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A podcast focusing on the perspectives, lives, and stories of Kansans to provide greater insight into the state we all call home.
AAK_Ep50
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Hike With Madeline
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[00:00:00]
Sydney Collins: couple weekends ago I took Madeline to Wilson, uh, lake State Park.
Gus Applequist: Yeah, I saw that.
Sydney Collins: And or Wilson State Park. Wilson Lake. It's all the same thing. I don't, the difference is, I don't know, but we went on, a short loop, um, took her on a hike so we had gotten through, 'cause there's like a little beach, um, that the hike goes through.
And of course she's, you know, playing in the sand and talking about dead fish and all that stuff. And
we get finally going on the hike after like 20 minutes on the beach and um, I stopped and I took a picture and she goes, mom, what are you doing? I was like, I'm taking a picture. She goes, why? I go, because it's pretty. She goes, well, I think all of it's pretty and just continues to march on. I'm like, okay, this got schooled by my 5-year-old.
That's fine. Well, I think all of it's pretty. [00:01:00] Okay. You're not, I mean, she wasn't wrong.
Gus Applequist: Yeah.
Sydney Collins: But
Childlike Presence
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Gus Applequist: the perspective of
Sydney Collins: childhood, the perspective of childhood, like I was like, oh, this picture is so pretty. Like you have like the gorge and the water was like kind of blue, which is very rare for Kansas. And yeah, she's like, oh, I think all of it's pretty like, oh,
Gus Applequist: I think like little kids because, well, for one, they don't have as many of the distractions that we as adults have.
But they're a little like, and it, it gets to our guest today, which we'll talk about a little bit. Yeah. But, but the, the gift of presence in the moment. Mm-hmm. And, and, yeah. Maybe, maybe that's what Madeline was really after there.
Sydney Collins: Yeah. Probably.
Gus Applequist: I'm on this hike right now. And you're, you are, it,
Sydney Collins: you are not here.
[00:02:00]
On Location At WSU
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Sydney Collins: Welcome to Ask Kansan,
Gus Applequist: a podcast connecting, uncovering, and amplifying Kansas.
Sydney Collins: So you may notice we are not in the studio today. It may look a little different. Um, may sound
Gus Applequist: a little different,
Sydney Collins: may sound a little different. Uh, we don't have our mics. Um, that's 'cause we are on location today. We are at Wichita State University here in Wichita, Kansas.
Um, we have an amazing opportunity, um, to have a conversation with President Rick Muma of Wichita State. Um, he was kind enough to give us some time today and. He's very down to earth.
Rick Muma: Yeah.
Sydney Collins: And that's kind of the best part about this conversation, I feel like. Mm-hmm. we were talking a little bit before we started recording and kind of telling him, you know, okay, this is what the conversation's gonna be like.
This is kind of the questions we're gonna ask. And he is like, oh, cool. Okay, well tell me more about you. And like, that was, I think, [00:03:00] something I didn't expect. And I was like, oh. Sure.
Gus Applequist: Well, without any further ado, here's our interview with President Rick Muma.
Meet President Muma
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Gus Applequist: Well, welcome to Ask Kansan, and thank you for having us here to Wichita State today. We're excited to have you on the podcast.
Sydney Collins: Can you introduce yourself for our audience?
Rick Muma: Yep. I am. Uh, Rick Muma. I'm President Wichita State University.
Sydney Collins: and how long have you been president?
Rick Muma: I am going on six years.
Sydney Collins: But you've been here for 30 years?
Rick Muma: 30 years, yeah. I started out as a faculty member and. Kind of rose through the ranks, the department chair and was the provost. And then now I'm the president.
Kansas Roots And Return
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Sydney Collins: What's your, so this is Ask Kan, what's your Kansas background? Did you grow up here? Did you, what, what's, what's your Kansas background?
Rick Muma: Yeah. Uh, well, my family homesteaded in Maize, Kansas, a farm, um, that got taken out by the big ditch that, you know, was created to divert water around the city of Wichita to control flooding.
And so that farm went away. uh, but they moved to [00:04:00] Wichita and this is back in the 1800s. And, well, the big ditch didn't happen until more recent times, but they have been here, um, uh, and for many, many years. And, um, I was born here and my father was a, uh, an engineer for a Conoco oil company, and that's where he started his career.
