Category: Featured Stories

Wichita State senior Sydney McKinney is a student-athlete made for the era of name, image and likeness opportunties.

McKinney is a softball All-American, artist, entrepreneur, and diligent brand manager for herself. When NCAA and college administrators conceived of NIL benefits – compensating student-athletes for their talent and time – McKinney is the perfect example of the intended outcome.

Since the early 20th century, road salt has been saving lives on highways across the nation, but its liberal use also presents significant consequences for wildlife and human health.  

An interdisciplinary team of Wichita State University researchers is working to curb pollution and damage caused by road salt. The project — ECO-CBET: Convergent Electrolysis-Electrodialysis System (CEES) to Curb Urban Chloride Pollution by Eco-friendly Road Deicing and Waste Salt Upcycling — was recently awarded $1.4 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF). 

After more than two years since expanding into the community, Wichita State’s #WeSupportU Suspenders4Hope program has continued opening its arms to local organizations including Ascension Via Christi, area high schools and now Wichita-based Thrive Restaurant Group.

One of the main goals of the Suspenders4Hope awareness campaign is to destigmatize discussions about mental health and suicide and provide training on campus and in the community. The campaign accomplishes this by encouraging people who have experienced a mental health crisis to share their stories of hope and resilience.

Learn more about Sam Gales’ study abroad experience in South Korea during the summer 2022 semester. In this spotlight, Sam shares why she chose to study abroad for teaching in South Korea, which is one of the popular study abroad destinations for Shockers in Asia.

Dr. Ryan Amick, a Wichita State University alumnus and NASA engineer, has been selected as one of the Innovators in Residence for the College of Innovation and Design during the 2022-23 academic year.

Amick is a principal human factors engineer at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. He serves as the extravehicular activity (EVA) human factors lead, where he provides human factors and human-systems integration guidance to the NASA community as applied to development of the Exploration EVA System, and its integration with the larger NASA Spaceflight System Architecture.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) announced today will award $51.4 million to Wichita State University to aid in the rapid development and adoption of emerging smart manufacturing technologies for South Kansas.

The funding, provided through the American Rescue Plan Build Back Better Regional Challenge, is the largest single award the university has received from the EDA.

A Wichita State University research team has received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for their proposal, “Examining the feasibility of a wearable device for fetal heart rate monitoring through interdisciplinary research.”

The objective is to develop a wireless, non-invasive, wearable fetal electrocardiogram monitoring device that will use algorithms and cloud-based health monitoring to improve clinical care among pregnant women in rural communities.

Wichita State’s Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences recently received a grant from the National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentations program (NSF MRI) for a 500 MHz Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectrometer. 

With the money from the grant, WSU is acquiring a high-tech NMR machine that — instead of providing traditional medical images we think of from a magnetic resonance imaging instrument (MRI) — will instead allow WSU researchers to map out or model a three-dimensional image of a protein (or smaller) molecule.

The final competition to determine “who rules the school” was held Friday, Aug. 26 and included students in each academic college competing against each other in relay races and team sports. The College of Engineering were able to with the competition for the fourth time.

Another honor awarded was the Spirit Award, which went to the W. Frank Barton School of Business.

You can also check out WSU’s social media to see photos and videos from Clash of the Colleges.

Jon Peterson, a senior from Illinois, is diving into the world of finance and venture capital with his internship with the University Venture Fund Crossroads Program.

More than 5,000 Shockers each year take what they’ve learned in the classroom and transfer that knowledge into real-world environments. Applied learning — which is required for every Wichita State student — happens in offices, factories, laboratories, nonprofits, industries and companies across the globe. Students work side-by-side with seasoned professionals to ensure that they’re fully prepared to make meaningful contributions to their employers and their communities when they graduate.