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Ask A Kansan is a podcast where we're amplifying, connecting and uncovering stories across Kansas.
Every week, Gus and Sydney sit down with the people who actually make this state run — museum directors and ranchers, founders and historians, zookeepers and woodcarvers. From Kansas City to Kinsley, WaKeeney to Wichita, we go where the story is.
You'll leave each episode knowing something you didn't about the state we call home. It's not a history lecture and it's not a business show. It's a real conversation with a Kansan worth knowing.
New episodes weekly. askakansan.com
Ep71
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First K-State Game Memories
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Gus Applequist: [00:00:00] Sydney, do you remember the first time you ever went to a K-State football game?
Sydney Collins: Oh, gosh. Um, I don't, probably not my very first one, but yes, I remember- going to quite a few of them, 'cause my, uh, mom and my dad could get tickets from the radio station. So we went every once in a while.
Gus Applequist: I remember going, my sister went to K-State, actually both my sisters did, but I w- remember going with my sister Hannah, and I was like five or six, and tiny little kid, and I just remember thinking like, "This is the most high energy thing- I've ever seen in my entire life." And I was, it was electric, you know? And, and the, I mean, if you compare, that was back before the big grandstands- were built, and it was just like a... I thought it was huge, but it was just like a little box TV on one end of the stadium. Um, it's- It- ... crazy to see what it's become.
Madeline Meets Purple Pride
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Sydney Collins: It's when we took Madeline, my youngest, to her first K-State game, she was probably, gosh, [00:01:00] four maybe- when she got to go to her first one, and it was KU versus K-State, too. Um, and so, I was trying to explain to her, like, what we were doing, like, "We're going to a football game." And she, and she knows that because dad's a football coach, brother plays, all that. She's like, "Okay." I go, "But we're going to a K-State football game." She goes, "K-State?" I go, "You get to wear purple." She's like, "I get to wear purple?" And, ' cause that's what really matters to a four-year-old girl- ... is what color she gets to wear and where she's going. And so from then on, any time we go to anything K-State, 'cause we've been to like K-State baseball, we've been to, I think we've taken the kids to a basketball game. But she goes, " I get to wear my K-State shirt?" And I'm like, "Yep, you get to wear your K-State shirt today." She's like, "Yes." And my poor husband, who's a Texas fan, Is just like, "Yay."
Welcome to Ask a Kansan
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Gus Applequist: Well, we're here today to talk a little bit about K-State, and so, uh, welcome.
Gus Applequist: [00:02:00] Welcome to Ask a Kansan ...
Sydney Collins: a podcast where we're amplifying, connecting, and uncovering stories across Kansas.
Gus Applequist: First of all, if my voice sounds weird or if you're seeing me with a mask, got a little bit of a cold. Uh, I'm surviving. Just didn't want everybody else in the studio to get sick. So that's, that's what's going on there.
Sydney Collins: It's a very confined space- and he needs to keep his germs over there.
Gus Applequist: Yep. If this is the first time you've ever encountered Ask a Kansan, welcome. I'm Gus, and, uh, my thing is that I'm nerdy, and I ask kind of the intellectual heady questions.
Sydney Collins: And I am Sydney, and I am the very down-to-earth mom, um, who, uh, who asks for a lot of definitions. The idea is to get [00:03:00] the full picture of Kansas, but yet the person picture of Kansas, and that's why- That's me ... Gus and I co-host.
Gus Applequist: We are here having conversations with Kansans across the state- about what they're up to, about what they're passionate about, and, you know, some of the things that makes Kansas a great place to live.
Sydney Collins: So if you love this episode, it's your first time here, thank you for coming and listening, or watching, wherever you're doing this from. But I also encourage you to check out some of the other episodes. like this month is education month, and so we are, interviewing educators throughout Kansas.
And we've also interviewed all kinds of fun people, from the Wichita War Dancer to, um... Oh, gosh, now I'm blanking on everybody. We've done a lot of conversations, so go check out the catalog,
Gus Applequist: um- At askakansan.com.
Sydney Collins: At askakansan.com or Spotify, Apple, uh, podcasts, wherever you're listen or watch from.
Gus Applequist: But we know the reason many of you are here is to hear from President Linton of Kansas State University, who is our guest today on the show.
Sydney Collins: Yes. And we're [00:04:00] very fortunate that he was in town today and could stop by the studio. that means the world to us- 'cause we find out he's a very busy guy.
Gus Applequist: As you will hear in this episode. Um, he gave us a wonderful window into his world, both personally and professionally. Very much so. So, so without any further ado, here is President Linton of Kansas State.
Sydney Collins: Hello, hello
Gus Applequist: Hello and welcome Hello, hello. thanks for being here. Welcome, welcome. I won't shake just 'cause I have a cold- Okay. But I'll let Sydney shake on my behalf. I'm Sydney. Nice to meet you. I'm good. Nice to meet you. I'm recovering, so it's hopefully not contagious, but I'm taking precautions.
Dr. Richard Linton: Well, it's good to be here. I'm ...
Gus Applequist: We're glad to have you. Thank you for doing this for us.
Dr. Richard Linton: Probably oughta fix this, right?
Sydney Collins: we're good. that looks great. Is that good right
there? That's good right
Gus Applequist: there. Okay. Okay,
Dr. Richard Linton: good.
Gus Applequist: Awesome. Well-
Dr. Richard Linton: We're set to go.
Meet President Rich Linton
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Gus Applequist: Would, would you start by just introducing yourself for us, please?
Dr. Richard Linton: Sure. Uh, Rich Linton, I'm the president of Kansas State University. Uh, been, uh, at K-State for about five years, and 42 years in higher education, so a long time.
Gus Applequist: Wonderful. [00:05:00] And, we're gonna talk a lot about the university today. Okay. But I also wanna make sure we cover just a little bit about you.
Dr. Richard Linton: Okay.
Gus Applequist: Um, are you originally from Virginia, or is that just where you went to school?
Dr. Richard Linton: I am not. I'm originally from Wilmington, Delaware.
Sydney Collins: Oh, wow.
Dr. Richard Linton: And, uh, my dad was a chemist for DuPont.
Gus Applequist: Wow.
Dr. Richard Linton: That's the corporate headquarters, and, but spent, um, all of my time in, in, uh, undergraduate and graduate school at Virginia Tech.
Gus Applequist: Wonderful.
Mentors and Food Science Path
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Gus Applequist: And I understand when you were at Virginia Tech, you discovered food science through a professor that made a, an, an impact on you.
Dr. Richard Linton: He did.
Gus Applequist: would you tell us about that experience, and, and maybe more broadly, the, the role that teachers can play in our lives by helping us discover those sorts of things?
Dr. Richard Linton: I think it's a great example of where one single person can make a huge difference in somebody's life. And so I was an undergraduate major in biology, and there was a bunch of us that used to study together, and we would take other classes just so we could study with each other.
