A monthly Shocker update to alumni and community

March 2020

President's Connection: A monthly message for alumni and community

members from Wichita State President Jay Golden

Recruiting students to our innovative culture; keeping them in Kansas through Shocker Microenterprises

March is college basketball tournament season, legislative budget season and college recruiting season. As your president, all three are important to me.

I’ll be on the road a good amount of my time this month, talking with legislators, community groups and the media to promote the importance of higher education and the special role that Wichita State University plays in growing and diversifying our Kansas economy and in preparing our students to be strong contributors to society.

I will be making my way through traffic jams in the greater Dallas/Fort Worth metro area to meet with community college presidents, high school principals, college counselors, as well as major employers, supporting our Shocker Cities program and Wichita State University. I am committed to recruiting talented students to our campus and greater Wichita.

Retaining talent in Wichita: A critical initiative

New student applications to Wichita State have grown steadily over the last two years. I believe this is due to increasing awareness of our innovative academic programs, real-world research and internship approach, superb faculty, staff, facilities and caring, inclusive culture.

Recruiting and retaining talent is an important part of the Innovative Culture that I am focused on creating at WSU and in south central Kansas. We can’t be satisfied if all we do is attract talented students. We need to have the structure and systems in place to help them graduate, with low or no debt, and then retain them in Kansas, preferably in the Wichita area.

One way I am focused on retaining talent is through a program we will be rolling out to the community in the near-term -- the Shocker Microenterprise Program.

This unique program, part of building our Innovative Culture at WSU, will bring together graduate students and undergraduate students from different academic programs to form innovation teams, beginning in the sophomore year.

The goal is to have these student teams develop a new generation of technologies, services and businesses that will be started and grown in Kansas after the team members graduate from Wichita State.

The students participating in Shocker Microenterprises will have access to our incredible Shocker innovation facilities on-campus and be mentored by our faculty, industry leaders, seasoned technologists and entrepreneurs, as well as the Small Business Administration office on campus. The teams will also have access to our legal technology transfer resources.

I will personally be working with alumni and friends of Wichita State who are interested in stopping the migration to other states of our young energetic millennials and focused, like me, on growing our economy and quality of life of Kansans.

We all realize that a key component for this type of success is having a highly innovative-research university that produces students and faculty who create home-grown small and medium businesses. Some of those businesses scale exponentially. We’ve seen it in the North Carolina Research Triangle, Silicon Valley and Austin. I want that for Wichita and Kansas.

Wichita State University is up to that challenge and I will be asking for your help as we work to create venture seed funding to provide to our student teams upon graduation, to assist them launch their businesses in our region.

Beyond donor support, we will need the partnerships and support of our local business community, local and state government, our alumni and donors to help further drive the growth of an Innovative Culture and region.

Please contact me if you want to help as an investor, partner, donor or mentor -- [email protected]

Go Shockers!

Jay

Jay Golden, Wichita State President

A Glimpse into the Life of the President

From left: Bill and Dorothy Cohen; Jay and Dina Golden; and Elizabeth and Don King.

Every day I’m given the opportunity to fill my time with meetings and events that are crucial to the future of our university. Below are samples of a few days this past month and what we all accomplished together:

Feb. 13-14:

Spent two full days in Arizona. Did not complain that the temperatures were in the 70s but forgot how much traffic there is in the nation’s 5th largest city. Right after landing, Dina and I hosted a watch-party that included a victory by our men’s basketball team. This was a loud and enthusiastic group of alumni. There are over 1,200 Shockers in the Phoenix area and they bleed yellow and black.

The following day included meeting with colleagues and leaders at Arizona State University, which continually ranks as the nation’s most innovative university. We shared experiences and ideas including partnership opportunities in research and economic development. Dina and I then met up to cheer on our women’s tennis team as they played the top 20 Sun Devils. While we did not win the match, it was very close and our women showed them that the Shockers mean business.

