Category: News

The College of Health Professions is excited to announce that the athletic training and exercise science programs at Wichita State will officially transition from the College of Education to the College of Health Professions, effective summer 2026. The athletic training program will be affiliated with the Department of Physical Therapy, while the exercise science undergraduate and graduate programs will join the Department of Public Health Sciences.

This strategic move reflects the university’s ongoing commitment to fostering collaboration among health-related disciplines and expanding opportunities for research, applied learning and community engagement. By joining the College of Health Professions, athletic training and exercise science will be positioned to strengthen clinical partnerships and provide students with enriched educational and professional experiences in the health sciences. The change also opens new avenues for collaborative research and community partnerships focused on improving physical activity participation and overall health and well-being.

Current students will not experience any changes to their degree requirements or graduation plans, and faculty will continue to provide the same high-quality instruction and mentorship. Both the athletic training and exercise science programs will remain located in the Heskett Center on WSU’s main campus through 2026.

The College of Health Professions welcomes the faculty, staff and students in the athletic training and exercise science programs and looks forward to the new opportunities this transition will create to advance education, research, clinical practice and service to our communities.

Faculty, if you have not already done so, submit your fall 2026 textbook requests to the Shocker Store. The latest Access Now requests will be accepted is Tuesday, June 30. Requests for course materials to be in the Access Now program will be accepted via email (lisa.fitzsimmons@wichita.edu) or in person (RSC Shocker Store). For any questions or concerns, contact the Shocker Store at shockerstore.books@wichita.edu or 316-978-7032.

If you’ve received a capital equipment inventory list, the deadline to submit is soon approaching. If you have any questions, WSU Property Control will be hosting brief Q&A sessions, where the team is available to answer inquiries about how to complete your inventory lists and general inventory questions. There are two sessions that will be available. Each session is come and go, so you can drop in and drop out at any time with your questions.

If interested, email WSU Property Control at wsupropertycontrol@wichita.edu indicating which of the two remaining sessions you would like to attend, and you will receive a calendar invite to that session:

• 10-11 a.m. Thursday, May 14
• 2-3 p.m. Tuesday, May 19

As the campus approaches the end of the fiscal year, note that all Telecommunications Service Requests must be submitted by May 29 in order to be billed to FY26. Requests received after May 29 will be billed to FY27. Standard work orders will continue to be processed in the order in which they are received.

The Office of Undergraduate Admissions has 2025-26 visitor guides available for any person or department that would like copies. If interested, contact Garrett Rupp via email at garrett.rupp@wichita.edu.

The Graduate Programs in Business at the Barton School of Business recently brought undergraduate and graduate students together for the Barton School’s Business Challenge. This event was an immersive, interdisciplinary case competition designed to strengthen collaboration, analytical thinking and real-world problem solving.

Open to all Barton School majors and minors, the competition drew 48 students across 12 teams. Participants were given one week to independently analyze and develop solutions to a complex business case without the support of faculty or outside advisors. The case, centered on a fictitious Riverfest scenario, was written by Barton School faculty member Justin Keeler.

Meet the teams that placed:

First place team:

• Julia Stark
• Don Philips
• Mikhail Lindsay
• Robert Lang

Second place team:

• Megana Paramal Viswanathan
• Takudzwa Nhamo
• Teseandre Hamilton

Third place team:

• Marysol Montiel
• Justin Van
• Ashira Kelly

More than 2,400 students are eligible to participate in Wichita State University’s 128th spring commencement ceremony on Friday, May 15 and Saturday, May 16 in Charles Koch Arena. There will be four ceremonies to celebrate the graduates:

Friday, May 15: Graduate ceremony

• All graduate degrees will be awarded at 7 p.m. Friday, May 15. The featured speaker will be Aishah Alhomsi, president of Wichita State’s Graduate Student Association.

Saturday, May 16: Undergraduate ceremonies

• 9 a.m. — Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the College of Fine Arts and the Dorothy and Bill Cohen Honors College. The featured speaker will be Sarah Kephart, a leader in inclusive arts education and an accessibility advocate.
• 1 p.m. — The College of Applied Studies and the College of Health Professions with featured speaker Marc Farha, co-CEO of CAA ICON.
• 5 p.m. — The W. Frank Barton School of Business and the College of Engineering with featured speaker Richard Dinkel, executive vice president CFO of Koch Inc.

