Quest Freshman Honorary hosted their first ever “Thank the Dang Day” event on campus this week to honor Kansas State University faculty and staff members and give students an opportunity to show their appreciation. Students were invited to write thank you notes to any employee on campus that they wanted to acknowledge.
Quest is a selection-based program sponsored and mentored by Blue Key senior honorary. It aims to help first-year students at K-State become leaders through service and development.
Quest students coordinating the event said they hoped it would impact the community by acknowledging that students notice the dedication, hours and intentionality put into the school by the faculty, said Cameron Jones, freshman in business management and member of Quest.
“We hope that this will inspire students to show their appreciation and thanks to their professors and the staff at K-State who truly make the university what it is,” Jones said.
The event was comprised of tables set up in the K-State Student Union, as well as the Derby and Kramer dining centers. It lasted Monday through Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The thank-you notes that students composed were delivered by the Quest members.
Jones said that the event was met with enthusiasm from students. They estimated around 400 people participated.
“All the students have seemed excited to write a note thanking their professors,” said Jones.
Students who participated thanked a wide variety of staff, from the custodians of Ford Hall to their favorite professors.
One student, Max Harman, a freshman in biochemistry and global food systems leadership, thanked both his leadership and agriculture professors who taught one of his classes.
“Together [they] made one of the classes that I learned some of the most from, without making it a burden on students,” Harman said.
Quest students who organized the event had been assigned a spring service project to serve a part of the Manhattan and K-State community. As a group they eventually decided to create an event that would give students an outlet to honor K-State faculty.
“We’d all felt like [faculty members] had impacted us in such a huge way this year and were under appreciated,” said Peyton Kavanagh, freshman in kinesiology and member of Quest.
