May 13, 2025
Next-Gen K-State Examples
The Next-Gen K-State strategic plan and our Delivering on the Promise discussions call for all of K-State – extension professionals, non-extension faculty and staff, and students – to engage with Kansans and work with them improve their lives, livelihoods, and communities.
We are to help them to address issues that are both familiar and new to us. Extension has risen to this challenge many times over the past year. This Tuesday Letter presents three examples of rising to this challenge.
Holton High School’s athletic field wasn’t the pristine athletic field we often think of when we picture athletic fields in our minds. It was hard, often brown, and weedy. Meadowlark District’s David Hallauer and David Key, worked with Steve Keeley, head of our Department of Horticulture and Natural Resources -- and a team of his graduate students – met and worked with staff at the school.
They interviewed the Holton High School personnel, and examined their turf equipment and processes. Using soil analyses taken by Meadowlark District staff, they developed a plan that enabled Holton High School to have a lush and weed-free athletic turf that made the high school and the entire community proud.
Our Sumner County extension colleagues, Randy Hein and Gavin Beesley, hosted a Food Entrepreneurship Workshop this spring in Caldwell. Partners in the program included Kansas State University (both with and without extension appointments), Network Kansas, Sumner County Economic Development, and the Heartland Regional Food Business Center. Karen Blakeslee with our Value Added Foods Lab presented on food safety.
The workshop also allowed for opportunities for people to learn more about Sumner County economic development activities, Network Kansas’s community entrepreneurship advisory service, the important work of Border Queen Harvest Hub’s local food network, Kansas State University’s All Things Kansas data analysis, and an update of local extension programming efforts. The capstone event was a tour of the new local incubator commercial kitchen.
In Hamilton County, our colleague Lora Horton held a joint K-State Community Visit and Hamilton County Local Partner conversation called Working Together to Solve the Food Access Problem. It was attended by Hamilton County staff, two area agents from the facilitation team, five Kansas State faculty, five students studying food security, and 16 Hamilton County stakeholders.
The purpose of the program was to determine food gaps, and develop locally based solutions to help cover these food gaps. Our Hamilton County staff plans to use their Hunger Free Kansas grant from the Kansas Health Foundation to implement their food access plan.
These three examples show how Kansas State University extension professionals are delivering on the promise to work with the people of Kansas to address their challenges and improve their lives, livelihoods, and communities. I know there are many other examples, and I would like to hear about them. Please email me your local unit’s, center’s, or department’s examples of how you are delivering on the promise and making K-State the nation’s premier Next-Gen Land Grant university. I can be reached at ghadley@ksu.edu.