Blake Flanders '86, '89, '04, Kansas Board of Regents president and CEO
• Wayne Goins, K-State University Distinguished Professor of Music and director of jazz studies in the School of Music, Theatre and Dance
• Tanya González, professor in the K-State Department of English and currently serving as the acting associate provost for institutional effectiveness
• Kevin Gwinner, Edgerley Family Dean for the K-State College of Business Administration
• Terry Holdren, CEO/general counsel of Kansas Farm Bureau
• Maria Izquierdo, K-State student studying nutritional sciences
• Nabeeha Kazi Hutchins '96, K-State Alumni Association board of directors chair
• Steve Lacy '76, '77, former chair of the board of Meredith Corporation; current K-State Alumni Association board member
• Kevin Lockett '96, partner at Fulcrum Global Capital
• Dennis Mullin, chairman of Steel and Pipe Supply
• Mary Oborny, president of K-State's University Support Staff Senate
• David Poole, K-State University Distinguished Professor of Kinesiology and Anatomy and Physiology
• Usha Reddi '03, '11, Manhattan city commissioner
• Darrell Reese Jr. '20, management trainee on the College Recruiting Team at BNSF Railway
• Charles "Chuck" Rice, K-State University Distinguished Professor and holder of the Vanier University Professorship; professor of soil microbiology in the Department of Agronomy
• Pat Roberts '58, former U.S. Senator
• David Rosowsky, K-State vice president for research
• Alysia Starkey '10, CEO and dean of K-State Polytechnic
• Gene Taylor, director of K-State Athletics
• Mary Vanier '89, vice chair of the KSU Foundation board of directors
• Lisa Wilken '03, K-State associate professor in the Carl and Melinda Helwig Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering

5. What are the next steps?

The search committee will work with an executive search consultant to screen potential candidates. The committee will evaluate nominations and applications, and then will present an unranked list of at least four candidates who are the most qualified for Kansas Board of Regents selection as the next president of K-State.

Starting in fall 2022, Kansas State University will require incoming Manhattan campus first-year students to live on campus during their first two semesters. K-State is implementing this residency requirement to enhance student success. 

"National research and an analysis of university-specific data both show a statistically significant difference in the first-year retention rate and cumulative first-year grade point average between students who lived on campus versus students who lived off campus," said Thomas Lane, K-State vice president for student life and dean of students. "K-State first-year, full-time students living on campus average higher GPAs, stay in school in higher numbers and graduate faster."

Based on data for fall 2018, K-State had an 87.6% retention rate for freshmen who lived on campus compared to a 79.9% rate for freshmen living off campus. For fall 2019, 5% more first-year students who lived on campus stayed in school as compared to first-year students who lived off campus.

K-State is not alone in its first-year residency requirement. The university will join all other Kansas Regents institutions, with the exception of the University of Kansas, in requiring freshmen students to live on campus. With this change, K-State will be the seventh of the Big 12 Conference's 10 member schools to require that students live on campus during their first year.

Students may apply for an exemption to the policy. Following a review, exemptions may be granted if a student plans to commute from the home of a parent/guardian or close relative who lives within 40 miles of the Manhattan or if the student will live in other approved organized student housing, including fraternity/sorority housing, Smith Scholarship House, Wesley House and Alpha of Clovia House. The exemptions application process will go live in December.

List of eligible exemptions

Lane said K-State is committed to providing safe, affordable housing to students. The university offers 10 residence halls with academic-focused options. Amenities include tutoring programs, on-site laundry facilities, round-the-clock security, advanced dining centers and more. For students who prefer to be more independent but still live on campus, K-State's Jardine Apartment Complex is available.

"Living on campus connects students to services supporting their transition into college life," Lane said. "As part of a university residential community, students will meet and develop supportive relationships with other students, faculty and staff. They'll have the inside track to discover ways to get involved through these support services and the connections they make."

Learn more

The K-State Marching Band is more than just a group of students who gather to practice music, dress up in purple uniforms and perform elaborately choreographed routines on game days. 

They’re a family — they work hard together, laugh together and sometimes even cry together, bonded by their common experiences and deeply felt purple pride. And recently, they had to support each other through a difficult year of challenges and struggles due to the coronavirus pandemic.

"I’m just looking forward to getting the band back together — the normal band stuff," said Frank Tracz, K-State professor of music and director of bands. "You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. We missed it — we missed the camaraderie."