Sydney Collins: Wow.
Dr. Richard Linton: And someone convinced me to take a food microbiology class, and [00:06:00] I convinced her to take a human genetics class.
Sydney Collins: Oh my gosh.
Dr. Richard Linton: Ironically, um, she is now a human geneticist, and I'm a, I became a food microbiologist.
Gus Applequist: Hm.
Dr. Richard Linton: And after three classes with, uh, the instructor, Dr. Merrill Pearson was his name- Hm um, I just Became 100% absolutely thrilled and excited about getting involved as a food microbiologist.
So I took the class with him my junior year. I ended up doing undergraduate with him, un- undergraduate research with him the next year as a senior, and then did my master's degree and my PhD degree with him, and he completely changed my life. He got me interested in research. He got me interested in higher education.
He convinced me, uh, to be able to take an assistant professor job at Purdue University, where I started my career. But without his, um, guidance, advice, and mentorship, I'd have never been in higher education. I probably would've worked for the food industry.
Gus Applequist: Wow.
Sydney Collins: Can you define for [00:07:00] me what a food microbiologist is?
Gus Applequist: Good question.
Dr. Richard Linton: It's a great question. Um, so when you think about things like E. coli in hamburger- Right ... and, um, salmonella, and you, you've been hearing about the cyclospora scare- that's happening right now in, in leafy greens, food microbiologists would help to protect the food supply, but they would also help to be able to extend shelf life.
So it's a food safety and a food quality- Okay kind of job, but that's what I did for, gosh, some 25 years.
Gus Applequist: Wow. Okay.
Dr. Richard Linton: It was fun.
From Research to Administration
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Gus Applequist: So, so it's, it's an, you know, you obviously you studied food science for your master's and PhD. Um, and I'm, I'm curious, you know, first of all, how you found your way into administration.
But also how having that background in food science, helps you approach your job as leading a land-grant university today.
Dr. Richard Linton: It's all about mentors. And when I was at Purdue University as a young assistant professor, I had a chance to [00:08:00] be able to participate in this idea competition at the university, and they chose two faculty members' ideas.
My idea was to be able to bring together, uh, the College of Agriculture and the College of Engineering around a food safety engineering concept. And actually, that ended up winning this competition where a senator would then take this idea forward and try to get, uh, legislative funding. And in that process, I got to meet the associate dean of research in the College of Agriculture, and his name was Randy Woodson, and he took me under his wing.
I ended up working in his office, was able to, for Purdue University, create the first interdisciplinary center in the history of Purdue. Now everybody's doing it, but back then it was not very popular. We actually brought five different colleges together and formed this concept called the Center for Food Safety Engineering, and it would focus on detection- of things like salmonella and E. coli in the food supply so that [00:09:00] instead of it taking two to 10 days, we could do it in minutes- ...to hours so that you could make decisions much faster and protect the food supply in a better way or inform the industry or inform the consumer of the potential risk, that's out there.
And so, um, you know, in this process and working under his guidance, not only did he help me, uh, uh, establish the Center for Food Safety Engineering, but he was able to get me interested in, in, in administration And as I took on a role in his office, an administrative role in his office very young in my career, he mentored me about what a dean did, what a department head did, what a, what a president would do and what a chancellor would do.
And actually, 26 years ago, we on a napkin filled out a picture of what my career could look like. And at that time, it was a faculty member, a center director, a department head, a dean, and then ultimately a university president. And so I'm one of the very few [00:10:00] that 26 years ago at least wrote this down on a napkin- and I was fortunate to be able to take that exact path to a university presidency.
Sydney Collins: Wow. You were manifesting before manifesting became a thing.
Dr. Richard Linton: Exactly. It, it, a- and as I try to mentor others and we talk about planning out your career, I think there's two ways to do it. There's one way which you fully plan it out and you actually do what you say that you're gonna do, which is what I did, and then there's other approaches, which is to just take the opportunities as they come.
And I think I kinda did a, a kind of a hodgepodge of both of those.
Gus Applequist: Hmm.
Dr. Richard Linton: But I was very fortunate to be able to have really good mentors that cared about me-
Gus Applequist: Hmm ...
Dr. Richard Linton: and invested in me, and then kind of, continued to mentor me throughout my career. In fact, I just talked to Meryl Pearson but, a few weeks ago- Hmm
and Randy Woodson next week, so they continue to mentor me even though I'm in the role of a university president.
Gus Applequist: They have to be really proud- I would think.
Dr. Richard Linton: They're, they're I, I think they're very proud, but I think they're also, [00:11:00] um, excited about being a part of my journey.
Gus Applequist: Hmm.
Sydney Collins: I love that you bring this up because we were just talking yesterday to, um, an elementary school counselor, and she was telling how she was, telling the story of how she was, working with kids and saying, "If you write a goal down, you're this percent more likely- to achieve it." And then it's like, oh it's true.
Dr. Richard Linton: Well, and, and to that point, uh, as I build out initiatives, and I've had a big initiative when I was at NC State as a dean and a really big initiative which I hope we can talk about a little bit later here at Kansas State University, Randy Woodson's motto was, um, "If you say it, it just might come true."
Hmm. "But if you don't say it, guarantee it'll never happen." Hmm. And I think it's a really good piece of advice.
K-State Scale and Reach
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Gus Applequist: You know, for, for people that, uh, for, for Kansans that, that have been to K-State or have a family member at K-State, they probably understand some, you know, idea of the scale of the university.
But there's also a lot of people that, that maybe aren't in this part of the state and don't know. So could you give us a, a sense of that [00:12:00] scale, um, both in terms of s- you know, how many students and faculty- but also, uh, the different campuses and how it's all organized?
Dr. Richard Linton: So it's a, it's a big, complex organization. You know, if you think about us from a student perspective, we're a little over 21,000 degree-seeking students. We've got another 7,000 non-degree seeking students, so that's, uh, credentials, certificate programs, and those kinds of things. We look to grow even larger. We hope to be at 23,000 students by 2030 and about 13,600, non-degree seeking students. But I think what people don't realize is the connection that we have with people all over the state every single year. We have three different campuses, Manhattan Campus, the Salina Campus, uh, right here- and also a campus in Olathe just outside of Kansas City, but we're connecting in all one five- 100, 105 counties and communities with cooperative extension, and we engage with millions of people just in the state of Kansas every [00:13:00] single year.
So our reach and our breadth and our diversity is quite different than KU or Wichita State in that we have this responsibility to be able to do what the people need and what the people are asking for, whether that's opportunities or whether that's building the economy. It is Kansas State University's role as a land-grant university to, um, serve the entirety of the state, and that makes us unique, and that makes us different.
Gus Applequist: How do you tie all of that together in one organization? You know
Dr. Richard Linton: It's a difficult thing to do. It's a lot of balancing, and if you think about our stakeholders, it's everything from students to parents to faculty, staff, and students on campus, but it's legislators, it's stakeholders, it's the farming community, it's engineers.