And then, uh, they moved all the, headquarters down to Houston. And so I grew up in Houston, but my grandparents worked here, so I was always coming back in the summers visiting them, romping around campus. I have this long connection, not just to Wichita, but to the, to the university itself.
Sydney Collins: Was it always the dream to come back to Wichita?
Rick Muma: Not really. I actually, I was kind of worried growing up in Houston what it was it gonna be like to, um, you know, come to Wichita. Mm-hmm. Was I gonna have enough things to do? I, it was familiar to me and so I, I, I, I got the job was, uh, I was a faculty member at the University of Texas in Galveston, um, where I started my career, which is [00:05:00] a medical school down there.
And, um. And I got to know some people at national meetings that were faculty here at Wichita State and they had an opportunity. So I, I applied for it and got the job.
Sydney Collins: What was it like coming here? 'cause you grew up here probably in the summers for your grandparents. What was it like when you finally moved here and you're like, okay, I have roots.
I have, I'm a Kansan now. What were those first couple of years like?
Rick Muma: One of the things I realized right out the bat is that, um, I didn't graduate from high school here, so that's really important to make connections. Um, so, uh, I didn't have that connection, but I just immediately found that to be a, a place that was just easy to, to get around.
I mean, Houston, if you ever been there. Yep. It's really difficult. Lots of traffic. Mm-hmm. Uh, you can get anywhere in 15 minutes here. People are nice. You know, anything that I'd want to do in the fine arts or shopping or it's all here and [00:06:00] Houston have all that too. But you didn't dare venture out to the traffic.
Mm-hmm. You didn't do, you didn't take advantage of all of that stuff 'cause, 'cause of just the complexities of the city.
From PA To Professor
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Sydney Collins: so your background is actually, uh, medical. You're a pa, correct?
Rick Muma: Mm-hmm.
Sydney Collins: Was the goal always to go into teaching? When you were getting that degree?
Rick Muma: No, not really. So, um, no, not at all.
Actually. Uh, I, um, so I started PA school mm-hmm. In 85 in the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. one of the first PA programs in the country. By the way, Wichita State's PA program is also one of the first. We all kind of started at same time. So long history there in PA education, but it was the very beginning of the HIV epidemic.
And so I got thrust into that work that's actually where I worked for the first two or three years, uh, uh, PA school. And so I had all this expertise as a PA and HIV and managing, managing HIV [00:07:00] patients, which is unusual then. And, uh, the PA program in Galveston wrote a federal grant to develop a curriculum, and they hired me to do that.
Oh, wow. Because they didn't know who else was going to do that. And so, um, I developed this HIV curriculum and then there was a vacancy on the faculty. I said, Hey, you should apply for this job. And so I did. And this kind of story of my life, you know, I became the provost and the, the, the president, Bardo who hired me, he got sick.
And so they appointed me as interim president. And then. Of course now I'm president. Um, but that's kind of how that happened.
Sydney Collins: you kind of naturally fell into a teaching role without really thinking this is what it's gonna
Rick Muma: Yeah. I didn't really think that that's where it was going to land, because I was also continuing to see patients mm-hmm.
While I was, uh, developing that curriculum. And even when I was a faculty. The hospital is just right across the street in the clinic. Mm-hmm. And I was always there, you know, with students. Um, so I just thought that's what I was going to be doing. And, the opportunity [00:08:00] here, um, kind of changed that whole trajectory really, because we don't have a medical school here.
Gus Applequist: Mm-hmm.
Rick Muma: Program's more community based, and so students are all out, all over the state doing clinical rotations. Um, so that, that's, that was a little bit of difference then that I hadn't experienced. But that's how a lot of PA programs are. Are, um, organized and managed around the country.
Gus Applequist: I don't want to get ahead of your, your question asking.
No, but, but I am curious. I, I think one of your staff mentioned to us that, uh, you are one of, if not the only PA, president of a major university in the country.
Rick Muma: Yeah. The only PA president of any university In the country. Yeah. I didn't know that when I became president. I, I kind of had stepped out of the professional aspect of being a PA by that time.
but they, the, the national organization who represents PAs, called me up and say, Hey Rick, do you know that you're the only PA president? And so they did an article about that. [00:09:00]
Clinician Mindset In Leadership
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Gus Applequist: Do you think that gives you a unique lens, uh, into, you know, your role here at the university?