Few things were normal about life in 2020. The K-State campus was quieter than it is in a typical year, with more classes taking place online as a way to slow the spread of COVID-19. The K-State football team played in front of a reduced capacity crowd in Bill Snyder Family Stadium — a place that band students are used to seeing packed with purple.

To help the Marching Band members get through the year, Tracz said one of the first steps was simply accepting it was not going to be a normal year. The goal was to keep the students as active and involved in the band as possible, even with COVID-related changes such as having to spread out over greater distances.  

“We were faced with a challenge, and it’s our job to meet it,” Tracz said. “We spent the most time trying to keep the kids’ spirits up.”

Many college students struggled with feelings of isolation and anxiety during 2020, and the Marching Band became an important network of support in the band members’ lives.

“A lot of them became real leaders,” Tracz said. “They saw their peers suffering, and they stepped up and helped. We all needed a friend, and we all needed to know we’re not alone in this.”

For Gillian Falcon, senior in chemical engineering and head drum major, the biggest challenge was finding ways to connect with all the band members and keep the same atmosphere when everything seemed so uncertain.

She said she can’t wait to meet all the new members and experience game day again.

“Getting the rush of adrenaline when going down the field in a packed stadium is an unforgettable feeling,” she said. “Being a part of the Kansas State University Marching Band is such an honor and I’m very lucky to be able to be a part of it. Leading such an amazing ensemble is a dream come true.”

Brighter days do seem to be ahead: 2021 band camp kicks off Aug. 13, and the band has a celebration show planned for the football team’s opening game in Texas. Tracz said that fans should expect to hear lots of upbeat dance tunes.

“We survived this, we got through this — let’s have a party,” he said of the show’s theme.

Other highlights from the upcoming season include performing the Olympic fanfare at the game where the K-State Athletics Hall of Fame inductees will be honored; music from Chicago on Harley Day; and finally, a celebration of the anniversary of women’s suffrage at the Homecoming game with a medley of Lady Gaga songs and Aretha Franklin’s iconic “Respect.”

Tracz said the best way K-Staters can support the students this year is to cheer on the band members and watch their performances on the football field. He’s also raising awareness about a proposed project to construct a new band building.

He can’t wait for the moment when the band can be together on the field in Bill Snyder Family Stadium once again.

“I wake up every morning, and I can feel it getting closer,” he said. “It’s going to be awesome.”

Images courtesy of @KStatePride

Although Sherry ’87 and Dale Conrad couldn’t physically travel during the 2020 pandemic shutdown, they still found ways to explore the world outside their home. 

They took virtual photography classes to improve their photography skills for when they could travel again, and they also attended Zoom meetings of their community’s Travel Club to learn about places they’d like to visit. 

Still, experiencing a new location virtually isn’t the same as actually being there, and the Conrads can’t wait to experience their first post-pandemic trip through the K-State Alumni Association’s Traveling Wildcats program. In July 2022, they’ll be traveling to Germany, Austria and Switzerland, during which they’ll see the Passion Play in Oberammergau, Germany, that is performed every 10 years. 

“We were disappointed that this had to be postponed in 2020 but it was so nice that we were immediately given new dates for the 2022 trip because it has given us something to look forward to throughout the many months we’ve been trying to stay safe and healthy from the virus,” Sherry Conrad said. “We have seen many beautiful photos of the area that we’ll be visiting, but this will be our first visit to this area of Europe so our excitement for the trip has been building for three years since we originally booked this trip.”

The K-State Alumni Association’s Traveling Wildcats program offers trips all across the world, from the pyramids of Egypt to the rainforests of Costa Rica. Since our travel partners take care of all the details, you can enjoy a stress-free adventure while also connecting with other travelers who share your purple pride.

"One of the really nice things about traveling with the Traveling Wildcats is the opportunity to meet new and interesting people as well as reconnect with those we’ve met on previous trips," Sherry Conrad said. "Knowing that we’ll be seeing at least a few people we’ve met before adds to the excitement as the trip approaches. We also enjoy the trips because they are well-planned and we can focus our energy on learning more about the different things we will be seeing and locations we’ll be visiting instead of investing time in planning the details to insure that the trip goes smoothly."

Pam Widener ’71 echoes the sentiment that meeting fellow K-Staters is one of the best parts of the Traveling Wildcats program.

“It has to be the friendships that have been cultivated along the way,” she said. “Many of those friends have become like family. My life has been enriched beyond what I could have imagined.

