The sun beamed down on Bill Snyder Family Stadium as the marching band blasted music from “The Greatest Showman” into the crisp fall air. The halftime of Kansas State’s Oct. 13 football game was an eventful one, as Maddy Mash and Tel Wittmer were announced as the K-State 2019 student ambassadors.
Just as student ambassadors before them, both Mash and Wittmer said they have a strong love for K-State because the sense of family creates a campus like no other.
“Once you meet K-Staters you feel at home and you feel welcomed,” Mash, junior in microbiology, said.
Mash said not only does she care about K-State as a school, but also about the students, faculty and community members who have made the university home, she said she hopes to serve past, current and future K-staters in her role as student ambassador.
“I would like to show the alumni what it is like to be a student on campus now and how K-State has grown and how they can help K-State grow,” Mash said.
Aside from K-State, Mash said she loves her hometown of Wichita, Gilmore Girls and her dog Bella.
When she was five, the doctor who allowed her to help deliver her baby brother told her to attend the University of Kansas to become a doctor; since then, Mash has had her sights set on studying medicine. She has also been able to experience being on the patient side of medicine as she was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in her freshman year of high school.
“I love that fashion of service and just helping others,” Mash said. “I’ve seen the incredible things [the health care] system can do for people.”
Mash said before departing K-State to attend medical school at KU and work in pediatrics, she is excited to take in all the moments associated with her unique opportunity to serve as ambassador.
Mash attributed K-State with providing her a place where she can run toward her dreams and people she can run with. Now, she said she is grateful for the opportunity to give back to the school.
Mash said in her time at K-State, she has grown from a young girl hoping to be part of the K-State family to a K-Stater working with alumni and impacting students’ lives.
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Similar to Mash, Wittmer grew up as a KU fan in Holton, Kansas, with a bedroom painted red and blue until his junior year of high school. It was the influential teachers, who were K-State alumni, and organizations that Wittmer said brought him to campus that helped visualize K-State as home. In the end, K-State was the only school he applied to.
Wittmer, sophomore in secondary education, said he hopes to follow in his parents footsteps in serving society through teaching.
From the beginning of his time at K-State, Wittmer dove into opportunities. At the beginning of his second semester, he represented K-State as an ambassador at New Student Services as well as giving campus tours.
“It definitely makes it worth it when you can genuinely connect with other people and help give them the same opportunities that have been afforded to you,” Wittmer said.
Wittmer said he fell in love with what the university stands for by providing quality access to education and opportunities to people.
“That’s really what I am passionate about,” Wittmer said. “Just serving other people.”
Once a young KU fan who wanted to become a film director, Wittmer said he is now a proud ambassador, looking forward to dedicating everything to demonstrating what K-State represents.
