K-State’s “2025 Visionary Plan” continues to make progress
toward its ultimate goal: turning K-State into one of the top 50 public research
universities in the nation.
The
plan, adopted in February 2010, is a universitywide strategy to capitalize
on K-State’s current strengths and reach nationwide recognition as
a top 50 public research school by the year 2025.
“The 2025 initiative is an excellent way for students to get invested in the future of K-State,” said Nate Spriggs, student body president and senior in agricultural economics. “It’s a benefit to students today even though 2025 seems like a long time from now. As the university’s reputation grows across the country, it’ll increase the value and significance of degrees that we’re earning today.”
Andrew Waldman, K-State student ambassador and senior in industrial engineering, said that he thinks the emphases on both research and the undergraduate experience will benefit recruitment efforts for the university.
“I’ve had the opportunity to work at New Student Services, and it’s so easy to get prospective students excited about the family atmosphere and affordability of K-State,” Waldman said. “With this new initiative, I think it will allow students to connect with something tangible: the opportunity to conduct hands-on research that could further their field in some way. I think being able to share the impact of those experiences will bring a new level of excitement to our recruitment approach.”
The vision encompasses the
advancement of every aspect of the university by focusing on key
themes and goals to improve facilities, faculty
and staff, athletics and the overall undergraduate and graduate scholarly
experience.
Progress in these areas will be gauged by various measures, such as student retention rates, graduation rates, reception of
faculty awards and the total number of research and development expenditures. Also being gauged are non-quantitative measures pertaining to facets of university life such as the quality
of student life on campus and faculty response to the differing needs of
undergraduate and graduate students.
K-State
2025 has been mapped in phases to help strategize progress and set smaller
goals that can be attained in shorter time increments.
Phase one began with
completing the visionary goal in September 2011. The plan continued last
spring, when the university began enacting phase two by drafting initial college
alignment plans.
This fall, each college will be refining its initial plans,
and by the spring of 2013, each specific department should have competed its own individualized
plan to benefit the school as a whole.
There will be a monetary
component in moving the plan forward once the primary stages are complete, but
the university anticipates the majority of the money will come from research
grants, as well as alumni donations.
Although
much of K-State 2025 focuses on academics and research, an important
factor in K-State’s success is the quality of student life at the university. With the
Princeton Review’s recent ranking of K-State as eighth for happiest students in the nation, it would appear that the student satisfaction aspect of the
plan is well underway.
However, even more measures will be taken in the next
12 years to ensure a greater response from the student population. These will include a reduction in class sizes, allowing for more student-faculty
interaction, and the possible addition of a new residence hall to ensure that
more students wanting to live on campus have that opportunity.
While
it might seem that much of the plan’s emphasis is on benefiting future students, associate vice president for student life Michael Lynch said there will be benefits for current students as
well.
“If we become a top 50 research institution and you graduate from that
institution, there’s a prestigious reputation that goes with that,” Lynch said.
“For the current students, there’s a lot of institutional pride that goes with
it, but there’s also some benefits that accrue to graduates of those
institutions in terms of jobs and a variety of other things. It’s the public’s
perception of the institution that you graduated from.”