Celebrating student, faculty and staff achievements

April 2025

K-State's talented students, faculty and staff are frequently recognized for their exceptional scholarship, teaching, research and creative inquiry.

Please join us in recognizing these Wildcats for their recent achievements.

Graduate students Olamide Adesina, Festus Ajibefun, Ravi Bika, Sandhya Gopisetty, Madison Kessler, Lawrence Tidakbi and post-doctoral researcher Adhilekha Dalal were selected for the inaugural Bayer Crop Science Mentoring Program. The program is designed to develop the soft skills scientists need to succeed in their careers. Each participant has been assigned a Bayer Crop Science employee who will serve as a mentor. The participants can complete mentoring calls, webinars, site visits and interactions with university students nationwide. The K-State program liaison is Jonathan Ulmer, assistant dean for graduate programs in the College of Agriculture.

Blake Allen, Vivian Nguyen and McKinley Robb were selected by the Mortar Board Honor Society for the Outstanding Student Scholarship. Each student receives $500 for the Fall 2025 semester for their exemplary scholarship, leadership and service.

The K-State chapter of Alpha Pi Mu, the national Industrial Engineering honor society, inducted 10 outstanding industrial and manufacturing systems engineering students for their academic achievements during its spring 2025 initiation ceremony on March 30.The initiates, with officer positions noted, are: Callan Carver, treasurer; Braylee Doughman, secretary; Lydia Etzel, assembly coordinator; Sarjoun Fardoun, Lily Lomshek, mentor coordinator; Danny Mitchell, assembly coordinator; Sara Murphy, mentor coordinator and IISE liaison; Dale Petrie, vice president; Dylan Potter, mentor coordinator; and Ashlee Seaton, president.

Pascal Hitzler, Lloyd T. Smith creativity in engineering chair and professor of computer science, recently published a new book titled “Handbook on Neurosymbolic AI and Knowledge Graphs.” Edited by Hitzler and his students, Abhilekha Dalal, Mohammad Saeid Mahdavinejad and Sanaz Saki Norouzi, the book focuses on state-of-the-art neurosymbolic and knowledge-graph based AI, reflecting an ecosystem in which large language models, deep neural networks and symbolic representations converge. The book illustrates the progress made while also revealing emerging challenges in trustworthiness, interpretability and scalability.

Jichul Jang, associate professor of hospitality management, received the Best Poster Award at the 2025 NENA Conference, held March 28-30 in Atlantic City.

The K-State Trumpet Studio performed a stand-alone recital at the 2025 She: Festival of Women in Music at the University of Arkansas on March 15. Selected through a national peer-review process, the ensemble completed research and an extensive preparation process to perform works by Cindy McTee, Reena Esmail, Amy Dunker and Jennifer Fletcher. The recital was led by John Kilgore, assistant professor of trumpet.

The Kansas State University Sales Team placed third overall at the University of Toledo Invitational Sales Competition on February 20–22. Hailey Rozell secured first place in the junior division, and Jackson Stewart finished sixth in the freshman/sophomore division. The competition challenged students to sell corrugated packaging solutions to a retailer launching a subscription service.

Mary Kaufman, grain science and industry, and Jocelyn Plein, veterinary medicine, have been selected as the January recipients of the Staff Spotlight Award. The Staff Spotlight Award highlights staff members — University Support Staff and University Professional Staff — each month for their service to the K-State community.  Anyone can nominate eligible employees - student employees and faculty are not eligible for award. A University Staff Leadership committee of UPS and USS representatives will review nominees. Winners receive a $100 award from the President’s Office. Please submit your nominations by the first of each month.

Military history graduate students Korey Lantes, Jeff Nixon, Chuck Sexton, Chuck Sexton and Zane Whitney, with Professor Andrew Orr and Assistant Professor Marjorie Galelli, attended the 91st annual Society of Military History conference in Mobile, Alabama. The group presented research, participated in research reviews and took advantage of networking opportunities. Military historians universally recognize the conference as the largest single military history academic research event and showcase in the world, with more than six hundred attendees.

Travis Linnemann, associate professor in the department of sociology, anthropology, and social work, has been awarded the 2024 Radzinowicz Prize by the British Journal of Criminology and Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. Awarded annually, the Radzinowicz Prize honors an article published by the journal that has made the greatest contribution to the development of criminology. The article, Ghost Criminology: A Framework for the Discipline's Spectral Turn, co-authored with Michael Fiddler, University of Greenwich (UK) and Theo Kindynis City St. George's, University of London, is a follow-up to an edited volume released by the authors in 2022.

Walter McNeil, associate professor of nuclear engineering, recently hosted NASA research experiments at K-State, providing calibration measurements for NASA's Fast Neutron Spectrometer using unique radiation characteristics from nuclear fusion.

Nelsy Osorio, master's student in geology, published a manuscript in the prestigious Journal of Geophysical Research. In the study, Osorio and her co-authors developed a new theoretical model combining percolation theory and effective-medium approximation to predict the elastic properties of porous materials.

Craig B. Parker, associate professor of music, performed at the Asian Classical Music Initiative World and Regional Premiere Concert at the University of Kansas on April 5. Composers from China, Iran, Myanmar and South Korea were represented at the concert. This concert celebrated the intersection of Eastern and Western artistic traditions, highlighting how music transcends boundaries to inspire new creative expectations.

Lexie Pattrin, Jack Pearson and Adam Ramirez were awarded merit scholarships for their outstanding sales skills at the Spring 2025 Huhtamaki Sales Competition hosted by K-State's National Strategic Selling Institute. Thirty-six students participated in two rounds of role-play sales scenarios focused on food packaging solutions for Eggland's Best.

Allie Pohler, teaching assistant professor and director of classical studies, presented at the Classics Department at the University of Kansas. Her talk was entitled "Mothers Know Best: Mothers, Daughters, and the Regenerative Plot in Terentian Comedy." The talk included her current scholarship, specifically her use of standpoint theory to identify subversive critiques of ancient Roman gender and subaltern perspectives in the comedies of the Carthaginian-Roman playwright Publius Terentius Afer.

Vaishali Sharda, associate professor in the Carl and Melinda Helwig Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, was honored with a one-year appointment as a Steve Hsu Keystone research scholar.

Jessica Heier Stamm, associate professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering, was honored with a five-year appointment as a Gisela and Warren Kennedy cornerstone teaching scholar.

Bassoon graduate student Thomas Stark, from the K-State Bassoon Studio under Susan Maxwell, was accepted to perform in the prestigious Vienna Summer Music Festival in July 2025. This is an international music festival with orchestral and opera performances by auditioned performers, offering students from a variety of performance and academic backgrounds an exclusive experience in a historic setting.

Brinna Wellington, senior in anthropology and history, presented progress on the History of K-State Archaeology website at the 45th Annual Flint Hills Archaeological Conference on March 29 in Salina. Her work was supported by a College of Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Award. The website is a collarboration between K-State's Anthropology program and the Chapman Center for Rural Studies.

Send us your kudos!

Kudos highlight notable professional and student achievements from outside the university, such as awards and honors, fellowships, performances, elections to regional and national boards or committees in professional organizations, and conference presentations. Self-nominations are accepted. Submit by May 7 for next month's kudos article.