Later than night, Dina and I, along with WSU Foundation President Elizabeth King and her husband Don, had the pleasure of being hosted for a wonderfully intimate dinner at the home of Dorothy and Bill Cohen, the generous donors for whom our Honors College is named. They allowed me the opportunity to share my vision for our university and for the continued growth in numbers and impact of the Honors College. They are so engaged and focused like me on the student experience. It was truly a lovely evening and I look forward to their continued insights and support of Wichita State University.

The value that our Honors College brings to students is enormous. Honors offers a different way to complete any degree. The Dorothy and Bill Cohen Honors College creates a small college environment within our research university campus. Our 685 students pursue 90-plus areas of study across all academic colleges. Approximately 65 faculty and staff engage with Honors each year by teaching a small Honors seminar or Honors section of a department course, mentoring a student researcher or intern, or advising a student thesis.

Honors students are intellectually curious, ambitious for themselves and their communities, diverse and determined. In short, we aim to challenge ambitious students in any major to develop their talents to create a better future.

This level of excellence wouldn’t be possible without the Cohens, who believe in joining knowledge and innovation to grow visionaries. With their help, Wichita State students are changing the world.

On the President's Desk

I created the President's Convergence Sciences Initiative to encourage researchers from across the university, including students, to work across the usual department lines on some of the most pressing issues facing Kansas and the world, including health disparities and delivery, digital transformation and sustainability.

We'll fund projects in those three areas, plus at least one other proposed by research teams.

As Kansas’ only urban public research university, we are uniquely positioned to address many of these issues because of our location; focus on applied learning and research; and partnerships with industry.

Successful proposals will be funded for three years, with a budget not to exceed $100,000 per year. The deadline for submissions is May 1. I’ll continue to update you on this important initiative.

In the meantime, you can learn more at wichita.edu/convergence.

Getting Social with President Golden

Feb. 20: J ust finished testifying before Kansas legislators on the importance of funding high education. No better example than the incredible benefits @WichitaState delivers by growing our GDP and creating new technologies and businesses.

Follow me on Twitter

Feb. 5: What a pleasure it was today touring Wichita Northwest High School and meeting all of the amazing students and instructors as part of the Principal for a Day program! Shocker Nation is alive and well at Northwest! #wsunow

Follow me on Facebook

Engage with Wichita State University

Whether you're a Shocker alum, donor, industry partner or just a fan of Wichita State, we want you to feel welcome on campus and to get involved in all the wonderful activities and amenities we have to offer.

New to you:

The installation of Wichita State's third pod: The new Shocker Pod is part of WSU's placemaking initiative to provide a visual identity and new hang-out spaces along the East Mall that runs from the John Bardo Building to Braeburn Square. Each of the themed pods, which also include Love Lock Pod and Earth Pod, is designed by Wichita artist Brady Hatter. At the Love Lock Pod, anyone is invited to place their own customized lock on the pod. The goal is to fill the entire exterior with "love locks." Learn more about WSU's pods.

Recently unemployed? Wichita State's makerspace -- GoCreate, A Koch collaborative -- wants to provide resources to community members who have been recently laid off by granting assistance memberships. Submit your application at gocreate.com/assistance.php or call 316-978-2738 with questions. It covers membership and training fees for a 6-month period and may be extended for an additional 6 months. These memberships can provide job skills, re-training and allow you to explore your ideas and make them into a reality through the use of cutting-edge equipment and hands-on instruction.

Can't-miss sports:

Men’s Basketball vs. Tulsa at 3 p.m. March 8

Senior Day for Wichita State senior Jaime Echenique

Softball vs. UCF at 6 p.m. Friday, March 20

Home opener for Wichita State Softball
Wichita Eagle Family Night. Purchase four tickets, four hot dogs, four bags of popcorn and four drinks for only $32.
The first 300 fans through the gates will receive a 2020 Shocker Softball schedule magnet.

Baseball vs. Oklahoma State at 6 p.m. April 7

The first 1,500 fans through the gate will receive an ’89 Shockers Jersey T-Shirt in celebration of the 1989 College World Series Championship.

Subscribe to the monthly newsletter