“I have been taking two trips a year since 2013, then came the shutdown. I have so missed the adventures and the friendships. Looking forward to the Baltic cruise in 2022, and I am sure I will find another trip for 2022 that will supplement that one!”

Traveling Wildcats Roger ’74 and Kathy ’81 Lanksbury have visited destinations including Morocco, Greece, Africa, Vietnam, the Arctic and the Antarctic, and they also are eager to travel again with other K-Staters.

“All of the Traveling Wildcats trips are very well-organized and the accommodations are top notch,” Kathy Lanksbury said. “It has been our pleasure to travel with the friendliest and best educated alumni, including President Richard ’65 and Mary Jo Myers ’64 and Alumni Association President and CEO Amy Button Renz ’76, ’86 and her husband, Allen ’87. We have made lifelong friends and memories with fellow travelers. There is a great variety of trips to choose from and we urge everyone to consider becoming a Traveling Wildcat.”

Check out our featured 2022 trips below, or view the entire 2022 line-up through our interactive Traveling Wildcats brochure!

VIEW ALL OUR 2022 TRAVELING WILDCATS TRIPS

To be a successful farmer requires an understanding of agriculture, of course, but it also demands some basic knowledge in business, engineering, science and local government, among others. 

As a result, farmers often rely on a team of trusted advisers to help them navigate the business of modern agriculture. That can be a lot to keep track of and a company founded by K-Staters is helping make that a bit easier.

AgriSync — a platform that streamlines the communication between farmers and their agribusiness advisers — was developed by K-Staters — Jerrod Westfahl ’97 and Casey Niemann ’96 — to make the process easier and more accessible. Think of it as a quicker way to reach experts they need.

"Farmers are mostly general business managers these days, they're not necessarily themselves experts on all of the nuances and some of that new tech. And so having a local trusted adviser who they can reach out to instantly, routinely and get good quality advice is a big deal to those farmers," said AgriSync COO Jerrod Westfahl ’97. "So our system, AgriSync, was originally conceived to make that simpler. How do we take this scarce knowledge from experts, advisers, and make them more easily accessible to farmers who need their expertise to solve a problem or make a decision."

An example: perhaps a farmer has a breakdown while planting wheat. With the help of AgriSync, they can videochat with a service or parts expert at the local dealership to determine how to fix the issue. Later they can privately review notes from the discussion in AgriSync if the issue reoccurs.

In other examples the system prompts farmers to set up appointments they would normally need to remember to make on their own such as calls to precision agriculture teams to overview cropland or for ranchers to call in a veterinarian to vaccinate their herd.

AgriSync’s clientele include groups of John Deere dealerships, SureFire Ag Systems, among others.

“We are thrilled to be doing our part to help farmers and their service providers succeed. The professional relationships we started in our days as undergraduates are a real asset to help us execute our mission. And, we constantly meet members of the extended K-State family who are using AgriSync to collaborate in their businesses. There is a lot left to do, but we are making steady progress,” said Casey Niemann ’96, CEO of AgriSync.

To help AgriSync grow its platform and market, several K-Staters supported the company through an angel investment managed by iiM, a Kansas City-based company that invests at the early stages of a company’s existence across the United States and Canada. iiM looks for companies that fit their focus areas of agriculture, animal health and human health.

“They were actually one of our very first investments,” said iiM managing director Lydia Kinkade ’09. “What we liked about the company, for one, was the team. Between the two co-founders, Jared and Casey, and the team they had started to build out, we were confident that they would do whatever it took to be successful. We also saw that they were solving a real problem in the agriculture industry, that connectivity of the farmer to their trusted advisers.”

The investment allowed Niemann and Westfahl to grow their business. Westfahl said users range from farmers in Kansas to Iowa and Illinois and across North America. They even have some users in Europe and Australia.

"We all have a lot of natural things in common for that reason," Westfahl said of the relationship with iiM and AgriSync. "They are motivated to support young companies when it's really hard for traditional investment vehicles or traditional lending vehicles to be relevant because everything is unproven and seemingly very risky. Being involved in angel investing in those kinds of formats is something I've encouraged a lot of people to take a look at."

As a newly graduated K-Stater, Jennifer Latzke ’00 had no idea her $20 investment at an agricultural conference would result in a 20-year career. 

Latzke had given herself a deadline: if she didn’t find a job in the communications field by a certain date, she was going to pack her bags and head to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a singing dream. 

While attending the 2000 Ag Media Summit, she brought along a stack of packets containing her resume and writing samples. She gave the concierge $20 to hand out these packets to other attendees as they walked in.

