President Kirk Schulz has been in office for only a couple days, but he has already begun working toward a vision of K-State in 2025.

The Collegian had an opportunity to sit down with him on his second day as president and discuss his goals for K-State.

Q: What are you doing short-term to make K-State 2025 a reality?

A: "What I'm going to spend the rest of the summer and really the fall semester doing is still just getting out and visiting with different groups. So I've been visiting Alumni groups — I've been to two groups in central Kansas, one in southwest Kansas ... I've made it to about all of the colleges except for about two or three now where I've just spent a couple hours there.

    "So a lot of it is just going and hearing what people have to say about the university: what do they think is good; what do they need to see improved ... it's really information gathering. It's a complex, big place with lots and lots of good things going on, and figuring all of that out as a newcomer is going to take some time."

Q: Why did you decide on the year 2025?

A: "I wanted something that was about 15 years out ... if you move out 15 years, that's far enough out that people will sort of say, ‘Well, let's think big.' Really what I want people to do is dream, think large. I think we'll be amazed; at the end, there will be a lot of commonality.

    "We'll find the students, the faculty, the staff, alumni, major donors, friends, people in Kansas City, people in western Kansas are all going to converge on a set of fairly common things and that's what will be in the plan."

Q: Have you made any immediate changes?

A: "Not really. We're continuing to look at governance models; the president's cabinet has got vice presidents on it; and I added the athletic director, the CEO of the Foundation and the CEO of the Alumni Association all to the president's cabinet because I was familiar with more of that model where I was before. But, we're going to look at some other things so that we keep students, the Faculty Senate, the Student Senate, the staff, the classified staff senate engaged and involved in decision-making. I'm going to float some things out there over the next couple of months that we think will improve the communications in the senior administration and maybe a little bit of how we do things."

Q: You seem to be really tech-savvy. How do you think that will help your presidency?

A: "I think people communicate in different ways. Somebody that maybe was a 1960s graduate may not be all that worried about twitter or facebook and things like those. So, I think the presidents of today have to be tech-savvy because we're trying to appeal to that 14-year-old that's starting to think about maybe where they want to go to college to the 1960 alumni that may have had a very long and productive career and may be helping out the university in some particular way. So you just can't do a single way and I think that's all part of it, plus it's hard for me to be connected to the students, the faculty, the staff, alumni this allows me to be able to I think keep connections up with people that you may not be able to do otherwise.

Q: Are you enjoying Manhattan?

A: I am and Believe it or not, this is twice the size of where we lived before so Starkville Mississippi does not have a mall it doesn't have a target and some of those things a so I like small college towns and I lived in two places now that have been about 50,000 people and it's about the right size. You get some restaurants and some shopping like that but it's easy to get around and the traffic isn't too bad but you go up to a couple 100,000 and moving around takes longer. I do like Manhattan it's very nice but I travel so much that when I need my "big city fix" I've got lots of chances to do in Kansas City or Chicago or Minneapolis or places like that.

Q: How's your family adjusting to the move?

A: They're doing well my younger son's here, Andrew, I just met him in the union and he's at band camp this week here at K-State and so I met him at the union we had lunch at the union then walked around the transfer orientation fair so we got to meet a whole bunch of different groups on campus and stuff like that. He was wearing his K-State shirt and shorts and I don't even want to know if he was wearing K-State underwear I'm not even going to ask. He seems to be acclimating very well a little adjustment though to being the president's son, because everybody sort of recognizes maybe not his face but they see his name and they just know on campus that he's associated with me and so I think he hasn't found anybody that didn't know who he is and so it's not a problem but it's going to take a little getting used to.

Q: Why didn't your older son end up coming to K-State?

A: Well he grew up on the Mississippi State campus and was there for eight years and we went to football and basketball and baseball and did stuff during the summer and he was very engaged so he came up to the CU basketball game here and Dr. Bosco sat right in front of him and worked on him the whole game about coming to K-State but he really loves Mississippi State that's where a lot of his friends are going and it's a very similar institution to here. So we were pleased with that and it gives him a little bit of freedom away form mom and dad from the perspective of if he came here, my younger son will be in high school but he came here everybody on campus ‘oh yeah your dad's the new president, your mom and this and your living right there on campus' I think this allows him to be a college freshman like you would hope someone could come and do and learn on his own and I think it will be fun for him but he'll be back for fall break and to a football game and so he'll be around.