Student Alumni Board Newsletter

Closing out the year with SAB has been a bittersweet experience to say the least. I still remember walking into my first meeting and not having many friends in the room. Now, I am proud to say, I can walk into any meeting or room and call every SAB member my friend. SAB has given me so much more than just a student organization experience. It has given me community, mentorship, and friendships that I know will last past graduation.     This spring has been filled with monthly meetings, retreats, and fun social events. In February, we welcomed 18 new, dedicated members to SAB, all from different corners of campus and all that exemplify what it means to a Student Alumni Board member. As we wrap up the semester, they will present their new member proposal at our final monthly meeting. They will propose improvements and new programs that SAB can implement in the future.     We were also able to host a few socials and retreats to help new and returning members get to know each other better. We first had a basketball watch party in February, courtesy of Wildcats Forever. We then had our spring BBQ at City Park where we enjoyed hotdogs, burgers, and a competitive game of sand volleyball. More recently, we had my favorite tradition, the second annual SAB 3v3 basketball tournament. Shoutout to Drew S. Hade H. and Lyle P. for taking the W! I hope this tournament continues in the future!    Recently, we wrapped up Open House weekend with For Sophomores Only. This event invites sophomores from all across Kansas and the country to visit K-State and experience Wildcat pride. On Friday night, we went around different campus locations. These included the Rec Center, Hale Library, and the Alumni Association. On Saturday, we hosted panels for students based on their interest to learn more about K-State and different degree programs! Thank you to our chairs Austin M., Taylor N., and Rylie M. for organizing this event!     As I close out this chapter, I am thankful for all the support I received! My advisors Tamie, Karadan, and Brandon have been instrumental in supporting me and my executive team throughout the year. I am thankful for all of the graduating seniors and wish them the best of luck! To the returning and new members, I am confident in your ability to help keep this organization moving forward. Finally, I want to specifically thank my executive team for helping me make this year a success! I would not be here without you! Moving forward, I know Sam Vogel and the new executive team will do great!     As always,   Go 'Cats!  Ibrahim Çiftçi  Class of 2026 

Where are you from? Tell us a little bit about where and how you grew up?

I am from Hiawatha, Kansas. I'm a third generation K-Stater on my mother's side. My dad also went there, but he was the first generation, not second. I have two, three older siblings who went to K-State. So, I grew up visiting K-State. I was one of the many students who didn't really think about where I was gonna go to college, because from the time I was born, it was going to be K-State. It was kind of a natural place for me to end up... I grew up on a farm, and at one point, I thought I was gonna go to vet school. I was an animal science major, pre-vet., but then I decided I was more interested in policy and international development. I finished in animal science at K-State, but for graduate work, I switched to agricultural economics. That's where I got my doctorate and stayed. 
 I didn't have to make a conscious decision that I was going, it was the natural place to go, plus all my siblings, aunts and uncles, first cousins, that's where we went.

Outside of SAB, what is your favorite K-State memory?

I have many, so it's hard to pick one. So, [being in] SAB and being student ambassador, there are a lot of positive experiences with that. I was also very involved in student government. I was chief of staff, which later became vice president for Kent Bradley back in the day. So a lot of my student government activities were a lot of fun, and very fond memories. And a lot of the same people overlapped; and it's probably the same now. People that are involved in SAB or in student government and in the honors societies. So, a lot of fond memories with many of the same people and different ways that we intersected.

After K-State, you went on to Oxford. How did you get that opportunity and how did your time in SAB prepare you for that?

Well, I think one thing that I gained from SAB was thinking about the university more holistically. We're not just the four years that we're here. K-State isn't just the students that are here now. It made you recognize and think about the importance that K-State has to alumni, and how it still matters to them, even if they haven't been there for decades. We also had a role in recruiting students, but really the role was about connecting with the larger community and people who have moved on. It also provided the opportunity to work and connect with administrators, especially as ambassador. I traveled with the president and we'd be on that little dinky plane going out to Western Kansas. That was a great opportunity, to have a fully, very different perspective on the university and how it functions, thinking about the needs of alumni and administrative perspectives that go beyond that four years. I can't say that that directly played a role in my going to Oxford, but it definitely broadened my perspective. And it probably also helped develop some social skills from chatting with alumni with all different backgrounds and at alumni events. You really have to be able to take any sort of a conversation and make it work. I think that's a valuable skill.  I did go to Oxford, so the year that I went, Kansas State actually had two Rhodes Scholars, which was not typical and not something that one would expect from a land grant or any public university. I did have a lot of opportunities at K-State, [and] I think it's still similar in that K-State attracts a lot of really strong students across the state of Kansas. I don't know if it's still the case, but it used to be that - I can't remember the percentage now - but a very high percentage of high school valedictorians in Kansas ended up at K-State. It does create a cohort and an expectation that even though it's a public school, there's an opportunity for elevated academics because of the cohort and the people that are there with you in your classes. That allows the faculty to have the expectation that you're going to have quality academic work. K-State in the '90s, you might be aware, had a scholarship advisor named Nancy Twiss, and she did a lot of work identifying students, identifying opportunities and resources for students. I was an animal science major, but she would encourage me to go to the London lectures, and then also, there was a smaller, more sort of niche lecture series that I'm drawing a blank on. She would make sure that I would go to all the outside of animal science things that are history, and liberal arts, and philosophy, and physics to take advantage of all the university resources. That helped prepare me for the scholarship application and interview process and to be fully prepared for graduate work at Oxford. 