The 22nd annual Graduate Research and Scholarly Project (GRASP) Symposium was on April 24 in Woolsey Hall. 90 graduate students presented their research to faculty and staff in conjunction with URCAF. Congratulations to all GRASP presenters and thank you to all judges, volunteers and faculty mentors.

This year’s awardees were as follows:

Oral presentations:

Winner: Marawan Rohayem, mechanical engineering master’s student advised by Dr. Ramazan Asmatulu, for the presentation entitled “Low-Speed Impact Damage Sensing in Aircraft Radomes via Gold Nanofilm-Integrated Nomex Honeycomb Core Sandwich Composites”

People’s Choice winner: Rahmat Safdar, biomedical engineering doctoral student advised by Dr. Nils Hakansson, for the presentation entitled “Developing A Novel Contact Modeling Framework for Dynamic Human Rolling Simulations”

Poster presentations:

• First place: Brooks Hartsock, doctoral student in applied mathematics – physics track, advised by Dr. Nick Solomey, for the poster entitled “Determining Simulation Correction Factors for Tungsten-Doped 3D Printed Radiation Shields”
• Second place: Kiora Joseph, aerospace engineering doctoral student, advised by Dr. Nadia Kianvashrad, for the poster entitled “Frequency and Heated Region Shape Effects on the Physics of Mach 2 Flow Over a Hemisphere Cylinder”
• Third place and People’s Choice winner: Timmerie Henke, Alex Meyer and Christina Wilk, anthropology master’s students, advised by Dr. Crystal Dozier, for their poster “Archaeological Analysis of Burnt Animal Bone: A Case Study on Faunal Remains for Fuel Use and Cooking Techniques at Etzanoa”

From May 4 through May 7, Wichita State is hosting Food for Fines, a program that allows students to have parking or traffic citations forgiven by donating items to support the Kiah Duggins Shocker Support Locker.

If you have a citation, you can participate by donating nonperishable food or hygiene items instead of paying your fine. Citation forgiveness is based on donation level: for citations between $0 and $50, donate 10 to 15 nonperishable food or hygiene items. For $45 tickets, donate two household or hygiene items. For $75 tickets, donate one baby item

On Friday, April 24 in Woolsey Hall, 70 undergraduate students presented their research to faculty and staff in conjunction with GRASP. Students competed in three categories, “Natural Sciences and Engineering,” “Social Sciences and Humanities” and “Creative Activity and Performance.” Students had the option to present orally or with a poster. Creative activities included presentations of music composition and live performance.

Cash awards will be presented to first and second place winners. Thank you to all judges, volunteers and faculty mentors. Congratulations to all URCAF participants. Abstracts will soon be made available in the Shocker Open Access Repository.

Natural Sciences and Engineering:

• First place: Elliott Chambon, Nicholas Atanasio, Drew Perez, Korben Schrotberger, “Student Designed, NASA Approved: WSU’s Next Gen Spacewalk Tool”
• Second place: Jonathan Nichols, “Remnants of the deep: a preliminary map of mafic enclaves near the vent of Big Obsidian Flow, Newberry Caldera, Central Oregon”
• Third place: Lauren Hughes, “What’s Linker Got To Do With It? Examining the Mechanical Stability of Palladin’s Ig3-4 Linker Region”

Social Sciences and Humanities:

• First place: Conner Murphy, “Quantifying Tillage Intensity as a Contributing Factor to Tillage Erosion at Archaeological Sites in Kansas”
• Second place: Braeden Miller, “Exploring Predictors for Online Disordered Gambling”
• Third place (tie): Grace Brabander, Aubrey Eilers, Addison Francis-Wilcox, Kellen Peri, Samantha Silva, “The Silent Epidemic: Bright Care, Healthy Smiles”
• Third place (tie): Elijah Jenkins, “Self Disclosing Behaviors with Robots”

Creative Activity and Performance:

• First place: Ethan Grohe, “Runnin’ on Fumes – Piece for Unaccompanied Alto Saxophone”
• Second place: Jasper Fast, “Why Do They Shut Me Out of Heaven?”
• Third place: Sophia Hart, ”Cosmos Laundromat: The Full Process of Scoring a Film”
• Fourth place: Grace Schulze, “Blues and Variations for Monk”