It's every kind of stakeholder that you can think about. And the job of a president is to try to manage and balance that in the best way possible, to take advantage of opportunities, to, to work to be able [00:14:00] to help build the economy, to be a good steward of the resources, do what our stakeholders need, and do what legislators are looking for.
That's really, in a nutshell, what a president does each and every day, and it's about finding ways to be able to get resources. That might be through state and federal funding. That might be through philanthropy. That might be through grantsmanship, through research. That's what a president is thinking about each and every day. How can I meet the needs of the state? How can I get the resource to b- r- resources together to be able to make something super special happen, in this case at Kansas State?
Gus Applequist: So for, um, you know, a, a kid, a student, a, a current student at K-State or a professor- that might, uh, look at your job and say, "You know, someday I might like to do that."
A Week in the President’s Life
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Gus Applequist: You've just sort of outlined, you know, from a broad sense what you do, but what, what does it look like, a day in your life? You know, what, what are you physically doing?
Dr. Richard Linton: So there is no day in the life that's exactly the same. [00:15:00] Sure.
Um, and what I will try to do for those that are thinking and considering being a university president, I have them shadow me for a couple of days.
And that will either become a magnet for them, or that will scare them to death. So as an example, just my week, just to give you a perspective, uh, I was, uh, Monday night in, in, in Kansas City meeting with the head of the alumni association- working on a strategy for communications for, uh, recruiting and, and a- attracting students to be able to come to K-State. And the alumni association, with their board, wants to be able to work on a strategy where they can be advocates for us. I then, the next morning, um, head on an airplane to be able to go to Washington, DC. I meet with a couple of our legislators there. Then in the evening, I am presenting, um, at the Israeli Embassy. I serve on a board, which is a collaborative arrangement that's been in place for 45 years, for agriculture research [00:16:00] with Israeli scientists and American scientists, and that was, uh, a, just a, kind of an update of where we are and a big announcement of a new program that was put into place You then yester- yesterday get on the plane and you screen back to be able to come to Kansas State to be able to get in front of a group of 400 people that work on the recruitment strategies of the university for, for student enrollment.
It's a huge goal, at Kansas State. I then hosted a dinner last night, uh, for donors at the house. We do 220 events at the president's residence every year. so that I could get up this morning and have breakfast with a Kansas Board of Regent member. I then came into Salina. Um, I've already met with two different groups before you, to be able to talk about, um, community strategy and how K-State Salina can be a part of that. I then just got off a telephone call with the Big 12. I serve as the vice chair of the Big 12 for athletics. I'm here in the studio with you right now so [00:17:00] that I can get ready for a big event that we're holding at the house this evening. So every day is a little bit different. Um, many of these days are planned.
I'd say 80% is planned, but 20% of it happens because of something that happened the previous day or is happening right at that moment, and that's really, um, the fun part of this job is the diversity and the kinds of people that we're meeting and the kinds of things that we're trying to accomplish and the, unanticipated surprises that come our way.
And I think a lot of people don't know what a president really does, but a, a president, um, is, is really about friend-raising and fundraising first.
Gus Applequist: Hmm.
Dr. Richard Linton: It is our goal to be able to build relationships and find ways to be able to bring in resources to help grow the institution.
Gus Applequist: Hmm.
Sydney Collins: Say friend-raising and fundraising?
I
like that. Yes.
Dr. Richard Linton: I've never heard that.
So friend-raising and fundraising, so friend-raising, the example that I use- this me- might be, um, the partnership I'm making with the alumni association [00:18:00] or I'm making with legislators in Washington, DC, or building a relationship with the Kansas Board of Regents, and then the evening event last night and the evening event, um, this evening is all about philanthropy.
So it's, it's a complex world that I live in, but a fun world.
Gus Applequist: Thank you for that window-
into your, into your schedule.
Dr. Richard Linton: That's just the last couple of days.
Gus Applequist: That's
Sydney Collins: wild.
How's your work, how's your work-life balance going?
Dr. Richard Linton: So, um, it's not easy. I think one of the, the, the luxuries that I have is I've got a great, um, spouse and family- that has understood this for a long period of time, so the 220 events that we do, um, at the president's residence on campus, that's not all the events. That's just the events- On campus ... at that home. Uh, the first lady's involved in 95% of them, and I'd say my son and daughter, who are K-State students, they're probably involved in about 15 to 20% of those events.
So we know that this is not just a job for Rich Linton as president. It's a first lady and a family that's involved. It's a fa- a whole family.
Community Listening and Initiatives
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Gus Applequist: How is [00:19:00] K-State shaped by the communities it calls home, namely Manhattan, Salina, and Olathe, but also beyond, like you referenced earlier?
Dr. Richard Linton: So I think a great example, when I first came to K-State, I went out and visited all 105 counties and communities.
Sydney Collins: Oh my gosh.
Dr. Richard Linton: Every single one of them in about a year-and-a-half time period. And you're in all of these communities, and it's not just a fly-by, but it's a stop-in, and it's connecting with the stakeholders that uniquely make up that community and listening to what's important to them, getting in their own backyard and trying to identify what are their issues, what are their challenges, and what are their opportunities.
And if you look at what we've done in our strategic plan at K-State, and if you look at what we've done with major initiatives, it's all been about listening and learning, uh, uh, with our communities. And so, as an example, we have a big biomanufacturing initiative. We have an initiative around water resource management, a new initiative that we, developed last year [00:20:00] around nuclear energy. These were all determined and created because, uh, of our listening sessions with our communities. Here in Salina, we've got a, a major initiative and partnership with Pure Imagination, which is this really interesting entrepreneurial company that's coming here to be able to work in the Salina area, K-State Salina, and we will, as a part of that, have a, what we are calling a destination for learning.
So you've heard about The Sphere-
in Las Vegas. We are creating a similar like facility- here on the Salina campus, but not for entertaining, but for learning- for students and for teaching and for training those that work in the workforce. And so if you think about a land-grant university as being different than a KU or Wichita State, we really have to be cognizant about what's important to our stakeholders, and if we can build ideas around what they told us was important, you get legislative support from the [00:21:00] state federally, you get philanthropic support, and you have the advocacy where you can make really powerful things happen in a short period of time.
Gus Applequist: Hmm.
Dr. Richard Linton: So that gives you a sense about how we work in the communities- and how important and vital they are for us as we make decisions about how we grow what we're calling the next-generation land-grant university.
Next-Gen Land-Grant Explained
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Gus Applequist: I'm glad you centered your answer there on, on, uh, one element, the, the land-grant element.
I've obviously heard that a lot, but I, I needed to go back and research it, so- permit me a, a little bit longer question here where- Sure ... do you wanna explain to our audience, for those that don't know, what, what this all means? So K-State was actually the first operational land-grant university.
Do I have that correct?
Dr. Richard Linton: That is correct.
