By NATE KING
Salina Post
Citizens of central Kansas, Kansas State University students, alumni, and community leaders discussed K-State Salina's role in K-State's overall strategic plan, high school education pathways to encourage students to pursue a college degree or post-secondary training, and the future of land grant schools during a community conversation on Dec. 5.
The community forum
The morning visit to K-State Salina for the community forum is part of the university’s plans to hear from Kansans all across the state for the 2022-2023 academic year. During their visit, K-State President Richard Linton, Provost Charles Taber, and dean of student life Thomas Lane joined a group of current K-State students collectively known as Connected Cats.
Linton said that the Connected Cats is a group of student leaders who have a diverse range of K-State experiences, a meaningful connection to engaged community work, and personal ties to Kansas' geographic regions.
"So you probably have seen some of the billboards that say, 'Kansas State is the university for Kansas' well, we're for Kansas, but we're also for the nation and the world," Linton said. "We're trying to be able to make a very important statement that we are the only university that's in all 105 Kansas counties and communities and we want to let folks know that Kansas is always first."
After Linton’s brief presentation and remarks, which included applause for the K-State football team winning the Big XII Championship game, K-State junior Ethan Brown, a graduate of Salina Central High School and one of the two current K-State Student Ambassadors; K-State sophomore Adelaide Easter; and K-State junior Yulissa Hernandez, a graduate of Salina South High School, discussed their college search experiences and why they selected K-State as their school of choice.
"When I was in high school, I started looking at colleges my sophomore year," Brown said. "When I tell you, I looked everywhere in Kansas, I looked everywhere. I wanted everything. I wanted to have great people, I wanted to have great academia, I wanted great athletics. They had everything that I wanted. The main thing I wanted was accessibility. For me, that breaks down into three things affordability, campus access, and then just general academic accessibility."
Easter spoke about the interdisciplinary connections she made at K-State.
"I started as a freshman majoring in bakery science and food science. Through my involvement, and through self-discovery connections, I was able to be exposed to the global food system secondary major, which talks about food policy and how we can make the world a better place and make sure that people have access to food," Easter said. "Being in food security scholars and organizations like the alumni board, I've gotten connected to alumni that are just as passionate about food issues as I am."
Hernandez, a student pilot at K-State Salina talked about how she switched her major from respiratory therapy, to aviation.
"When I was looking into coming to K State, I was a freshman in college at the time and I was working as a nurse assistant," Hernandez said. "I was doing my prerequisites for respiratory therapy - that same year, I met a pilot. He introduced me to aviation and at the time, I didn't know really any pilots. So it was all so new to me."
Hernandez said that her pilot friend took her on a discovery flight in a jet which made her decision easier to make.
"I was convinced I was just going to change my major completely, which was pretty scary at the time, because I thought I had it all figured out. But I thought a flying was just way more fun then respiratory therapies," Hernandez said.
The forum transitioned into a community conversation where community entrepreneurs, business leaders, regional high school educators, parents, and citizens were asked to discuss what they wanted to see from K-State. Topics discussed included increasing the presence of veterans affairs at the K-State Salina campus, eliminating roadblocks for transfer students, continuing to expand the local network of private industry partners, and meeting the current workforce demands.
Following the forum, Salina Post sat down for an interview with Linton, where he discussed how students should always be the center of enrollment strategies.
"When we started thinking about doing community visits, we reached out to other university presidents around the country and the message that came back is you have to take students and you have to take students from those communities," Linton said. "Parents and students aren't really there to listen to presidents and provosts because they can relate so much more to student stories."
Linton also spoke about the university's new initiative, Next-Gen K-State.
"We 're trying to develop a new strategy, a new strategic plan, for what we're calling the Next-Gen Land Grant," Linton said. "We haven't defined exactly what the next generation land grant university means yet, but we want to be the model land grant university that other land grants are looking to. When you take a look at one of those things that I know, will be an important part of the Next Gen Land Grant is better connectivity with communities around economic growth, and creation of jobs and support for every single community."
Ellsworth County Health Center: Because We Care Mental Health Summit
Linton and the Connected Cats, traveled to Ellsworth County Medical Center, 1604 Aylward Avenue in Ellsworth, for a mental health summit hosted by K-State Extension. Midway Extension Director Jessica Kootz said that a group of individuals in the Ellsworth community started meeting virtually on a weekly basis to talk about COVID-19 updates and mental wellness.
"This group of individuals, community stakeholders decided that we needed to focus a lot more on mental health. The COVID-19 update group became a 'Because We Care' group, and that has evolved within the last six months into a coalition that's centered around mental health," Kootz said.
The summit featured a panel of experts including Rachel Clews, family and consumer science extension specialist in the Southwest Research Extension Center; Jennifer Kaufman, director of community support services for Central Kansas Mental Health; Derek Knopp, school-based clinical coordinator for Central Kansas Mental Health; Kerianne Ehrlich, Ellsworth County Health Department; and Jim Kirkbride, CEO at Ellsworth County Medical Center.
"Most of our communities aren't just rural, they're considered frontier. It's that born and bred mentality that - you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you just push it down, and you keep going," said Clews. "When I worked with farmers, I tried to tell them that I'm a fourth generation farmer, my husband's a fourth generation Kansas farmer. I understand those issues. But I tell them, when your livestock is sick, you don't just say 'Oh, push it down, and you'll get over it.' I tell farmers, that they take better care of their machinery and their livestock than they do themselves. A lot of times they don't think to ask for help themselves because farmers are really great at helping others."
Kootz said that in the last two months, Ellsworth had faced tragedies relating to mental health causing their group to push harder to be focused and intentional on making sure there is a comprehensive approach to addressing mental health in rural communities.
Linton asked the panel if it could provide him with any statistics to help give context to the Kansas mental health crisis.
