Kansas State University

search

The Loop

Category: Faculty and Staff

Build your network through ‘Cats Connect

Posted on by Staley School of Leadership

Looking for a way to meet new people and connect with others? Sign up for a ‘Cats Connect group beginning the week of Sept. 16.

Are you looking for a way to meet and connect with other K-Staters? Do you want to help build our K-State community? If so, sign up for ’Cats Connect – a program at Kansas State University designed to build community through conversation.

As a Health-Promoting University, Kansas State University is dedicated to supporting the holistic health and well-being of each student, faculty, and staff member. One aspect of well-being includes social health, which is the ability to form meaningful relationships that provide support, guidance and encouragement. Over the past two years, ‘Cats Connect has worked to improve mental health and social well-being by connecting more than 950 K-Staters! Building relationships within ‘Cats Connect can help protect against stress, anxiety and depression. Positive relationships also increase student satisfaction and retention, as well as faculty/staff engagement.

Graphic image with pictures of groups of people from 'Cats Connect sessions

‘Cats Connect is a peer-to-peer facilitated program designed to help groups of 4-6 Wildcats meet and develop friendships outside of their regular social circles. Groups meet for one hour for five consecutive weeks. During each meeting, everyone will have the opportunity to respond to a series of fun and thought-provoking questions and engage in a small connection project.

Students, faculty, and staff are all invited to participate. Groups will be built based on shared experiences and availability. Participants can select in-person (on the Manhattan campus) or virtual meetings (via Zoom). There are two fall 2024 sessions to choose from:

  • Session 1 will meet weekly beginning the week of Sep. 16, through the week of Oct. 14.
  • Session 2 will meet weekly beginning the week of Oct. 21, through the week of Nov. 18.

Registrations for Session 1 are due by Tuesday, Sept. 10. Continue reading “Build your network through ‘Cats Connect” →

Building Bridges for the Future of Leadership Education: Leadership scholars present at national conference 

Posted on by Staley School of Leadership

Several Kansas State University faculty and doctoral students presented at the 2024 Association of Leadership Educators conference (ALE), July 14-17, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As a professional organization, ALE seeks to strengthen the expertise of leadership educators and developers. The conference theme, “building bridges for the future of leadership education,” embodied the idea that leadership education is dynamic and ever-adapting to prepare leaders for the challenges of a diverse and changing world.

K-State scholars contributed the following presentations to the conference program:

Systems Leadership Education: Bridging Theory and Practice (panel)

Kerry Priest, Ph.D., and Jessica Ramirez, Staley School of Leadership, Leadership communication doctoral program; Jason Headrick, Ph.D., Texas Tech University;  Michael Gleason, Ph.D., Wartburg College; and Haley Traini, Ph.D., Oregon State University

Peer Coaching: A Practice to Enhance Leadership Education and Support Leadership Educators (workshop)

Kerry Priest, Ph.D., Staley School of Leadership and Dan Jenkins, Ph.D., University of Southern Maine

Mentoring International Graduate Students (presentation)

Chibuzor Azubuike, Ph.D., Andrew Wefald, Ph.D., N’Zoret Innocent Assoman, Ph.D., and Trisha Gott, Ph.D., Staley School of Leadership, Leadership communication doctoral program

Classroom Reflections: How Teaching Leadership Exemplifies Leadership-As-Practice (roundtable)

Michaela Sauders, Kansas State University Leadership Communication doctoral candidate and Instructor, Washburn University Leadership and Community Engagement Program

Building Bridges to Move Beyond Organizational Barriers to Collaborate and Create Opportunities in Graduate Leadership Education  (roundtable)

Michael Gleason, Ph.D., Wartburg College; Jennifer Moss Breen Kuzelka, Ph.D., Creighton University; and Kerry Priest, Ph.D., Staley School of Leadership

Leadership Capacity Building Workshop for Nigerian National Youth Service Corps Members (poster)  

