 "Photo: Nathaniel LaRue")
Humor enlivened the opening speech at Thursday night's Student Senate meeting as K-State President-Select Kirk Schulz addressed Student Governing Association members about the future of K-State.
"Keep up what you're doing; be engaged and be involved and I think that it's critical that you talk to the students around you and also make sure that they are engaged and involved," Schulz said.
Schulz spoke and fielded questions for about 30 minutes, during which he informed the student senators about his plans to develop a "long-term strategic planning process" for K-State's future and student leadership opportunities to help during the planning process. Schulz fielded questions about issues at K-State ranging from the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility to athletics to sustainability. Schulz even managed to crack several jokes at the University of Kansas' expense.
Schulz said as he is already thinking about what K-State will be like in the year 2025.
"We want to ask questions like, how many students should we have? How much research should we be doing? What kind of buildings should we have? What should the freshman year experience be to be the best in the country at Kansas State University?" Schulz said. "We want to ask these kinds of questions and we're certainly going to want your involvement, the involvement of our alumni and our faculty, staff and everybody on campus."
Schulz addressed the issue of student retention when he was asked if he was in favor of possibly requiring students to live in the residence halls during their freshman year. He said he would like to see local alumni chapters throw send-off parties for high school seniors before they leave for K-State.
"What it does is that students then leave feeling that there is some community support behind them and what they are doing," Schulz said. "Secondly, in those events what you can do is take all those juniors in high school and you bring them out and say, 'Hey, this is the school and state you are going to go to.' It's a great recruitment tool."
Schulz said he will be working hard to ensure that NBAF will put an "international star" on Manhattan and K-State. He said he believes that NBAF will attract many companies to the Manhattan area and he would like these companies to be "true university partners" by supporting the university with scholarships, providing summer internships for K-State students and hiring K-State graduates.
Schulz said that once he takes office on July 1, he will be meeting with various campus organizations, students, faculty members and staff to create a dialogue about what direction K-State is headed. The incoming president told the crowd that he had a Facebook.com account and students were free to add him as a friend.
"I'm just pleased to be here," Schulz said after his speech. "This is my 5th visit to campus, and I'm just getting to know the K-State community more all the time."