Rick Muma: Yeah. Uh, I, I use that background a lot.
I think just healthcare also have a background in public health. Just gives you this broader perspective of, of, you know, what's going on and, and the things that you should be thinking. I always tell, um, people that I kind of use my PA skills every day, you know, 'cause I'm in meetings like every hour of the day.
Mm-hmm. Kinda like seeing patients, you know, every 15 minutes. and this is a mm-hmm. A meeting right here. And, um, one of the things I learned as a PA as clinician is that when you go into those rooms or you have someone come and meet you, you're present for them. Because then I might be there for a healthy visit or a, they might have a really serious problem or they might be terminal, and you have to be present with them.
And so I, I kind of learned how to transition in that way. And so right now I'm here talking to Ask Kansans, podcasts, um, [00:10:00] interviewees. So what a gift. And, and, and I'm just present with you and I'll move on to something else after, after this. So that skill is really critical to have when you're, when you're a pa.
Or any kind of clinician.
Gus Applequist: Mm-hmm.
Sydney Collins: when you were, um, still doing all your clinical, was public health kind of a thing, thing you were passionate about or is it just something thrust upon you?
Rick Muma: when I was a pa, so I worked. Obviously an infectious disease took care of HIV patients. Mm-hmm. And, um, I really felt like I needed more education and, and epidemiology and some of the, uh, research aspects of providing care.
And so, uh, that was a good fit. And, and, and in terms of that, and there was a program at the University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, where I went to school to get that degree that, um, really fit what, what I was working in, in terms of HIV. was able to understand the research process and did some research on, [00:11:00] um, my patient population with other clinicians in that practice.
So, um, that's how I, I, I got into that. Okay,
Campus Transformation And Innovation
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Sydney Collins: so fast forward, you're in Wichita. You've been teaching for 30 years, you're now president. What has been kind of the most. You know, significant change in your time here that you've seen, either as you were teaching or now you're president, you have this longevity here on campus.
What, what's [00:12:00] kind of the big shift that you've seen over the years?
Rick Muma: students really, uh, the, the, the students that we serve at Wichita State are very diverse. It's one of the most diverse, um, uh, populations of students in the state. to me I think that's great because that, that's the population that, that, you know, you, you hope to serve as this diverse population so people can develop skills and degrees and go out and work in the workforce.
that, uh, also has brought a lot of complications, uh, to the university. And, I mean, not in a, I'm not trying to be negative. But a lot of under-resourced students. Mm-hmm. And so, uh, it's very costly to go to college these days. And so trying to figure out how to, support them and, um, make sure that they can get to school and stay in school and graduate has, has been real challenge.
The whole landscape around online learning has really changed to, you know, students coming outta high school, really advanced [00:13:00] technologically. And, you know, we at, at institutions really are pla kind of playing catch up with, with many of those things. And so that different mix, um, that you see in, in the student population and then at the university here, Wichita State, you're sitting in, a facility that is surrounded by new buildings, on an innovation campus that used to be a golf course eight years ago.
This
Sydney Collins: used to be a golf course.
Rick Muma: Yeah. This is a golf course. I did not know
Sydney Collins: that.
Rick Muma: Yeah. We purchased this golf course from the Crestview Country Club that moved further east Yeah. And operated as a golf course. Our golf team. Mm-hmm. Played on this, president who hired me as Provost John Bardo envision, uh, this whole, um, uh, what you see here in front of you.
Uh, how can you bring business and industry to campus to students so they can work closely with the students and help create talent for them? and it's been phenomenally successful. I mean, I, I've been to lots of [00:14:00] institutions, worked at two other institutions. You, you don't see anything like this. And now we have.
Like 12,000 students working with these partners and others in our community. And they're earning almost $40 million a year. And that goes in their pocket, helps them. Pay for their college, helps them support their family so they can stay in college and graduate. So that's been, you know, in terms of my job here, been the most transformational thing that I've been a part of.
And now we're partnering with KU to build a innovation campus downtown. Wow. The biomedical wow. Campus. You may have noticed is under construction downtown.
Gus Applequist: Mm-hmm. Huge building. Huge building. Yeah. Happened to be downtown for a wedding not too long ago and, and looked out the window and what is that? Yeah.