Oluyomibo Asunlegan and Ifedayo Olubejide Leadership communication doctoral program; Kerry Priest, Ph.D., Staley School of Leadership

Posed group photo of K-Staters at ALE: : Michaela Saunders, Ifedayo Sunday Olubejide, Oluyomibo Asunlegan, Kerry Priest, Andy Wefald, Innocent Assoman, Jessica Ramirez

Pictured left to right: Michaela Saunders, Ifedayo Sunday Olubejide, Oluyomibo Asunlegan, Kerry Priest, Andy Wefald, Innocent Assoman, Jessica Ramirez

As part of K-State’s land-grant mission, the Staley School of Leadership advances leadership learning and development through research and practice that strengthens our communities, state, and world. Learn more about K-State’s leadership communication doctoral program here.

Building leadership practice to impact climate change networks in Ghana

Posted on by Staley School of Leadership

Kerry Priest, Ph.D., professor in the Staley School of Leadership, and Shaibu Fuseini, 2023 Mandela Washington Fellow Alumnus and co-founder of AgricConnect, were recently awarded a Reciprocal Exchange Grant to support network building among climate change leaders in Ghana.

The Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders—the flagship program of the U.S. Government’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI)—was created in 2014 to invest in the next generation of African leaders.

The Reciprocal Exchange component provides U.S. citizens and Fellowship Alumni with the opportunity to build upon strategic partnerships and professional connections developed during the Fellowship through collaborative projects. These exchange programs are a unique opportunity to implement a co-designed project for the purpose of forming lasting partnerships, expanding markets and networks, and increasing mutual understanding between the United States and Africa.

Left to right: Sipasi Olalekan Ayodele, Kerry Priest, Shaibu Fuseini

Priest and Fuseini’s project was entitled, Fostering Community Leadership: Cultivating Innovative Skills to Tackle Climate Challenges in Ghana’s Agricultural Sector. The Climate Change Workshops took place June 1-5, 2024, in Kumasi, Ghana. The facilitation team for this project also included Sipasi Olalekan Ayodele, 2019 Mandela Washington Fellow Alumnus and doctoral candidate and graduate research assistant in K-State’s Department of Horticulture and Nature Resources. Jon Ulmer, Ph.D., and Nellie Hill, Ph.D., in the Department of Agricultural Education and Communication served as consultants on the program design. Continue reading “Building leadership practice to impact climate change networks in Ghana” →

Third Floor Research: Taking leadership learning to the next level 

Posted on by Staley School of Leadership

Take a moment to reflect on the context in which you carry out leadership, maybe it is in your organization or within your community. When trying to learn about leadership imagine the floors of a building. Starting with the first floor to make sense of context, this is where leadership action occurs. You can think of the second floor as a reflective site, here, people get up on the balcony to see what is happening on the first floor from a different perspective and make the case for a third-floor approach. Reflection and sense making occur on the third floor by evaluating and researching what takes place on the first and second floors.  

In this blog series, we invite you to join us on the third floor to gain a deeper understanding and critically assess what is and is not working in our leadership efforts. Authors will spotlight Third Floor Research, a joint research initiative between Kansas Leadership Center and Staley School of Leadership and explore several projects designed to advance the exercise of leadership and its development. The series will start by introducing Third Floor Research in this blog post with each blog that follows sharing a deeper dive into our findings that might be useful to individuals, leadership educators, organizations and communities.  

Author Carlie Snethen is a Leadership Communication Ph.D. student in the Staley School of Leadership and a Graduate Research Assistant with Third Floor Research. With the first blog in this series, she will introduce the work of Third Floor Research while describing the levels of impact that organizes their projects.  

What is Third Floor Research? 

Making change on large system issues can be a complex, challenging, and difficult journey to embark on. With programs across the country seeking to prepare and equip attendees to complete this work the need for impact assessment heightens along the way. As the Kansas Leadership Center (KLC) continues to prepare leaders to tackle their most compelling challenges, our curiosity for determining what is effective and how it impacts participants has increasingly become a priority. Taking an evidence-based approach to their framework, KLC continues to push the boundaries of how we understand leadership through an innovative partnership. 