What were some highlights of your time at Oxford?

Sticking with the K-State connection initially was a big change. It was very helpful and reassuring to have someone that I knew going through the experience with me. Our first couple months, her name was Mary Hale, now Mary Hale Tolar '90, '09. She's [now] at the Staley School [of Leadership]. She's the dean of the Staley School. She and I were Rhodes Scholars together. We went from Kansas to London and landed. The two of us bonded. It's like, OK, we have to figure out “How do you get groceries on a Sunday when everything's closed?” We did have a broader group of friends, but we definitely supported each other through the first six months, and we've stayed friends since. That's a unique K-State part of my time at Oxford. I had a built-in companion to help me navigate. That made the experience a lot more doable, especially at the beginning. The academic experience at Oxford is a little bit different because it is very independent [and] undergraduates don't necessarily have lecture classes, or they do, but they're on the periphery. But the real focus is writing essays and doing tutorials. I was obviously doing a master's and then a doctorate. My master's program had courses like a normal American university. But again, it's very independent and self-directed. That was a transition. I first did a masters in agricultural economics, and I was really focused on Honduras, land titling. I went to Honduras and spent three or four months and interviewed a couple hundred small farmers out in the Western highlands of Honduras. Having an agricultural background was very helpful because there's a language difference and a scale difference, but there are a lot of things about agriculture that are common from Kansas to Honduras. I've continued working in international ag[riculture], in Kenya, Ghana, and Cambodia. Having an ag[ricultural] background really translates, obviously, with differences, but it gives you a good foundation for a common understanding. I did my master's, and then stayed and did my doctorate at Oxford. I was there about five years. And then, I came to Penn State and I've been at Penn State ever since.  [Also,] the students in my classes and in my social group, were literally from around the world. In my graduate program there were two other Americans, but then when I was in my doctoral program, there were no other Americans. It was all Europeans, Africans, Latin Americans. And that just gives you a whole different perspective.

How did you decide to come back to the U.S. and how did you land at Penn State?

Yeah, at that point, it was really just personal decisions as much as professional. So I'm now divorced, but I was married to a K-State graduate who was a Marshall Scholar. And we had our first child while we were in Oxford. I had finished my dissertation, and waiting on him, so we had a baby. And so once you have family, then being closer to grandparents was part of the decision. He's from Puerto Rico, but being in the U.S. on the East Coast we were one flight from Kansas or Puerto Rico.
So being on the East Coast was a place that worked well for family, and thinking about proximity to grandparents, our siblings, the kids, aunts and uncles. We did think about staying in Europe or continuing there, but it was really the family call that brought us back.  We were a dual academic family at that point. We looked at a map and said, “Where are some parts of the U.S. that have enough universities that two Ph.D.s can get a job?” The Philadelphia area has a lot of universities. I'm actually not at the main campus of Penn State. I'm at a smaller campus that's in the Philadelphia suburbs. So, I live in the Philadelphia suburbs. The Philadelphia area, the D.C. area, actually UNC Chapel Hill area. We were like, “Where are places that have a lot of universities that are, again, [in] proximity to Puerto Rico and Kansas?” Those were a lot of logistical factors that went into it. And this area worked for both of us. He got hired at an institute at Penn. So that worked for both of us. 

Since being at Penn State, what have you taught and what has your research been?