Rick Muma: Yeah. Really changing the skyline. It's the largest capital investment in the history of downtown Wichita. it really will change how we deliver healthcare in this community. This part of the state. Partnering with KU has been great. Also, WSU Tech is, which is our, affiliate, our technical [00:15:00] school that's part of Wichita State is also.
in that, facility or will be in that facility. So you have the full pipeline from GED to PhD to postgraduate medical education. So lots of opportunities there.
Book And Applied Learning
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Sydney Collins: Can you speak to how Wichita State is using kind of applied learning? you have recently, um, released a book kind of surrounding that a little bit.
Can you give us. as there's such a broad question 'cause there's so much to it. Um, can you one, give us kind of a synopsis of your book, um, and two, how Wichita State is utilizing applied learning?
Rick Muma: Okay. So we'll start with the book.
Sydney Collins: Yeah.
Rick Muma: You know, I, I, wanted to write that book to kind of document this transformation of the university the last 10 years.
This is, we just this last year celebrated the 10 years of, uh, the innovation campus and that growth on, on campus. So I wanted to, to document that for historical purposes. Mm-hmm. But it also have lots of people asking me all the time, [00:16:00] how are you doing this? How, how is this possible? 'cause it really is not what you're seeing across the country.
And so that's, that's why I did that. So also wanted to make sure that it was warts and all. Some of the challenges that we've experienced, we still experience, um, you know, doing this in a, a area that's not growing, um, is, is hard. And, and a lot of it's public private partnerships and a lot of people don't think that public universities should be engaged in those sorts of things.
So I wanted to make sure I tell that story too. But it's really to tell the story of how we trans transformed over the last, uh, 10 years really through my lens as being associated with the university from a little kid.
Gus Applequist: Mm-hmm.
Rick Muma: Um, to where I am now. And I thought that would be, um, more, um, interesting to people to, to see that kind of story, uh, kind of unfold over for me the last 50 years.[00:17:00]
So how we're using a applied learnings. So my predecessor, John Barta, who hired me as Provost, who envisioned the innovation campus, he. Obviously, as I said before, wanted to make sure that we bring business and industry to the students. My thing has always been how, how should we be doing that? Um, in terms of when a student gets here or versus when they graduate.
So if you went to college, you know that a lot of internships and those kind of experiences are typically in the junior or senior year. Well, we really feel like that's too late.
Gus Applequist: Mm-hmm.
Rick Muma: We want students to show up. And, and learn about that. The, you know, the moment they even find out about, the university, what it takes to be a shocker.
Shocker Career Accelerator
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Rick Muma: So we've recently added on to our Marcus Welcome Center, where students come and learn how to get admitted to the university, what the degrees are, and we, we added this, uh, uh, a new, new addition to it called the Shocker Career Accelerator. And what [00:18:00] that is, is a, a unit that meets with students when they get here and finds out what they're interested in, even if they don't know what their majors are, and connects them with different industry partners and they get paid, um, to, to do that.
It helps them professionalize even when they don't know. Um, and we really think that's key and also keeps them connected to the university on track. Helps them, you know, stay in school so they graduate in a timely manner. So that's a little bit different from the co-op or the internship. We still have those too.
'cause there's some, uh, different programs that really think that that's important. But it's really a, a situation where these individuals are pseudo type professionals Working at Airbus, working at Deloitte, you know, students come into high school, they know a lot of stuff. Mm-hmm. They don't think people give them credit for that.
And they, they know a lot about technology in particular.
NIAR Real World Research
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Rick Muma: So we also have the National Institute for Aviation Research, which there's some facilities [00:19:00] on this campus and down south by Boeing, uh, where we're doing large scale testing, evaluation, just all kinds of crazy kinds of things to help support the aviation industry.
There's about a thousand students who are working there doing some pretty significant things. I, I just toured some people who were visiting last week from the University of Tennessee system to try to learn from us. And we go into this one lab where these multimillion dollar robots operated by students.
so that kind of experience is obviously going to be something that's gonna be more meaningful for them than, you know, working in an office making copies or, you know, Running errands. So it's. Real world type jobs. And then many of these students go on to take jobs with these partners that are on our campus or in our community or wherever else they might have offices.
Keeping Talent in Kansas
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Gus Applequist: You know, one of the, the things that we hear a lot on the podcast [00:20:00] from, from past guests. Is, uh, is just about the brain drain that happens in Kansas from smaller communities to larger ones and from larger ones, uh, from everywhere outside.