Since its creation in 2007, KLC has been working to empower organizations, corporations, individuals, and communities to make progress on their toughest challenges through the idea that anyone can lead, anytime, and anywhere. KLC facilitates leadership development programs and has collaborated with over 15,000 alumni from 44 states and 62 countries across six continents. These alumni are from five primary sectors including education, non-profit, government, faith, and business. With this large swath of participants KLC engages a diverse range of community members through five core principles. Continue reading “Third Floor Research: Taking leadership learning to the next level “ →

Leadership Communication faculty and graduate students contribute to new books on Leadership and Coaching

Posted on by Staley School of Leadership

Kansas State University’s Andrew Wefald, Ph.D., associate professor in the Staley School of Leadership, recently edited and published two books on leadership and coaching. Alongside graduate students from K-State’s interdisciplinary leadership communication doctoral program, the team contributed chapters to Critical Perspectives on the Intersections of Coaching and Leadership, and Navigating the Coaching and Leadership Landscape: Strategies and Insights for Success, published through IGI Global.

K-State’s Leadership Communication faculty and students are committed to co-creating knowledge with community and university partners that enrich scholarship, research, and the common good.

The books stem from Wefald’s years of teaching, research, and study in leadership and coaching. The contributing graduate students examined the intersections of coaching and leadership through their unique perspectives and experiences.

K-State contributors co-authored the following chapters:

Critical Perspectives on the Intersections of Coaching and LeadershipInterrogating Coaching Through the Lens of Critical Leadership Perspectives

  • Andrew J. Wefald, Ph.D., associate professor, Staley School of Leadership
  • Ariel Griffin, MS, program officer, Children International

Entrepreneurship Leadership Coaching: Indigenous Nigerian Approach

  • Chibuzor M. Azubuike, doctoral candidate in leadership communication at Kansas State University and graduate teaching assistant at the Staley School of Leadership
  • Ifedayo Sunday Olubejide, doctoral student in leadership communication at Kansas State University
  • Emmanuel Jeje, graduate research assistant in the Office of Engagement at Kansas State University

Book cover: Navigating the Coaching and Leadership Landscape: Strategies and Insights for SuccessDeveloping Emotional Intelligence Skills in Emerging Talent

  • Roberta Maldonado Franzen, Ph.D., affiliated faculty at Kansas State University and director of talent acquisition at Duke University

Gamification: Athletic Coaching vs. Executive Coaching

  • Janice E. Perkins, doctoral student in leadership communication at Kansas State University and professional executive coach with her own practice

The books are available for purchase here and here. To learn more about the leadership communication doctoral program, visit www.k-state.edu/lead-comm.

K-State faculty mentor McNair Scholars through Summer Research Internship

Posted on by Staley School of Leadership

Scholar Development and Undergraduate Research, housed in the Staley School of leadership, recognizes and celebrates the 2024 McNair Mentors for their contributions to the Kansas State University McNair Scholars’ academic and professional growth as they prepare for graduate education. McNair mentors play a large role in the development of the undergraduate researchers and are helpful in providing a trajectory toward graduate education.

McNair Scholars interviewed and invited a faculty member to serve as a mentor for their Summer Internship. This summer, eleven K-State faculty members are serving as mentors through the Scholars’ 8-week summer internship, taking place June 6-July 26.

As a mentor, each faculty member will:

  • Guide the scholar through completion of research project including submission of written materials
  • Help the scholar understand theoretical frameworks and methodologies
  • Encourage understanding of discipline-specific professional trajectory, such as expectations for graduate program applicants

Thank you, to the following mentors for the 2024 McNair Summer Internship: Continue reading “K-State faculty mentor McNair Scholars through Summer Research Internship” →