Gus Applequist: And, so land-grant university is a distinctly American idea. In 1862, President Lincoln signed the Morrill Act- which gave states federal land to sell to fund colleges built for, quote-unquote, "regular working people." Farmers, tradespeople, families who'd [00:22:00] never had a real shot at higher education.
The goal was to make knowledge practical and for students and graduates to carry it out into communities around them.
Which I have to say is I see that showing up in your mission statement today when I- reviewed that on your website. So my question for you about all this is, I'm sure a lot has changed since 1862 when K-State- was founded under that mandate. What does it mean for K-State today to be a land-grant university?
Dr. Richard Linton: So when we think about the land-grant university, you did a really good job of explaining and articulating what it is. Um, when I came to K-State and we started thinking about what should our strategy be in moving forward, we talked about being the next generation land-grant.
So almost if, if we were to create and develop the land-grant university from scratch today, what would it look like? And certainly if you-- as, as you're driving the car, right, and you're looking in the rearview mirror, there's a lot of things that you need to keep in place. But we're [00:23:00] looking in the front of the windshield a lot more now than we ever have before. Students have changed. So if you look at the student dynamics, we've gone just in the last decade from fifty-seven percent to forty-four percent of high schoolers even wanting a college education. So as you think about that, a couple of things are important to us. We have need to articulate the value and the importance of higher education, but we also can't forget about those that don't want a degree. How can we work with them to be able to create career opportunities for them and maybe a credential program, uh, a certificate program? And so that's why we've gone from zero to thirteen thousand six hundred non-degree s- seeking students. And these students are different. You know, what role does AI play in this? What role does first-generation play into this? And you'll see we have a lot of partnership programs with, community colleges in rural parts of the state. This year, Dodge City, Garden City, and Manhattan Technical College are three new partnerships [00:24:00] that we've created to be able to try to enable these potential students that may or may not want a degree program and how that might change. From a research perspective, 'cause that's the second arm in a land-grant institution, it's not just about the basic research, it's about the applied research that's gonna help Kansans today. So as an example, biomanufacturing, uh, more than fifty percent, uh, of jobs i-in the future are gonna be involved in biomanufacturing.
So how do we equip their students? How do we partner with industry to be able to fill in that gap? Nuclear energy is another, um, v-very opportunistic area that we're working on. And then with engagement, I think if you think about the, the land-grant institution from the beginning of time until today, in the beginning of time, it was all about accessibility for students, right? And so check, we've done a really good job there. The second piece is around research and about making [00:25:00] research innovation very applied to the needs Of the people of the state. I would argue that the third leg, which is engagement, outreach and engagement of a land-grant university, is really the area that we need to really build out today, and that's engagement.
That's better engagement with industry, better engagement with our communities and stakeholders, better engagement with legislators so that we can, in a sense, leverage, leverage ideas, leverage our resources, and move together, in a together kind of way. And so as we think about the next generation land-grant institution at K-State, we're changing the way that we think about students, not just degree-oriented, non-degree oriented as well. We're thinking differently about the application of the research that we do, and we're trying to be much more engaged, and we're trying to do that at a faster speed.
Right? And so if you think about academia, we've always, um, kinda had the challenge of not responding at the pace [00:26:00] of industry. We're trying to respond a lot quicker than we've done in the past.
And, uh, again, you talk about the complexity of a job of a president, the president has to think about those things too, and we have to deliver on what we've promised.
Biomanufacturing Defined
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Gus Applequist: You said the term biomanufacturing a couple- times in there. Could-- What, what does that mean? What is that?
Dr. Richard Linton: so biomanufacturing is manufacturing of those things that are living.
So biomanufacturing could be in pharmaceuticals, it could be in healthcare. But when we think about ma- uh, biomanufacturing, it's really on the, um, agricultural side. It's on the veterinary science side, so vaccine development could be a really good example of where we're doing a lot in the space to be able to grow biomanufacturing. It could be food processing.
Um, so we try to think of what our take could be to the biomanufacturing needs of the state, and we focus on where a, a land-grant's really strong. Agriculture, veterinary science, [00:27:00] and I think engineering- would be kind of that, that, that triangle that we try to put together for what our contribution will be to biomanufacturing.
Value of a K-State Degree
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Gus Applequist: I, uh, am a graduate of Kansas Wesleyan here in Salina and, and have enjoyed K-State athletics and, and many of the programs- you all offer over the years. Um, and, and I know that this is a conversation that's going on throughout higher education of all scales and sizes. and that's just communicating to people the value of a college [00:28:00] degree here in 2026. You sort of- referenced that a little bit ago.
But, but, you know, if you're talking today directly to a family that's trying to make that decision about whether or not they should send their child to school, what- how would you communicate the value of a K-State college degree?
Dr. Richard Linton: we try to do it in terms of what does your life look like 25, 35 years down the road? Um, I think it's so easy today where there's, a lot of jobs that are available, very hands-on, skilled-related jobs where, frankly, the salaries are pretty good. And in many cases, those salaries are higher than what a, a college graduate would, would, would provide. But when you take a look at 20 to 25 to 30 or 35 years down the road, that's where a college degree, and specifically a K-State college degree, uh, provides better quality of life from a, from a perspective of, of compensation over time. We also talk about things that we are doing at Kansas State [00:29:00] University to overcome some of the hurdles relative to student affordability and student debt. So there's three numbers that we like to talk about, and these are things that we advocate through our alumni, and it's 81, 97, and 67. So the 81 is 81% of the students that go to Kansas State University get some form of financial support, and that's twice more than any other university that I've ever worked at.
So we're putting a lot of energy in, in getting, um, um, national need funding all the way through philanthropy. So just in the last several years, we've raised $300 million for student scholarships.
Sydney Collins: Wow.
Dr. Richard Linton: So there's a huge effort to trying to, to lessen their burden financially, which makes it easier for them to wanna think about getting a college degree. the second one is 97% of our students get a job or go to graduate school or medical school, whatever that next step in, in life is, within six [00:30:00] months. So if you're a parent and you're looking at making an investment and you know that there's a 97% chance that your son or daughter is gonna be placed almost immediately after they graduate, that's a really good return on investment And the third is 67%.
67% of our graduates right out of the chute, right after they graduate, are making more than, the average salary that we have here in Kansas. And so, you know, as we think about it, our, our job is to really, get... we, we say get 'em in, try to recruit the very best that we can, is to keep 'em.
Right?
To keep 'em and make sure that they don't give up on a college education, 'cause there are many students that do. So get 'em in, keep 'em in, graduate 'em as soon as you can, get 'em out, and get 'em out into a workforce where they're gonna be successful. So I think once we, we talk about how their life can really be changed by a college degree and that we're doing everything that we can to be able to [00:31:00] help support them financially and then to help support them so the student is gonna be successful, I think that's when we notice that there's an uptick and actually an increase in the interest, in getting, in getting a college degree.