Rick Muma: Mm-hmm.
Gus Applequist: And, and I know that, you know, as a university your focus is on taking care of students and giving them a bright future.
from your perspective, what can Kansas do to, to still have a foot in the door sort of with these students so that when they're coming out of here. We can keep some of them in Kansas.
Rick Muma: Yeah. Well, and I should have said earlier, that is really the, uh, intention of our applied learning model is how do we get students from Kansas?
We're also recruiting students from OUTTA state because, you know, we don't have a growing population. How do we get them connected early on so they'll stay here and take a job? Mm-hmm. And kind of the national average of students who come from outta state, about 20% of them stay in a community. It just depends on the community size and what's available, but about half of those students are [00:21:00] coming from outta state are staying here, and it's because we're getting them connected to all these business partners.
So that, that is one of the main purposes and that's a great return on investment. When you're talking to legislators who are asking all kinds of tough questions these days, you know, what are you doing with the resources that we're already giving you? Well, we're, we're growing the workforce. Mm-hmm.
Trying to help our industry partners grow.
Future Vision Biosciences
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Sydney Collins: What's your hope for the future of Wichita State?
Rick Muma: yeah, that's kind of a, it's a
Sydney Collins: big question.
Rick Muma: Big question. Yeah. Well, uh, I, I, just from talking to you about what we have going on here in terms of our innovation campus, I, I see that this is gonna continue to grow, but my real hope is how can we actually diversify our economy, help diversify job prospects in this community by developing more, um, of this kind of thing. But focus on the biosciences. We really haven't done this in this, in this community. We have lots of expertise in robotics and [00:22:00] automation, know, all these high tech things that a lot of institutions don't have. Uh, but partnering with KU and other entities, um, we can use that expertise and combine it with ours.
One of our projects that we're hoping is going to kickstart is how can we, um, develop pharmaceuticals, manufacture them here in this country? Most of the ip um, intellectual property for pharmaceuticals is developed in this country, but only 20% of the pharmaceuticals are actually manufactured in this country.
We have all kinds of expertise in that, and we basically can manufacture anything, we can create through reverse engineering anything. we really feel like that that's something that we might be able to, um, do and gain traction, um, and help further diversify the, the economy, help grow workforce for that.
So that's an example. There's lots of other things. I, I really, my goal overall, other than what I've talked about. Is to make sure that we can bring more students into [00:23:00] higher education. That's just a real challenge in this state. We're not growing, um, many people in this community, there's about 85,000 people in Sedgwick County alone.
The highest educational attainment they have is a high school diploma. All the jobs of the future or
something beyond high school. Uh, how, how can we get more of those people if we can just move the needle just a little bit? We can bring a lot more people to higher education. That's really what I see is the main goal of the universities as a public institution.
How can we get more people into the, to the university?
AI Impact on Campus
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Gus Applequist: I have, I have one last question from, from my other things. It seems like everywhere I go these days, um, be it like a leadership conference or a board meeting, all anybody can seem to talk about or ask about is ai, what AI means for the future, what, as your organization, you know, you know what I'm talking about.
Rick Muma: Yeah.
Gus Applequist: I'm curious about, you know, your personal view of AI and, um, how you think it should be engaged with, [00:24:00] or how it should be limited. Yeah, just, just expand on
Rick Muma: that. Yeah. Well, I'm no expert on ai, but you know. We use AI and lots of things already at the university and have been in enrollment in in particular.
You know, we have all kinds of data analytic tools that, find information for us to, you know, get a student on a different path. You know, we click all kinds of data every night that gets pushed into, uh, uh, a, a, a tool that we have and then analyzed overnight and it pushes out. Things to get students back on track in an automated kind of way.
So we've been doing that. I think a lot of this, we've been doing a lot of, uh, for many years
Gus Applequist: under different names.
Rick Muma: Yeah, different names. You know, and I'm probably naive about this, but you know, first of all, there was, um, the printing press, right? And everybody thought that was gonna, you know, just be the end of the world.
Then, um, you know, books came about, I'm kind of hopping around [00:25:00] here and fast forwarding and then, and then the internet came on the scene before that software was developed. I remember my dad, um, he was an adult student and he was working on his engineering degree and he came home with a Texas Instruments calculator.
