May 2023

Shocker grads are prepared to take on the world

It’s graduation season, and I am so incredibly proud of all our Shocker graduates. On May 13, we will be awarding more than 2,500 degrees to about 2,200 very deserving and hardworking students.

Just some quick data on our spring 2023 graduating class:

• The overall GPA for this class is 3.5.

• They hail from 29 states, 48 countries and six continents.

• 66.4% are from Kansas, 11.2% are from states outside of Kansas, and 22.4% are from other countries.

• 45.6% of them are first-generation students.

• 6.1% are veterans, active-duty military or military dependents.

• 17.7% of our undergraduate grads are returning adult learners.

We’ve compiled a handful of stories from some of our graduates, and I invite you to visit our spring 2023 Meet a Shocker page to learn more about them.



Each of our graduates has taken part in applied learning experiences as a requirement of their degree programs, which involves spending a significant amount of time in a professional setting. This approach ensures that, upon graduation, they are well-prepared to make meaningful and immediate contributions to their respective fields. In fact, in 2022, about 8,000 Wichita State students earned $28.5 million in applied learning opportunities with 601 employers.

May podcasts: Shockers Up

Join President Muma for conversations with Ebony Moore, Ryan Walter and Kyle Walter, students interning at Deloitte's Smart Factory @ Wichita; Brittany Wojciechowski, a first-generation student working on her Ph.D. in aerospace engineering; and Joshua Senn, a graduate student in the College of Fine Arts' choral conducting program.

Click the above videos to watch each of the podcasts. The podcasts are also available on Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts or Apple Podcasts (iTunes).

In the most recent graduate school rankings from U.S. News and World Report, Wichita State University’s College of Engineering continued its steady ascent, landing in the 47th spot for the 2023-24 academic year. Additionally, the College of Health Profession’s physician associate program is debuting in the rankings, at No. 65.

In both lists, Wichita State is the highest ranked university in Kansas and the only one in the top 100.

In the past four years, WSU’s College of Engineering’s graduate program has consistently climbed the charts from No. 94 to 77 to 59 in 2022, and now this year at No. 47 — the highest yet.

Thanks to the significant contributions made by the governor and Legislature, Wichita State will be able to amplify its need-based aid efforts with an additional allocation of $4.2 million, helping expand access to higher education to Kansans, improve students' lives and generate a much needed workforce for our community.

The state of Kansas also provided $8.5 million in resources to the higher education system in Kansas to not only help attract students, but to provide additional support to help them graduate on time.

This session also saw one of the most significant investments in the Wichita region in history in the form of $155 million for the new Wichita Biomedical Campus, a joint effort between WSU, WSU Tech and the University of Kansas to consolidate all our health programs into one facility in downtown Wichita to educate more students in state-of-the-art health care education, improve patient outcomes and engage in new clinical research opportunities. To date, the state has invested a total of $190 million, which will allow WSU, WSU Tech and KU to begin construction of the $300 million, 471,000-square-foot facility.

WSU, WSU Tech and KU will continue to explore all avenues of funding including federal, state, local and private to complete the project. It will break ground in early 2024 with a targeted completion date of fall 2026.

When Alissa Haddock joined the Wichita State University Strategic Communications team as an intern in spring 2022, it was abundantly clear that she possessed outstanding talent as a graphic artist. What wasn’t as apparent was her lifelong battle with her health.

A few months into her internship, her outward façade started to reflect her internal health struggles: Her skin and eyes took on a yellow hue, and her demeanor and the dark circles under her eyes suggested that she was someone who was just bone tired.



Today, as she creates and collaborates from her desk in Morrison Hall, she is positively glowing inside and out with renewed vigor and enthusiasm — not just for her job, but for life — all because of a new liver, thanks to her cousin’s selfless donation.

As night falls, an unsuspecting gray mouse chitters under a tree while nibbling on a seed she scavenged in the grass. Then — swoosh! — in less than an instant, the space where she stood is empty, and an owl swoops soundlessly away with the mouse in her talons.

That level of silent stealth is something a group of Wichita State students is attempting to replicate as part of a project to use owl-feather technology to create silent drones for NASA’s University Student Research Challenge (USRC).

The AeroFeathers team is comprised of seven Shockers, who are all part of the Mechanics, Acoustics and Dynamics Lab (MADLab): primary investigator Will Johnston, Pulitha Janith Chandrasena Godakawela Kankanamalage, Amulya Lomte, Dr. Maria Jose Carrillo-Munoz, Brittany Wojciechowski — all aerospace engineering graduate students; Gabrielle Mathews, a junior in business; and Laura Nobles, a sophomore in aerospace engineering.

Only two students were selected for the 2023 summer Yale University Press manuscript editorial internship — one was secured by a Yale University student and the other was Wichita State University's own Hannah Holliday.

Holliday, a junior studying creative writing and communication in WSU’s Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will continue to live in Wichita while working remotely at her internship, which will be done over nine weeks starting June 5 and ending Aug. 5.

When Rob Gerlach joined the Office of Tech Transfer and Commercialization at Wichita State in 2018, he noticed a gaping hole in the community: For a city that prides itself on its entrepreneurial spirit, Wichita was severely lacking in people to protect and manage its innovations.

In fact, a quick database search revealed that there were only a handful of patent practitioners in Wichita.

So Gerlach created the Gateway to IP program “with the purpose being to increase Wichita’s IP IQ.” Through the program, Gerlach and his team in the TTC office mentor students and introduce them to the pathway to becoming a patent agent.

The W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University has chosen two recipients to receive the 2023 Professor Fran Jabara Scholarship in Entrepreneurship. This year’s winners are Kayla Atkinson from Andover Central High School and Caleb Lowry from Eisenhower High School in Goddard. They will each receive more than $32,500 spread over four years to attend WSU and major in entrepreneurship.

The Jabara Scholarship is one of the largest of its kind nationally for entrepreneurs. To qualify, a student must write an essay and have achieved at least 24 score on their ACT, a 3.5 high school GPA and declare entrepreneurship as their major. The scholarship is named after the late Fran Jabara, who was a Wichita State faculty member for 40 years and founded WSU’s Center for Entrepreneurship. Along with serving as the dean of the College of Business Administration, Jabara received the Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001 and the President’s Medal in 2002.

While writing is a vital part of studies and careers in science, the skills required for scientific writing are sometimes overlooked.

BioKansas, a non-profit focused on supporting the biosciences in Kansas and the surrounding region, aims to help students with those skills. Five Wichita State students are participating in the year-long BioKansas Scientific Writing Scholars program.

The Wichita State students in the program are Rachel Sargent, Asha Rankoth Arachchige, Emmanuel Ajiboye, Oluwatosin Ajiboye and Sanju Ghimire. They receive training and mentoring, both in group and individual sessions, to help their writing, organization, time management and data management skills.

Three Wichita State researchers have been awarded the John A. See Innovation Award.

The award is given each year as a way to recognize novel ideas that have the potential to meet a market need and attract further funding once they have advanced through the early prototyping phase. Examples of supported costs are prototype development, design, product testing and market analysis.

More than 2,200 Shockers are eligible for graduation in spring 2023. As they leave the Wichita State University campus, they will share the story of Shocker Nation through their work as engineers, artists, teachers, scientists and leaders. Here's what some of our graduates have to say about their time at Wichita State and their futures.

Keep in touch.