I have taught, but I'm primarily an administrator. I'm at a smaller campus and we don't have departments, but we have multidisciplinary divisions. I oversee programs in engineering, business and computer science, IST type programs. A lot of my work is overseeing academic programs and faculty. In many ways, I've had a more straight trajectory from what I plan to do than most people do for my research. Usually, there are a lot of variations. I've had variations, but I've been pretty consistent. I've continued to do research and teaching in international agricultural development. Because I'm an administrator, I only teach one class a year, and that one class is actually tied up with both K-State and Oxford. I collaborate with a program for former street children in Kenya. And we teach a course that's really focused on agriculture and youth development during the spring semester, and then we take students over in May for about three weeks to work with this organization. And that's connected to K-State and Oxford, because the founder of the organization that we worked with was the Kenyan Rhodes Scholar that I met when I was at Oxford. And because of Mary's and my connection, she also knows him, and the Staley School, with their service learning teams, sends students to the same program in Kenya. I've met Kansas State students in Nyeri, Kenya. Oh, they're from Overland Park. I know where that is. And they're like, “How do you know?” And I was like “Well, yeah, I'm from Hiawatha” And that kind of blows their mind when they find someone from Hiawatha in this little town in Kenya. So that's something that Mary and I have continued to collaborate on.
My teaching is really focused around providing Penn State students the opportunity to have a lived experience of working in international agriculture and international development, collaborating with a community organization. So it's really focused on “How do we have, you know, an ethical and effective collaboration that meets the objectives of our partner in Kenya?” 
 And then my research has continued to be in agricultural development. [In] my last 10 or 15 years, I've really focused on intra-household dynamics and how that affects development outcomes. So, really looking at women's role in agriculture, and how that, when that's ignored, can constrain meeting the goals and objectives. So, if we're trying to increase corn production, and you only talk to the men, but the women are the ones that actually are responsible for planting or selling the corn, then you might miss out on their knowledge, or if you don't include them, and they're the ones that are responsible for the labor, they might not put the labor in if they don't control the income because they're like, “OK, I control the income from the eggs, so I'm going to focus on the chickens. My husband controls the income from the corn, so, you know, that's on him.” So, looking at intra-household dynamics, and how that affects development outcomes has really been my primary research the last 10 or 15 years. And again, we've had different projects, some in Honduras, again, some in Ghana, one in Cambodia.  Growing up on a farm, I was aware of the importance of agriculture. When you're looking at international development, agriculture in the U.S. is still 2% of the population or less that are actually working on farms. But globally, in the developing world and the global south, like Kenya, it's more like 40% of the population in Kenya works in agriculture. And in rural areas, it is foundational to the economy. So if you're going to talk about development, you have to focus on agriculture. I'm also interested in issues of poverty reduction and well being and, you know, equity and social justice. Most of the people in the world that are malnourished are in agriculture. Which, kind of seems wrong, right? The people that are growing foods are the one most likely to not have enough money to buy food. That's just wrong. My background in agriculture gave me a passion for appreciating the importance of agriculture. And when you're working in development, you can't go any other way.

What is a favorite memory from your time in SAB?

It was kind of interesting because when I was thinking about what we might talk about. I was thinking about the serious things, you develop social skills and the ability to talk to a variety of people. But, it was a lot of fun. We would pack into a van in the afternoon and drive somewhere for an event and be gone for, like, 10 or 12 hours and get back in the wee hours of the night. And it was a fun group of students and administrators. It was people like Amy [Button Renz] and there were young admissions reps who were just a year or two out of K-State. And we would pack into a 16 passenger van and it was fun. And we'd spent a lot of time driving across Western Kansas. It's possible there was a speeding ticket once or twice on the way back. Then trying to make up classwork that you missed because you have to leave at noon or two in the afternoon. Sitting in the back of the van, at that time, we didn't have devices, so it was all sitting notebooks and writing things out or reading things with a flashlight. There were a lot of fun memories from interacting with the students and the K-State employees, administrators who led it. There were just so many amazing people that we got to work with closely.  It was mostly when we would go off campus, it was mostly alumni events. 
We'd go to the Hays Alumni Association event on a Thursday night. In some ways, now that I'm looking at it as a professor, we missed a lot of class. Because to get to Hays we would often leave at two in the afternoon to drive. As a professor, that wasn't good, but as a student, it was a lot of fun. And there was enough of us. You didn't have to go to every event. So we’d spread it out.

Why are you proud to call yourself an alumnus of Kansas State, and how does it differ from Penn State?

My kids went to Penn State. We just comparing the ice cream from Call Hall and the Penn State Creamery, because Penn State says they have the best ice cream. And my kids have had both.
And so I said, well, I'm gonna have to say it's Call Hall has the best ice cream. And my kids, they're Penn Staters, and they're like, “What? How can you say that?”
I was like, well, it's in my blood? I am a K-Stater. I don't see them as contradictory. They're both land grants, they both have a very similar feel. I feel they're kind of on the same team. There's nothing inconsistent with working at Penn State for 30 years and being committed to the success of Penn State. And at the same time, saying, I'm a proud K-State alumni and support K-State. And the odd chance that they ever ended up in a bowl game together? Maybe I'd be a little conflicted, but I probably would love to go with K-State there.

Hello SAB Alumni!  My name is Karadan Kinsey, and I am the new Assistant Director of Student Programs. When I’m not at work, you can usually find me playing pickleball, out for a run, or planning my next adventure. A personal goal of mine is to visit all 63 U.S. National Parks in my lifetime. I have been to 26 parks currently.    I graduated from Kansas State University in May 2025, got married, and moved to Kansas City but as we all know, K‑State has a way of bringing you back. I just didn’t expect it to happen quite this soon! After switching majors a few times, I earned my degree in Communications with a Nonprofit Certificate, and throughout that journey, I prayed I would one day get to work alongside college students. I’m grateful I got this reality.    These past few months with the K‑State Alumni Association have been incredibly rewarding. My role allows me to wear many hats especially right now, as Homecoming is in full swing (and yes, it’s a beast… but one I am genuinely loving). I get to support numerous programs that I’m passionate about, each with its own opportunity to make an impact.  One program that I never knew about as a student was Wildcats Forever. It’s been gaining momentum for several years, and I believe this year will be one of its strongest yet. We’re seeing greater community support and increased student engagement across campus, which is exciting to witness.    At the end of the day, I truly love connecting with people, learning their stories, and fostering meaningful relationships. I’m excited to continue doing that work with SAB, alumni, students, and the broader K‑State community.  Go 'Cats!