He had a slide rule too. 'cause that's what engineers used to do, their calculations. But he said, look, it, I got, I'm gonna be able to use this. And I ha, I ha, I ha I, I held onto that for many, many years, um, until it finally, um, you know, stopped working. Uh, but, uh, and then now that we have AI and I, and it's disrupting people's thoughts about this, I just, I kind of just think that that's.
Kind of the next iteration mm-hmm. Of technological and advancement. We're still gonna need people. Right. We're not, well, podcasts could kind of change over time, I guess, that we can't foresee, but are we gonna have an AI in our conversation?
Sydney Collins: Yeah.
Rick Muma: Yeah. [00:26:00] Although John Tomlin or uh, or VP for research here mm-hmm.
Has a, as a AI. Robot that we're going to actually, at some point I'm going to interview them on. Oh, that'd be how fascinating. Fascinating. Yeah. To kind see how that goes, because there are some very sophisticated things, but I don't think it's going to eliminate all of us. We we're still gonna need to have some sort of human, live, human, uh, interaction to, to, you know, to make sure that things are, you know, being done correctly or, you know, I still think there's gonna be that human aspect.
So I'm not as worried about it as you hear probably every day that, oh my God, this is going to, all the people's jobs are gonna be taken away. Mm-hmm. I, I just not buying that at this point. I do think there's are some things that can occur in like in accounting and finance system on the, even in the research side, in the clinical side.
But again, I think that's gonna help and not [00:27:00] get rid of people, but we'll see.
Kansas Support and Research Growth
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Sydney Collins: How can Kansas help support? Students, Wichita State, what's kind of your ask that we can help support?
Rick Muma: Well, uh, I think sometimes it's missed on Kansans what's going on here at Wichita State. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, from probably following us, uh, we're, we have a pretty sophisticated research operation here.
We're just passed 400 million Wow. In research expenditures, uh, this past year. Wow. Uh, received 600 million in research awards. That's gonna continue. We're really doing some very cutting edge things that, um, are really helping not only this community and the state, but the nation, particularly on the military side.
I don't think people understand what that really means, uh, for Kansas and, and what that means for jobs and what that means just in terms of their son or daughter who is thinking about college and [00:28:00] what we can provide them that really no one else can, can provide. So I'm always talking about the story of Wichita State to make sure people understand it's not the sleepy university that some people may re may remember.
We've doubled in size just in our footprint, and we have 10 different locations around the city. Lots of expertise on the research side, but we also have a great faculty who are, who are helping move that forward and, and it's still. A reasonable size institution where you don't come here and you feel like you're getting lost.
So I guess telling that story, you allowing me to tell this story this morning is, is one step, um, uh, forward, uh, to, to help get the, get the word out.
Gus Applequist: Well, thank you for your, your openness and willingness to come on the podcast. Yeah. Inviting us here today. Appreciate it. This was, this was wonderful.
Rick Muma: Yeah. Thanks.
[00:29:00]
Post Interview Reflections
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Gus Applequist: Well, we hope you enjoyed that interview with, uh, president Yuma from Wichita State.
Sydney Collins: I love that he was okay with us getting kind of back into his like clinical work. 'cause that's always just something really interesting to me of like, you went from medical to president of a university. That's just something you don't see very often in a career job.
So I was, I was happy he was okay. Uh, sharing that story, that part of his story.
Gus Applequist: People in roles like this in leadership in our organization, they're so used to communicating about the organization.
Sydney Collins: Mm-hmm.
Gus Applequist: And that's one of the fun [00:30:00] things about the podcast is, is we have the opportunity to, to welcome them, sharing about themselves.
Mm-hmm. As much as we're, I mean, we care about just state, of course, but. We also just wanted to hear from him. Yeah. And I think we got a, a good share of that.
Sydney Collins: Very much so.
Gus Applequist: Yeah.
Sydney Collins: All right.
Sheriff Reflection on Ramadan
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Sydney Collins: What do you got for us today?
Gus Applequist: Okay. Well, I originally just had one thing, but I, I came across something in my saved folder on Facebook, and so I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna turn this into two little things.
Okay. the first is not connected to what I state at all, but the second is,
Sydney Collins: okay.
Gus Applequist: Um, so I was, I was scrolling through Facebook the other day and I saw a friend shared a post from the WCI County Sheriff's Office.
Sydney Collins: Oh, I love the woman C Yeah, we've talked about that before.