But you have to... A- and sometimes you have to use pictures about what that might mean- and show them, you know, what a car could look like- without a college degree and what a home could look like without a college degree, and on average what that could look like- based on the compensation patterns. And those kinds of things matter. Those kinds of things matter to people. So we spend a lot of time going throughout the state. You know, I had mentioned I visit 105 counties and communities. We've done that multiple times. In fact, two weeks from now I'll visit 30, um, counties in the western part of the state just to be able to articulate the value of what we're trying to do for communities around the state of, of Kansas, but also talk about the importance of a college degree and the value that it can bring.
Gus Applequist: Wow.
Community College and First-Gen Paths
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Sydney Collins: [00:32:00] I'm curious what your, um, take is 'cause a l- a, a big thing now for parents is saying, "Oh, well, just go to a community college and get your gen eds, and then you can go specialize." How's your, what are your
Dr. Richard Linton: so I think, I, I think that's, um, a growing trend.
And we need to be very supportive of that, and we need to be able to work with community colleges, um, to be able to help support that effort so they will want to come to a community college for a two-year degree, and then will wanna continue on at K-State, and we need to be very adaptive. And so I think that's what's happening in Garden City, and that's what's happening in Dodge City.
Gus Applequist: Okay.
Dr. Richard Linton: Actually, two things are happening, the two plus two that you had just mentioned. But also, we are finding in those communities a large majority of them are first gen.
Sydney Collins: Oh,
Dr. Richard Linton: A large, uh, majority of them are first gen that actually don't wanna leave their communities.
Gus Applequist: Hmm.
Dr. Richard Linton: And so for those that will leave the community, we'll do a two plus two, but for those that don't wanna leave that [00:33:00] community, we're working with those community colleges and delivering education through cooperative extension in that community, through a research station in that community, or virtually, or we're having faculty members actually come to those communities so that they have the courage and the confidence to be able to get that degree, and then ultimately at the end of the day, hopefully they're gonna wanna stay in that community and not- leave the state of Kansas, which is a, another huge challenge-
um, that we deal with. But I think as we get to these changes in higher education, whether there's a lack of an interest in wanting to get a college degree or to be able to save resources or stay in the community and work on a two plus two, we need to do everything that we can to embrace that, adapt to that, and support it. Right. That's what a next-generation land-grant university should be doing.
Brain Drain and Keeping Kansans
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Gus Applequist: It's, it's funny, we were talking about brain drain a second ago because that's what my next question is about. we, we talk a lot with, with [00:34:00] people on this podcast about, um, the, the issue of trying to keep kids in Kansas, keep- um, help them to see the opportunities here.
and it's difficult 'cause we need to balance what's best for them- right, with what our community and what our state needs.
Dr. Richard Linton: Right.
Gus Applequist: And so, you know, I guess this question is, is meant-- I, I wanna understand K-State's piece, but also, like, what Kansas needs to do as a whole- in order to reverse that trend.
Dr. Richard Linton: It, it's a great question because it's not just universities that need to be involved in reversing that trend. So let me give you some numbers to unders- so you can help understand the context. Five years ago, we were, like, 80%/20% in state/out of state.
Keeping Grads in Kansas
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Dr. Richard Linton: 80% in state, 20% out of state. today, just because of the lack of students and the lesser amount of students that are wanting to go, uh, to a university, um, in the state of Kansas, that number today is more like 65/35.
Sydney Collins: Wow.
Dr. Richard Linton: So [00:35:00] we are having to pull students from From out of state, in order to be able to fill the capacity that we have in the universities and community college, colleges all, all throughout the state of Kansas. From those that are in the state of Kansas, about 75% of them will stay in Kansas. That's a good number.
For those that are out of state, uh, at least at Kansas State, that number's more like 40 to 45% will stay in Kansas. And so we're trying to change those dynamics, and we'd like to get that number to about 60%.
But in order to be able to do that, when you ask students, um, "Why do you stay in Kansas?" versus, "Why do you go outside of Kansas?" They stay in Kansas because it's home. They stay in Kansas because they love it. It's a great quality of life, and there are opportunities.
Jobs and Economic Pull
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Dr. Richard Linton: For those that say that they're going to go out of state or leave the state of Kansas, it's quite often because they've got better job opportunities with, with higher [00:36:00] compensation-
outside of Kansas. And so I think we need to work with, uh, Department of Commerce. We need to look with-- We, we need to work with, you know, economic agencies throughout the state to be able to provide opportunities to attract industry, to be able to wanna come to the state of Kansas, and ultimately be competitive, um, to Oklahoma, to Texas, where we lose so many of our students from a, a job opportunity perspective and from a compensation perspective. We can do everything that we can to be able to attract and train the workforce, but we need to be able to work with the state so that those opportunities are there for the students once they graduate. Right. And it's a partnership that we've been working on the last couple of years, and we've gotten dramatically better, but there's still a lot more work to be done.
Gus Applequist: Sure.
Athletics vs Academics
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Gus Applequist: One thing that I think it, it would be hard to be a Kansan and not have heard about is Kansas State athletics. And- Oh,
And, you know, I'd, I'd say that's the [00:37:00] most public thing that the university does. I hope- I hope that's the truth. And, and, you know, obviously the young athletes o- of the university are inspiring and really fun to watch compete.
, And, and obviously American universities are tied at the hip with their athletic programs these days- as they provide incredibly powerful public engagement, brand building, and sources of revenue.
So how do you balance all of that with the university's academics, research, and mission?
Dr. Richard Linton: It's a difficult balancing act, especially all that's going on right now in athletics with internal revenue sharing and name, image, and likeness. Let me give you just a couple of statements and, and statistics just to give you a perspective. First of all, athletics is the open door to the... It, it is the open door to the university.
It is, many times, it is the connection back with students and alumni. It is a very powerful component relative to our, our donor base. So in athletics, we have to be competitive, and we have to be competitive [00:38:00] at the highest level, in this case, in, in the Big 12.
Why Sports Matter
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Dr. Richard Linton: From an economic perspective, uh, you know, when you take a look at the total economic impact of K-State every year, it's $2.3 billion to the state of Kansas.
Gus Applequist: Wow.