One of these packets ended up in the hands of an employee for the High Plains Journal, a regional ag publication which happened to have a job opening. Latzke was invited to lunch with the publisher, later traveled to Dodge City, Kansas, for an interview, and ended up spending 20 years with the Journal. Her first date on the job was Aug. 19 — the deadline she had given herself to find a communications job before heading to Nashville.

Now, she can’t imagine doing anything else. She was named an AAEA: The Agricultural Communicators Network Master Writer in 2007 and then Writer of Merit in 2019. 

“They pay me to put words on a page,” she said, her passion for her career evident in her voice. “I get to write stories and interview people for a living.”

💜 Purple roots

A lifelong Kansan who went to school in Chapman, Kansas, Latzke graduated from K-State in 2000, earning a Bachelor of Science in agricultural communications and a minor in animal science. 

Coming to K-State was an easy decision for her; her family has deep roots in agriculture, and she displayed purple pride from an early age. She recalls, with amusement, a memory of finding a Jayhawk on a Kansas Day coloring page and coloring it purple.   

“My parents were farmers. I came from a farming family,” she said. “I always knew I wanted to go to K-State.”

Originally, her father cautioned her against pursuing a career in agriculture. She decided to major in general communications at K-State, then a friend invited her to an Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow meeting. The faculty members she met there inspired her to change her major. 

“I dove in — totally and wholly,” she said. “I made so many connections through my classmates at K-State that I still use personally and professionally today.”

During her college years, she tried to be as involved on campus as possible: she was a national officer for Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow; a member of the Sigma Kappa Sorority; and volunteered with 4-H.

“I liked seeing and meeting people from different aspects of campus,” she said. “I didn’t just stay in Weber. I didn’t just stay in Kedzie.”

Her teachers at K-State challenged her to look beyond her own experiences and consider new perspectives. Through her time living at Ford Hall, she also had the opportunity to meet international students from many different countries, learning more about their backgrounds through thoughtful conversations.

“I wanted to expand beyond what I knew,” she said. 

🌾 Cultivating communication

During her two decades in agricultural communications, Latzke has sought out stories of everyday farmers and ranchers, just like her dad. Her subjects might not be famous or receive national media attention, but they’re a vital part of the supply chain that gets food and other necessary products into people’s homes.  

“That’s really important to me,” she said of promoting these stories. “I’ve always rooted for the underdog, for the folks who may not get their voices heard. That’s why I love this job. For me, it’s the people and the faces that make sure our grocery store shelves aren’t bare.” And her K-State education gave her not only the skills, but also the flexibility to tell those stories no matter what medium is popular. 

In her role at the Journal, she was also responsible for special events programming, including learning how to pivot to online events on Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2018, she helped launch a weekly podcast called HPJ Talk, and even interviewed NASA astronaut Nick Hague from Hoxie, Kansas, about ag research performed on the space station. The class she took at K-State about radio and TV production paid off, as she and her colleague had to record, edit and publish the podcast themselves. 

Latzke currently serves as editor of Kansas Farmer, a publication under the banner of Farm Progress, which is owned by Informa PLC. She manages a monthly print magazine and daily email newsletters, covering agriculture all across Kansas.

Agriculture has witnessed rapid changes since the 1950s, with a wealth of new equipment and technology. As the profession continues to evolve in the future, Latzke’s goal is to help farmers make decisions and learn about how to effectively use these new tools.

She continues to build on those lessons she learned back at K-State about expanding her perspective, and she’s explored agriculture beyond the Sunflower State in places like Vietnam, Argentina and Cuba. These experiences help her to celebrate differences while also finding common ground. 

“We may not look alike, we may not sound alike, we may not love alike, but we’re still people,” she said. “The more you open up and ask questions, the more you immerse yourself in someone's culture, the better off you’ll be. I never stop learning.”

Photo 1: Taking photos is part of telling the stories of farming neighbors. Here Latzke stands in a wheat field near Woodbine, Kansas, on an assignment to tell the story of a local farm family. (Courtesy photo)

Photo 2: Latzke’s work has taken her around the country to tell stories of agriculture and the people who work in the field. Here she’s on a tour of an Idaho potato farm. (Courtesy photo)

Photo 3: Latzke was one of a handful of American agricultural journalists who toured Cuba in 2016 with the AAEA: The Agricultural Communicators Network. While there they were able to tour farms and ag facilities, and interview Cuban ag officials. (Courtesy photo)