Gus Applequist: We have. And, um, so some of their stuff is, is kind of silly and, and fun.
This was less that. Um, and I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but I would invite you to go check it out if this interests you. but it's basically the sheriff's, I believe it's the sheriff's reflection on Ramadan. Oh. which obviously, you know, Kansas is a heavily Christian state. Mm-hmm. And so [00:31:00] we don't hear a lot about Islam and mm-hmm.
And the associated practices here. And, and, uh, this sheriff, uh, spent time in Iraq, uh oh. In the Army. And, uh, he in this, in this post, he does an excellent job of just. Um, kind of lifting the veil that we all have over ourselves mm-hmm. About other cultures and other races and, and religions. Um, and so yeah, I would just really encourage you to go and read it because I think it, it, it's very enlightening and it's, and it's done in, in a really meaningful way.
So I guess it's less of a segment than just pointing you out to go check this thing out on Facebook, but I, I think you'll be glad you did.
Kansas Lost City Rediscovered
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Gus Applequist: Um, okay, now to my thing that actually relates to Wichita State, Okay. So Sydney, did you know that there is, or technically was a lost city in Kansas?
Sydney Collins: Did not.
Gus Applequist: Okay.
Sydney Collins: Is it Atlantis
Gus Applequist: N? No. It's definitely not Atlantis. It's, and neither is it a ghost town or an old [00:32:00] frontier settlement? It is a city. And it was a city, it was a settlement of 20,000 people that stretched for five miles along two rivers in southern Kansas.
It was one of the largest communities in North America at that time, and it thrived for over 250 years.
and for the last four centuries, no one could find it. And its name is Etzanoa So, the reason we're talking about this today is that it was discovered, or maybe rediscovered is the best way to put it by a professor right here at Wichita State University.
so you, you asked how could a city this big be lost? Yeah, I think that's a fair question. So to understand that we need to go back to 1601 and oh,
Sydney Collins: like way back?
Gus Applequist: Yeah. Way back. And that's when a Spanish conquistador named Juan Dete, uh, the founding governor of new governor of New Mexico. Led 70 soldiers on horseback from New Mexico into the Great Plains, and they were looking for gold.
Sydney Collins: Well, yeah, as most conky [00:33:00] stores want,
Gus Applequist: as they did back in the day, they kept hearing stories about a great settlement somewhere out on the plains and they wanted to find it and they did, um, near the Walnut River and, and specifically where the Walnut River meets the, our Kansas River here in Kansas, near our Kansas City.
Oates Min came upon more than a thousand large round grass thatched houses clustered in groups among fields of corn, beans and squash. The Spanish counted, um, like it was more than they could count mm-hmm. The number of houses in the area and they, it just kind of kept going into the distance and so they didn't even see the whole thing.
And, uh, the people living there were the ancestors of today's Wichita tribe. Um, and. when they discovered the city, it was already abandoned.
Rick Muma: Mm-hmm.
Gus Applequist: At least from what they could tell the people had already fled because they heard the Spanish were coming. Oh. And so it was just a bunch of hut. They noted it in their, um, you know, [00:34:00] record keeping mm-hmm. On the, on the trip. Um, but then another tribe who had also heard that they were in the area, and I apologize in advance for this pronunciation, the s que, who were enemies of the people that inhabited that settlement, attacked the Spanish and they were forced to flee.
Um, and actually 60 of the 70 Spaniards were wounded.
Sydney Collins: Oh, wow.
Gus Applequist: So, uh, they, uh, the Spaniards caught one person during that fight and his name was McGill, and they brought him back to Mexico and he drew them a map. And on that map he labeled, uh, the Great settlement with its name. It's in. And so that map still exists in an archive today in Mexico City.
Oh my gosh. So from there, the, the trail kind of goes cold. Uh, Europeans didn't come back to this part of Kansas for almost 120 years when the French friendly dead in 1718 bets and new ones were gone. Uh, disease, most likely brought by the Spaniards had devastated the [00:35:00] population. today, the Wichita people number about 3000 based in, uh, Ann, uh, Anna Darko.
Again, apologize, pronunciation, Oklahoma. Back in the early days, their ancestors name numbered in the hundreds of thousands.
Sydney Collins: Wow.
Gus Applequist: And because the, the Etzanoans built with grass and wood instead of stone. There were no ruins for anyone to find and stumble upon. There was no pyramids, no walls, just fields.