Dr. Richard Linton: 486 million is from athletics. Hmm. So about 20 to 25% of our economic impact is due to athletics. If you take a look at our success in athletics and our growing enrollment, they're highly correlated. In fact, when I first came to K-State, I sat down with the, the chancellor of KU, and the chancellor of KU was showing me the change in, in student enrollment after they won a national championship- in basketball. Sure. He was sticking it in my back- just a little bit. Just-
Sydney Collins: Sure
Dr. Richard Linton: ... but also to have fun, but to, to, to, to put an important message. And I think when they won their last national championship in basketball, you know, it was like a 1,200- increase in student [00:39:00] enrollment, and they showed the same trend when they won it- Hmm
many years before that. But if you look at what was happening at KU, the same thing, the same peaks were happening at Kansas State. So not only did their national champions result in direct benefits to them from a student enrollment perspective, but Kansas State benefited as well. So we're trying to do everything that we can right now to try to figure out the internal revenue challenge financially and the name, image, and likeness, that external piece, so that we can, support what's happening. We can be competitive in the Big 12 because we know that if we're not competitive, our student success, our student enrollment, our student retention will be greatly, impacted, as well as our relationship with alumni and our relationship with our donors and philanthropy. I, I, just recently, um, hosted, uh, uh, a- an international trip for the alumni association. So my wife and I went with a large number of donors on a [00:40:00] trip to Croatia, and I keep detailed notes of, of the interactions that I have with all the K-Staters, and I had 41 conversations in, in a week with people. 40 of the 41 were athletically derived. And so that tells you how important and how much athletics is on people's minds.
And so, um When you think about all the challenges and all the things that a, a chancellor or a president have to balance, athletics has to be core and right at the top. It needs to be equivalent with research and, and teaching and engagement, and we need to find ways in which we can partner where we're talking about those things. We also have athletics that's talking about research and teaching and students and engagement so that we can kinda take our communication message and kinda build it and, and bring it together so that we're helping each other out. But it's, um, it's, it's incredibly important, and it's probably [00:41:00] 10 to 15 hours of every president in a Power Four conference. That's the amount of energy that it takes in order to be able to make sure that you're on top of it. But at K-State, I feel like athletics, because we're in a small, remote location, in the state, it's even, it's even more important. You know, when I look at my career and I look at where athletics was so important to the community, Purdue- Oh, very similar. It's a remote location. And Kansas State even more important than, um, I think North Carolina State or Ohio State. Right? 'Cause Ohio State and NC State, there's a lot going on in Columbus, Ohio. There's a lot going on in Raleigh, North Carolina. But if you look at, what's going on on a Saturday in Manhattan, Kansas, it's football. It's football. It's football. Big-time football.
A President as Fan
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Dr. Richard Linton: this might be a super elementary question, but I'm curious. have you always been a sports fan or- You have?
I have. So-
Sydney Collins: Okay, so this wasn't something you had to [00:42:00] learn through-
Dr. Richard Linton: No ... through
Sydney Collins: your time.
Dr. Richard Linton: So, um, if I'm watching the Philadelphia Eagles- who's my NFL team, no one else needs to be in, in the room, so my wife says. Okay. So I actually grew up in college athletics. I played soccer my freshman year, collegiately.
Gus Applequist: Wow.
Dr. Richard Linton: Um, I played on a national championship team when I was in high school in soccer. I had season tickets to all the Purdue- uh, basketball games. So I am a huge fan of athletics as just a fan, but I'm now even more of a fan of athletics, uh, as a university president. we, my wife and I, the first lady and I, uh, make a conscious effort to be at every single event that we possibly can be. We address-
Sydney Collins: Oh my goodness
Dr. Richard Linton: ... all the teams before the season. We sit down with them. We, um, we recognize their importance to the university. We thank them for their commitment. We thank them for how hard they work to be able to, um, you know, make an incredible, entertaining aspect, of the university. [00:43:00] So I came in, 100% on board with athletics and, um, now even more so, knowing how important it is to Kansas State, now being involved in the Big 12.
So I'm the vice chair of the Big 12, which is an elected position because I wanna even be more engaged at a national level, to make sure that, um, K-State's in the thick of things. And I think that's- very important, um, to show the university and to show our students, and to be able to show alumni and potential donors.
NBAF and Biosecurity
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Gus Applequist: Can you talk about the role that the presence of the National Agro and Biodefense Laboratory has on- campus, and, and m- more broadly speaking too, the leadership that Kansas State provides nationally?
Dr. Richard Linton: It's a great question. Um, when you think about the things that are really important to a university, it's those things that nobody else can do in the state or that no one else can do in the country. [00:44:00] In this case, it's where no one else can do in the world. So if you think about animal disease and diagnostics in general, Kansas State University, there's no one that can touch us. So there's different levels of danger, right, relative to the infectious agents, level one, two, three, and four. Everybody in the country, i- if you're at ag school or ha- have a, a college of veterinary medicine, they'll do one and two. A very small amount does what's called BSL level three. Hardly anybody does BSL level four, which is, which is the USDA facility that, that you're talking about. So when you take a look from a composite perspective, our, our animal science department, um, is one of the fastest-growing in the country. Our College of Veterinary Medicine is one of the strongest research-based colleges of veterinary medicine. We are able to be able to do BSL level one, two, three, and four for all species of animal. [00:45:00] No one can do that. And with the Pat Roberts Hall, which is the BSL level three facility- which Kansas State University leads, and now with the USDA, uh, NBAF facility, which is the BSL level four facility, w- we're gonna be able to do things.
We're gonna be able to attract industry. We're gonna be able to train a workforce, like no other place in the world. And so that's why we spend so much time, so much energy, not only on what we have created, but the partnership with USDA in moving the initiative forward. It is, um, something really special at K-State, and it's one of the reasons I was drawn to the opportunity to be president.
Gus Applequist: Wow.
Next Gen K-State Plan
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Gus Applequist: So I think this is something that, that you alluded to earlier, I hope that you wanted to talk about. One of your signature efforts at Kansas State has been the development of a new strategic plan- uh, Next Gen K-State. Can you sort of give us what the goals of that are and, and how, how it's going so far?
Dr. Richard Linton: so when you think about [00:46:00] the Next Gen K-State strategic plan, Knowing that we were the first operational land grant, again, it's as if we were creating this from scratch from the beginning. How can you think differently about the three legs of the stool? About students, and we've talked about that already, about research, and we've also talked about that as well, and about engagement. But if you think about what's happening with our strategic plan, our goal is to get to 23,000 degree-seeking students. And having that level, that's the capacity that, that we're up at. We were down as low as 18,500, and you're thinking, " Well, why is that important? Why is that significant?" It impacts the town-gown relationship. It impacts the economy. It impacts the reputation of the institution as a whole, and you're not fulfilling the capacity of the university, and when you're on campus, it seems empty.
And so building that back and the strategies that we've put in place, philanthropy, [00:47:00] raising $300 million, better messaging, better technology, getting better engaged with parents and guidance counselors and students, reaching out to all 105 counties and communities- Specifically going after states like Illinois and Texas and California and Colorado and Missouri, which are the states that we draw students, are some of the things that the NextGen plan has put into place. From a research perspective, we're up 22% in research, and we're doing research in areas that I've mentioned before, biomanufacturing and water and nuclear, that are tied to what Kansans really think are important in helping to be able to grow this state out. We're engaged in all 105 counties and communities.
