Setting priorities can ensure successful future
The key to K-State's continued success lies in setting priorities, Jon Wefald told the audience for his 22nd State of the University address Sept. 14.
"If K-State had a middle name, it would be 'priority setting,'" Wefald said. "Each college must assess its strengths and pursue excellence in the fields where it has the best chance of national prominence."
He described K-State as being on the verge of its goal of becoming one of the country's top 10 land-grant universities without medical schools.
Wefald noted that K-State was ranked 12th among its peer institutions by the Center for Measuring University Performance. The center compares such things as total research dollars, federal research, faculty awards, number of doctoral students, national merit scholars, endowments and annual giving.
K-State has at least 34 academic departments and programs ranked in the top 10 of all land-grant universities or in the top 10 of land-grant universities without medical schools, Wefald said. Four colleges at K-State -- Agriculture; Architecture, Planning and Design; Veterinary Medicine; and Human Ecology -- have achieved that same distinction, he said.
"Only a few schools have the money to be excellent in the top 10 in each of their departments," Wefald said. "We're not one of them. But we can focus on a few programs and be regionally excellent and nationally superior."
To illustrate his point, Wefald said in the late 1990s the university made food safety and security its top priority.
Today, that endeavor involves more than 160 scientists from 14 academic departments in six colleges. Russia, China and many European counties use K-State's animal and plant scientists as advisers to their ministries of agriculture, he said.
This emphasis on food security also led to the construction of K-State's Biosecurity Research Institute and put the university in the running for the National Bio and Agro-defense Facility. NBAF will eventually replace the federal government's Plum Island animal disease research facility.
If located at K-State, NBAF would attract high-level agricultural and biological research and many new faculty members, Wefald said.
Wefald compared K-State's position as a finalist in the NBAF selection to a team working its way through the NCAA basketball tournament. K-State already has beat out many competitors, he said.
"I'm not saying we're going to win, but we do have a shot at it," he said. "Don't count us out."
Wefald also spoke of the number of scholarships K-State students have won. K-State ranks first among public universities for the Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, Goldwater and Udall scholarships.
Wefald plans for the trend of excellence to continue into a bright future for K-State: "We are a university that deals in hope."
President Wefald's State of the University Address text
Provost Nellis' State of the University Address text
Photos: Jon Wefald told his audience that the university is on the verge of achieving its goal of becoming one of the country's top-10 land-grant institutions without medical schools. Photo by Dan Donnert, K-State photographic services.