So for 400 years, historians kind of heard these Spanish legends, um, and, and thought they were just exaggerating that there could be that big of a population out here. And the prevailing view was that before Columbus, the Great Plains were, you know, distant and sparsely populated. but in 2013, scholars at uc, Berkeley Retranslated, some of those original Spanish documents, um, from that expedition.
And they, they got really rich translations and descriptions of the area and they're [00:36:00] specific enough. Dr. Don Blakey, an anthropology professor and archeologist here at Wichita State, uh, read those translations and began to figure out, oh wait, okay, we can actually put this on the map. And so, uh, he started digging in 2015 and he found it, uh, he found stone tools for processing bison.
He found battery, uh, arrowheads and evidence of a massive settlement stretching for miles along the Walnut River, exactly where the Spanish loaded it would be. Some of that might have been a little hard to kind of nail down that this was the settlement that the Spanish found. But in 2017, a local teenager named Adam Ziegler found a small iron cannonball in the area, the kind of ammunition the Spanish used in the early 16 hundreds.
Sydney Collins: Wow.
Gus Applequist: And Blakey used that to pinpoint the exact site of the 1601 battle. So 400 years later, a high school kid and a Wichita State Professor proved, every word that the Spanish wrote was true. And, and it gets bigger. Blakeslee, Dr. Blakeslee here has [00:37:00] continued to research Etzanoa and, and work out on the site.
And they've discovered that it was part of a network of large towns that the Spanish called Quivera which is a name we're more familiar with the same name Coronado used when he came through Kansas 60 years earlier, Blakeslee he estimates that the total population of this community was roughly 200,000 people spread across what is now Southern and central Kansas.
They were not nomads. Like some of the people that came later, they were farmers and professional bison hunters who processed bison on an industrial scale. They traded obsidian and turquoise from the southwest and they may have spoken a shared language based on, Nahuatl the language of the Aztecs that connected them with people as far south as Mexico and as far west as California.
So, um, just to put, I think all of this into perspective. Mm-hmm. Um, 20,000 people on a, you know, in a settlement in Kansas, previously [00:38:00] Cahokia, which is near present day, St. Louis was generally considered to be the largest pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico, and its peak population was around 20,000.
This, this may have been the largest or tied, or, or similarly sized to the largest settlement in North America, or, sorry, in, in, in the area of North America, north of Mexico.
Sydney Collins: Yeah.
Tours and Episode Wrap
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Gus Applequist: So it's pretty remarkable that it's here in Kansas and you can actually visit it. Um, so the Cherokee Strip Land run museum in Arkansas City offers guided tours of the site.
Sydney Collins: Oh wow.
Gus Applequist: It's only $10 a person and it takes two and a half hours. You walked the same ground. The Spanish walked in 1601 and the Wichita people walked centuries before that, so. Hmm. Now do you know about Etzanoa?
Sydney Collins: Anoa.
Gus Applequist: Well, uh, that brings us to the end of another episode of Ask a Kansas.
Sydney Collins: Yep. Please make sure to like, subscribe and leave us a review wherever you are listening or watching from.
Gus Applequist: If you have a chance to check out the Curious [00:39:00] Ksan newsletter on our website where Tanner's going out and exploring the state,
Sydney Collins: uh, make sure to sign up for said newsletter. You'll get behind the scenes content along with all the latest stories.
Um, you, we now have a merch line as well. You can buy shirts and water bottles, um, and then also let us know what other kind of merch you want and we can build it.
Gus Applequist: And I was, I was a little bit resistant on merch at first because what we were doing is just putting our logo on things and there is that if you want it.
Sydney Collins: Yeah.
Gus Applequist: But, but we're getting creative with it. Yeah. And there's some really cool designs, so you should definitely check it out.
Sydney Collins: Yeah. So, um, we have kind of a signature shirt that we're selling right now. Um, it's a badge logo with a bison and. Sweets and kind of the Kansas, uh, night sky. So it's really kind of a cool, we should have brought it as a
Gus Applequist: Yeah, we have one,
Sydney Collins: so Yeah.
Yeah, we have one. We should have brought it, but um,
Gus Applequist: check it out. See, see what you think
Sydney Collins: out. Yeah.
Gus Applequist: Well, thanks for watching and hope you have a good day.
Sydney Collins: Bye.
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