We are in Washington, D.C. almost every couple of weeks making sure that our messages and our opportunities are learned more. But y- you have to think about things outside as well, philanthropy. We have a goal of, raising $2 billion by 2030. [00:48:00] Right now, we're about 170 million over that goal. And philanthropy is important because it enables us to do things that we couldn't otherwise do as we're challenged with state and federal funding, which is flat and sometimes decreasing over, you know, many decades in time. But it's also about our facilities. If you haven't been on the Kansas State campus recently, we're investing almost $800 million in our campus by the end of our strategic plan in 2030. The biggest project, kind of a legacy project, is a nine-building project. Several buildings will be knocked down. Hmm.
Other buildings will be renovated, and we'll have five new buildings which will all be completed this fall-
Gus Applequist: Wow
Dr. Richard Linton: to be able to support agriculture. So it's called the Agricultural Initiatives, and so some of the new buildings include things like a new championship-style livestock arena-
Sydney Collins: Oh, wow ...
Dr. Richard Linton: to be able to do rodeos.
And so instead of doing two events a year- [00:49:00]
we'll do 50 events a year.
Sydney Collins: That makes a huge difference. It- Oh my
Dr. Richard Linton: goodness ... and, and if you think about a town-gown relationship- and building the economy regionally and locally-
that becomes important.
Ag Initiative Fundraising
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Dr. Richard Linton: Um, three buildings to be able to support agronomy right across from Bill Snyder Stadium, and that's done strategically- so people can im- understand the importance when they're walking to a football game about agriculture. And the hallmark building is $127 million building which supports interdisciplinary work in food science, dairy science, animal science- grain science, and milling, where in grain science and milling, we are number one in the world.
And, and the great thing about that project is this is very NextGen thinking. The idea and the vision came from talking to people in the state. That vision was really carried out by the College of Agriculture dean at the time And then in order to be able to resource it, it's $260 million. It's [00:50:00] a lot of money. Never before in the state of Kansas for any academic university has something like this been fundraised for and paid for before the doors are opening. That's happening here. 75 million of those dollars came from the state, 135 and a half million of those dollars have come through philanthropy, and then five and a half million dollars came federally.
So it was a partnership between all of these resources that I talked about before, and everybody wanted to support a winner. So let me give you some, some numbers which, which show the significance of what the NextGen thinking did. We had to raise $75 million in a year in order to meet a $25 million goal from the state.
So we had to raise three times more than the state was gonna provide us in that given year. Um, we hadn't raised $75 million in 14 years- in the College of Agriculture. We, [00:51:00] we raised 84 million in four months.
Sydney Collins: Holy
smokes.
Dr. Richard Linton: And so that's when you've got an idea that came from the state, it came from stakeholders in the state, you built it, you believed in it, you wrote it down, and you said you were gonna do it. And actually, when we wrote it down and said that we were gonna do it 90% of people said it's impossible. So we were making the impossible-
possible. We wrote it down. We, we pushed it, and just, it just kept growing. And, um, so this August and September we'll have two different ribbon-cutting events to be able to celebrate this unbelievable achievement.
And the unbelievable achievement is shared across legislators, it's shared across our stakeholders, it's shared across the vision in the College of Agriculture, and it's shared across all of the donors that have made this happen. Those are the kinds of things that we wanna be doing at K-State.
That's next generational [00:52:00] thinking where I don't think we were thinking that way in the past. And that's probably the best example I can give to you today about how we're living- a next generation land grant university.
Gus Applequist: Congrats.
Dr. Richard Linton: Thank you.
Gus Applequist: Wow. Wow.
Dr. Richard Linton: It's been a, a long journey, but a fun journey.
Gus Applequist: Hmm.
Education and Mentorship
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Gus Applequist: I just have a couple more questions. Um, and, and so, you know, we were just kind of at, at the big scope, the grand scope of K-State, so I wanna bring it back to you personally here. What do you value most about your own education, looking back at it?
Dr. Richard Linton: So, um, my dad was a first-gen student, C student in high school.
Somehow he managed to make it through college, I'm not sure if he even knows how, and then ended up going to graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania to get a PhD in chemistry. And I watched that, and, um, I saw what he was able [00:53:00] to do with his life and his career. And so nobody had to tell me the value of education.
I saw it firsthand from how he was able to live with his family versus how he was able to live as a child in the family that he grew up in. And I, when I saw that with my father, I started as I st- get, started to get into higher education, and you look at all these mentors along the way, and I've got a slide that'll show, like, 20 mentors that have been with me i- throughout, in my entire journey, some for two or three years, and in the case of Randy Woodson, who I mentioned earlier, you know, for 40, for 40-plus years. And just watching, how they were enabling themselves through their experience in higher education to be able to build a better life for themselves. And so I wanted that life, but I also wanted to be able to create those lives for other people. So it was very easy for me to be able to see it because I lived it every day [00:54:00] with my father, and he was an incredible inspiration, and the only reason I got a PhD, literally, the only reason I got a PhD is because my dad had one. And I wanted to have what he had-
and I wanted to build a better relationship with him. It's the worst reason- for wanting to get a PhD, right? You should wanna get a PhD for other reasons, but, um, it was that time.
Gus Applequist: Well, I'm sure it was a prerequisite to achieving your goal of being- a university
Dr. Richard Linton: president.
It, you, you had to have it. Um, and I didn't know it at the time, but, um, that and I think, um- Having people believe in you along the way, um, and that it was a great learning lesson for me as people mentored me. You know, I always thought that I'd find a way to be able to give it back, and I look at these young people that have so much potential and, and you, I can spot them very easily.
I can spot those that are the 1% that can do anything and have any job and be really successful in higher education, and I try to do everything I can to try to twist their arm- to get [00:55:00] involved in things and say yes- more than no. And a lot of times we write it down, but we put it on a napkin-
so it will actually happen.
K-State Culture Story
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Sydney Collins: I do have a question based around campus culture. So you've been able to be at all these different schools throughout your career.
How is K-State's campus culture different than those?
Dr. Richard Linton: So it's very different, and I'll explain it with my experience that I had first on the campus.
So I had been to K-State over a 15-year period multiple times. I had a, a, a research collaboration that I had with K-State, and I would come every summer, but never really walked on the campus, never really experienced the, the, the community. Purdue University had an aviation program. They'd fly us from West Lafayette, Indiana to- Manhattan campus. We'd pop in, four or five of us would be here for a day or two, and we'd do our thing, and we'd leave. When I finally had to tell my wife that I was interested in a presidency job-
Sydney Collins: I love how you put that.
Dr. Richard Linton: And, um, [00:56:00] we opened up the Rand McNally Atlas-
to- find where Kansas was, right? I sh- I had been many times, but she had never been and kind of wanted to find out where it was and, um- We snuck out on campus. We snuck out on campus for three or four days. No one knew who we were. And we, very last-minute decision, we got the plane ticket, and then, well, I'm in the airport thinking, "Okay, now I need to get a rental car." Didn't realize it was a home football game against Baylor.
Sydney Collins: Oh, no.