"We have hired over 50 new staff at Central Kansas Mental Health, just within the past year," Kaufman said. "Trying to be able to provide services that range from front desk staff that are inundated with phone calls every day trying to get intake staff to be able to provide that initial service and if you're aware, there's a workforce shortage in most areas, and that includes social work, case managers, all lines."
Clews added that according to the State of Mental Health in America 2023 Report, Kansas ranked last in the country, following the District of Columbia.
"Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death for Kansas," Clews said. "Between the years 2000 and 2018, suicide rates in Kansas increased by 70 percent."
Clews also added that suicide is the second leading cause of death for Kansans in the 15 to 34 age range.
An obstacle that was highlighted during the summit was the lack of educational resources directing Kansans on where to turn when they needed mental health assistance.
"As far as regional scale, the last few years, I think, especially since 2020, we've seen an increase in people who are seeking services for mental health, and we've seen is a big increase in anxiety and depression," said Knopp. "People are recognizing the need that when they are struggling there are resources available - if you know how to access them. One of the things that we [Central Kansas Mental Health] have done, we've done a lot of work in providing education on how to access mental health services, because unless you have a family member or direct connection with somebody who has accessed services before, you don't always know how to go about that."
Linton recognized the need for more social work professionals and mentioned the recent partnership between K-State Salina and the University of Kansas. K-State Salina will offer a Master of Social Work that will be instructed at the K-State Salina campus.
The cooperation between K-State Salina and KU will increase the availability of graduate-level social work education in rural areas of Kansas while meeting the gaps in coverage that human service agencies in rural areas of the state have been experiencing.
"K-State Salina is committed to responding to the needs of our region by providing a trained workforce for our social service partners," said Deb Marseline, assistant dean for diversity and student success at K-State Salina, earlier this month. "Qualified, experienced social workers play an integral role in the success of any community by working with people to improve their circumstances in a variety of situations. This opportunity furthers our mission by training students to be leaders and make an impact on our state."
Connecting industry with education
Linton also stopped by Great Plains Manufacturing, 1525 E. North Street, Salina, to take part in a facilitated conversation about ways that education in the Salina region is partnering to meet the needs of industry. Dean and CEO of K-State Salina, Alysia Starkey spoke to the importance of these types of open conversations and how industry advisory boards are working to meet workforce demands.
"How do you stay connected to the workforce needs in your region, it has to do with our industry advisory boards and making sure we're engaged with what the needs of the industry are," Starkey said. "So regardless of whatever field you're in - each of our programs, and each of our colleges and each of our degrees at the university has industry advisory boards that help correlate where it is that they're [the student] going in the future. Industry advisory boards are a key way that you all can get involved with helping to drive your workforce needs."
Starkey also mentioned that K-State Salina has partnered with Salina USD 305 to provide an opportunity for high school students to earn industry-recognized credentials, receive college credit for general education requirements, and complete dual credits for an associate degree while in high school and graduate at the same time as their peers. The program is called the PolyCats Academy.
"Here we have a high school program that will allow a student to get an associate's degree while they're still in high school, graduate at the same time as high school with an associate's degree, which reduces the time of entry into the career field, and it also helps to reduce the overall cost and affordability for students as well," Starkey said.
David Disberger, executive vice president for Great Plains Manufacturing, spoke at the discussion about the scholar's program being offered by Great Plains manufacturing.
"The scholar's program is something that came out of discussions that Dean Starkey and I had to address our needs and also address the needs of Kansas State," Disberger said. "What we've done is we've taken your traditional manufacturing engineering technology type degree, where the college student would go to school for four years to get their bachelor science degree, instead, they'll go to college for three years, and have that same BS degree."
The Great Plains Scholars Program is for students who want to earn a bachelor's degree in one of K-State Salina’s engineering technology programs and acquire first-hand knowledge of specialized industry technology by working part-time at Great Plains Manufacturing. This provides high-level learning opportunities in advanced manufacturing, basic manufacturing, advanced robotics programming, and engineering design.
"We're able to get those workforces beginning with us at a younger age. By the time they graduate, they have over 2,400 hours of experience, and to kick this whole program off this year, we agreed to start with three students to make sure we've worked out the kinks - which we have, and it's going very well," Disberger said. "We are very pleased with the results that we're seeing thus far, we intend to continue to grow this program up to where we have 12 new students entering this program every year. Hopefully, the 12 graduating come to work for us."
Linn Exline, Salina USD 305 superintendent, spoke about how the work field is changing the way educators prepare students for their careers after high school.
"Over 70 percent of the jobs that we're preparing students for today will require either a two-year degree a four-year degree or some kind of industry-recognized credential," Exline said. "To that end, USD 305 has really been working on Career Exploration and career planning with students. We start that process with a semester-long class at middle school. And during that class, students use an online platform where they explore their interests. They explore their aptitudes, they explore different careers, and they try to identify a career field of interest."
Exline also shared the successes of the Building Bridges program at USD 305.
"Building Bridges is an effort for us to bring industry leaders, public schools, faculty, staff, our students, and business together to talk about workforce needs and how we can work together to better meet those needs," Exline said. "We are encouraging our students to understand what jobs are available here in our community because many times our students think they need to go away to get the kinds of positions that they're being trained for."
Exline said that USD 305 has worked to ensure that the Building Bridges program matches with local job demands and industry standards.
"As a result of these efforts, we are seeing increased jobs. We're seeing increased internships, and we're also seeing increased number of partnerships."
Salina Library visit
Linton's visit concluded with a stop at the Salina Public Library, 301 W. Elm Street, where he and Lane read a book to children. The book selected to be read was K-State: An Alphabet Journey Across Kansas, by Debbie Mercer and Loretta Larson.