May 25, 2021
A Couple of Changes
On Monday, May 24, 2021, President Richard Myers announced his retirement in the K-State Today newsletter. His retirement will be at the end of this calendar year. The announcement can be read here: https://www.k-state.edu/today/announcement/?id=75406.
President Myers has long-term love and respect for Kansas State University. In addition to serving as its president, he is a Kansas State University Foundation professor of military history and leadership and received both a bachelor’s degree and an honorary doctorate from K-State. He is also one of K-State’s most recognized and distinguished alums, having served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2001 to 2005. The university's military science building bears his name to honor his military career.
President Myers is also very appreciative of our K-State Research and Extension missions. Inviting us to share about extension and our successes over the past year at his April town hall meeting will be something I will always appreciate. I will also remember a series of emails between him and me regarding how he should respond to two 4-H parents. The parents were concerned whether county and state fairs would be conducted during the COVID-19 challenge.
To help him respond, I replied with a long email informing him of extension’s roles at the fairs, the working relationships with the fair boards and associations, how our agents and specialists have back-up plans in case a local fair board cancelled its fair, and how our local-unit system is co-governed by K-State and each local unit’s extension board. I will always remember the first sentence of his follow-up message: “You do live in a complex world.” While I know he has experienced far more complex systems in his storied career, it made me smile to think that a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the president of our university thought about and appreciated the fact that extension professionals live in a complex world.
On another note regarding change, our Grand Challenges of global food systems, health, developing tomorrow’s leaders, community vitality, and water have remained unchanged since they were unveiled in 2015. We will be adjusting one of those Grand Challenges.
The Grand Challenge of “Water” will now be called “Water and Natural Resources.” Why? Water, of course, is an extremely important natural resource to Kansas, and it will continue to be a critical focus area of ours in the years to come. Nevertheless, K-State Research and Extension professionals and volunteers are involved in working on more natural-resource issues than water alone. We have colleagues involved in forestry, grasslands, wildlife, parks, and air quality. It is time to better reflect that work.
Making the change in name and scope from “Water” to “Water and Natural Resources” remains in keeping with the feedback provided by our stakeholders during the strategic planning process which resulted in our Grand Challenges. It will enable us to better communicate about the work we do regarding the use, management, stewardship and conservation of water and all of Kansas' other natural resources.
The Grand Challenges image appears on most of our documents. A revised image will be developed to reflect this change. The transition to the revised Grand Challenge image will be a gradual phase-in. While we will begin transitioning to the revised Grand Challenge image effective immediately on new documents, you do not need to replace documents that you have on hand that feature the current Grand Challenge image.