Dr. Richard Linton: Um-
Sydney Collins: There's no rental cars
Dr. Richard Linton: You're not getting a rental car .
And you're not getting a hotel room. So we stayed at a budget hotel- in Wamego. Um, I couldn't get a rental car, so I rented a Hertz, truck. I mean a big truck, a 13-foot truck. Like a moving truck. A little moving truck. And ended up finally at, at the end of the day, I called, um, someone who was a, a faculty member here that was a postdoc from years ago, and I called her and I said, " We haven't talked for 10 [00:57:00] years, but I need your car." And, and so when we first came on campus, you know, you're walking around campus and you've got a map in front of you. Any other university campus that I would go to, most people wouldn't even connect with you. They'd walk by. Some might stop because you've got a map and say, "Can I help you?"
And they'd say, Anderson Hall is over there," and they kind of point to the building and let you go on your way. We're walking around campus with a map, and multiple people came to us, stopped, and said, um, you know, "What can I help you find?"
"Okay, Anderson Hall." They wouldn't point to it. They took us to Anderson Hall, then they would say, "Who are you here to meet with?" And you would say who you were there to meet with, and they would take you to the office. And it happened three or four times over the course ... And, you know, my wife kept saying, "They know who you are.
They know who you-" Nobody knew who I was. No one knew why we were there. Then we go for the football game, and we [00:58:00] decided not to go to the football game itself. I wish we would have. But we didn't, but we thought, we would learn about the people in restaurants, the people in local pubs, the people in coffee shops. Then we said, "Well, let's just walk around the tailgate."
Sydney Collins: Oh,
Dr. Richard Linton: At least 15 groups invited us We didn't have purple on.
Invited us to join their tailgate, sit down, have something to eat. That's what's different about this community. It is the connection with people, and especially the connection with our students and the faculty. It is so much More developed and better than e- every place I've been has a special component to it, but the connection with people and the connection with our students is over the top here.
Gus Applequist: Wow.
Dr. Richard Linton: It's an incredible place. That's why both of my kids go here.
Gus Applequist: Hmm.
Dr. Richard Linton: My son's a senior in undergrad. My daughter's a second-year graduate student. They both said that [00:59:00] they would never go to a university where their dad was an administrator. Sure. In fact, my daughter went to UNC Chapel Hill-
Gus Applequist: Hmm
Dr. Richard Linton: when I was at NC State, so it's like KU- Kansas State, and both of them chose to come here.
Gus Applequist: Hmm.
Dr. Richard Linton: Um, says a lot about this university.
2126 Vision and Legacy
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Gus Applequist: Well, I have one last question for you.
Dr. Richard Linton: Okay.
Gus Applequist: The year is 2126. Yep. 100 years from now. What do you hope is different about Kansas and K-State University-
and what do you hope is still the same?
Dr. Richard Linton: So, um, I hope, let's start with what's the same. That, that connection will never go away. And that special feeling, whether it's at an athletic event or whether it's just walking around campus, that that connection with people and that K-State family feel never goes away. That's what I hope stays forever. What I hope changes is that we continue to evolve as a next generation and a further next generation land-grant [01:00:00] institution so that we are in the same sentence with universities like University of California Davis, and Cornell, and the University of Florida. When you look at the top land-grants in the country- those are the kinds of universities that are talked about. I would hope in 100 years we're in the same sentence that our top land-grant universities are in for making a difference with research and students with engagement in our state, nationally, and globally, and, we're on our way. I hope it doesn't take 100 years to get there.
Gus Applequist: That's a great answer. Well, thank you so much for-
taking time to come on Ask A Kansan today.
Dr. Richard Linton: This has
been, uh, a lot of fun.
Sydney Collins: We appreciate it.
Dr. Richard Linton: Thank you.
[01:01:00]
Host Wrap and Takeaways
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Gus Applequist: Well, that was a fun interview.
Sydney Collins: I, it was really hard for me not to get s- like super emotional, 'cause a- again, like, along with Julie, who's in the studio, like all of our kids are starting school and doing like that next chapter. And so, like I've never been so passionate about making my kids go to college, and I've never been that way.
And that's the thing is like I didn't have a traditional college experience. Like I tried it. Um, I was politely asked to leave ' cause apparently you're supposed to do your homework. And so I just worked and worked and worked, and I love working.
So I've never really been sold on the you have to go to college to be successful in life, and now I'm like, "Oh I guess you really do."
So it changed my thinking a little bit. I'm not saying it's like the only path for everyone- ... 'cause every child is different. [01:02:00] But it really kinda opened my eyes from like a higher level,
Gus Applequist: You know, as we prepared for this interview, uh, there was plenty of time to overthink it because-
it's like, you know, it, it's a fairly important guy. And, um, but I, I just try to r- keep, keep in mind that he's just another guy. And, and he lives a crazy life, but he's just another person. And-
Sydney Collins: Well, and he was, and he was that way when he even, like, walked in.
And he's like, Hey, how's it going?"
And we're like, "Oh, hey." "Hey, how's it going?" And I was like, "Oh, cool."
Gus Applequist: And I, I, what I, what really impresses me about him is, is just that ability to, to sort of hold everything that this organization- is doing, you know, across tens of thousands of students and thousands and thousands of faculty and staff.
and, and try to point it all in the same direction. And, you know, more broadly speaking, obviously that's one of our hopes with Ask a Kansan is that- we can help create that sort of alignment across the state too because, much like at Kansas State how when they work together, good things are gonna happen.
We can do the same thing- at the state level.
Sydney Collins: Very much so.
Subscribe and Support
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Gus Applequist: So thanks for tuning in to another [01:03:00] episode of Ask a Kansan.
Sydney Collins: please ch- check us out online at askaKansan.com. There is a Curious Kansan newsletter. Um, this is a newsletter that goes out about once a month, and it's kinda fun behind-the-scene things, what's coming up next, what, um, our crew has been doing. there's lots of moving pieces here on Ask a Kansan. There's about, what? One, two, three, four. There's about six or seven of us that work on this podcast, and so you kinda get a little insight, um, of what we're doing. So make sure to, to subscribe to the Curious Kansan newsletter. And we also do have merch.
We have shirts. We have water bottles. We have stickers. Um, you can get all of those at askaKansan.com as well.
Gus Applequist: And there are so many... We have a rich backlog of episodes now. Yes. Um, what? 70 episodes maybe. We're
Sydney Collins: close. Um-
Gus Applequist: Somewhere
Sydney Collins: around there ...
Gus Applequist: and, and, you know, if this episode, you loved it, but you know somebody in your life maybe won't like it, but maybe they would be interested in learning more about Kansas, check out our backlog.
Find an episode you think might fit them and, and send it to them. That's the single best way you could support the podcast.
Final Thanks and Goodbye
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Gus Applequist: So, uh, [01:04:00] I think we've got through everything. I think that's it. We've made it to the end. Thank you so much for tuning in, and have a great week.
Sydney Collins: Bye.