K-State president tells Board of Regents how efficiency allows K-State to move toward top of nation's land-grant universities

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Source: President Jon Wefald, 785-532-6221
News release prepared by: Erinn Barcomb-Peterson, 785-532-6415, ebarcomb@k-state.edu

Friday, October 20, 2006

K-STATE PRESIDENT TELLS BOARD OF REGENTS HOW EFFICIENCY ALLOWS K-STATE TO MOVE TOWARD TOP OF NATION'S LAND-GRANT UNIVERSITIES

MANHATTAN -- Kansas State University is moving into the ranks of the nation's top land-grant institutions by working efficiently with limited funds and resources.

That's the message Jon Wefald, K-State's president, delivered Oct. 19 to the Kansas Board of Regents. Wefald told the board how a culture of empowerment, delegation of authority, engagement, respect and ownership spreads focus and efficiency throughout the university.

"We are making progress -- not because we have several truckloads of money to throw around -- but because we are efficient, because we delegate responsibility to competent faculty and staff who are close to the action, and because we have well-conceived university, college and department goals that are commonly understood and accepted," Wefald said.

Wefald said K-State has made many strides in the past 20 years without the benefit of comparable faculty and funding increases. Despite gaining nearly 10,000 students between 1986 and 2006, the university has 19 fewer ranked teaching faculty today than in 1986. K-State has produced 112 Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, Goldwater and Udall scholars since 1986, yet because of funding constraints the university spends about 80 cents for every dollar spent by peer universities to support academic programs. Faculty salaries have been and remain below regional or national benchmarks, but K-State still draws the caliber of faculty that managed to pull in $111 million in extramural funding last year in contrast to just $18 million in 1986.

To make such strides possible, K-State has taken measures that are benefiting students in the classroom, as well as citizens of the nation and the world. K-State has invested in developing its academic department heads to become leaders in their disciplines, an investment that will carry over into the instruction K-State students are getting in the classroom. The university is making a difference across the nation and around the globe by setting priorities in areas like biosecurity, bioscience, food animal veterinary medicine, science education and English as a second language, as well as international supply chain management between the United States and Asia. K-State's priorities are responsive to today's concerns, from the accounting department's emphasis on detecting accounting fraud, to the master's and doctorate programs in security studies, which the Kansas Board of Regents approved last year.

"You must recognize how difficult it is for a university that is significantly underfunded to reallocate resources to strengthen programs that have been identified as priority programs," Wefald said.

Yet, K-State has been able to allocate $4 million in base funding to 20 important faculty initiatives in such areas as grain biomaterials, bioinformatics, global water-based economies, ecological genomics, sensors and sensor systems, geospatial technology and food safety and security. Wefald said eight years ago the university began an effort to make K-State a world-class institution in food safety and security. He said the university is confident that its food safety and security program, involving 160 scientists from six colleges and 14 academic departments, is the best program in the nation today.

"This K-State culture, in which everyone is engaged with a sense of ownership and urgency, underpins everything we do," Wefald said. "It allows efficiency to flourish."