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The Sunflower is an entirely student-led newspaper that covers Wichita State and the surrounding area. Its newsletter comes out every Monday afternoon, delivering some of the most important news from the previous week straight to inboxes.

To subscribe to the newsletter, visit The Sunflower website and enter your email address. Subscribers can unsubscribe at any time.

For questions or concerns, contact The Sunflower editor-in-chief at editor@thesunflower.com or visit The Sunflower’s office in the basement of Elliott Hall, room 019.

The table below is to assist instructors with certain dates regarding CES. The dates shown are for the spring 2025 semester. The first column includes the various start/end (part-of-term) dates for spring semester courses. The second column includes dates meant for instructors. This is the timeframe when instructors will receive emails about the CES process and procedures that they should complete. Instructors will receive additional emails during and after the student CES access dates. The last column includes the dates that CES will be available for the students to complete course evaluations.

If your course is in bold, then your spring 2025 CES evaluation process will start soon. Review the start/end dates in each column so you know when your access to the CES system will start and end.

Course start/end datesInstructor CES process datesStudent CES access dates    
Jan. 6-11Dec. 25-Jan. 8Jan. 9-10
Jan. 6-18, Jan. 13-18Jan. 1-15Jan. 16-17
Jan. 21-Feb. 22Jan. 28-Feb. 11Feb. 12-21 
Jan. 21-March 12Feb. 16-March 1March 2-11
Jan. 7-March 13Feb. 17-March 2March 3-12
Jan. 21-April 4, Feb. 24-April 4                     March 10-24March 25-April 3
Feb. 24-May 8, March 13-May 8, April 7-May 8April 13-27April 28-May 7
Jan. 21-May 15, Jan. 25-May 15April 14-28April 29-May 8
Jan. 6-June 20May 26-June 9June 10-19

The College of Engineering has been ranked 20th nationally out of 550 colleges and universities in the Cyber Power Rankings, which were created by Cyber Skyline in partnership with the National Cyber League (NCL). The rankings represent the ability of students to perform real-world cybersecurity tasks on the Cyber Skyline platform.

Students from the School of Computing within the College of Engineering and the Wichita Linux Users Group (WuLug) competed in the NCL competition throughout the fall 2024 season, including individual and team Capture the Flag competitions. The top team from Wichita State, SKY-SHOC-2024, ranked 16th out of more than 4,800 teams. Students and their rankings were as follows:

Individual game (8,485 total players):

  • Steven Janssen: 86th
  • Daniel Halbleib: 166th
  • Charlie Hill: 186th

Team game (4,894 total teams):

  • SKY-SHOC-2024: Steven Janssen, Daniel Halbleib, Aidan McGillivray, Harsh Subnani, Corbin Huisman, Charlie Hill: 16th
  • Kali Girls: Divy Patel, Arpan Day, Alex Harms, Stockton Underwood, Sophie Clark, Liv Robl: 75th
  • Club Penguin: Hyacinthe Howell, Jack Delmar, Juniper Riot, Sophia Hunt, Koral Richardson, Morgan Stewart: 86th
  • aPun: Hannah Nikkel, Sean Dugan, Remington Derksen, Liam Moore: 101st
Wichita State Student Success Advocate with the silhouette of Wichita

The Office of Student Success hosted an informational showcase for faculty and staff, providing an opportunity to connect with the Shocker Learning Center, Success Coaching staff and First-Year Programs. The event also celebrated the vital role everyone plays in fostering student success and persistence at WSU.

Recognized were individuals and departments whose exceptional contributions have made a lasting impact on students and the WSU community. Help in recognizing the following award recipients for their outstanding efforts:

Outstanding Collaboration Award

  • Student Outreach and Support
  • Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
  • Office of Financial Aid & Scholarships

Behind-the-Scene Hero Award

  • Mary Morris, learning management systems specialist
  • Rebecca Off, Rhatigan Student Center event coordinator

Distinguished Partnership Award

  • University Libraries

This recognition is a reflection of ongoing commitment to creating an environment where students can thrive. By honoring those who contribute to its shared mission, the Office of Student Success continues to encourage a culture of excellence and collaboration across the campus.

Wichita State has long been a partner with Panopto for academic video capture and hosting. This relationship will end on June 1, 2025, and Panopto will no longer be available to staff, faculty or students. If you have videos stored in Panopto, you can download them for future use. OIR has designed training to help you move from Panopto to Stream, the new video capture and hosting solution. The Academic Resources Conference (ARC) for January 2025 also has training available. Most of that training will take place Jan. 14, 2025 online via Teams, and recordings of those sessions will also be available. To make an ARC training plan, consult the session schedule.

At this time, Panopto videos are still safe in Panopto, and any videos you would like to remove from Panopto can be safely removed. This process must be completed no later than May 31, 2025, however. Reach out to the Office of Instructional Resources at OIR@wichita.edu for questions or help.

Five people standing together

The Evelyn Hendren Cassat Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic had a reason to celebrate in September when client Kurt White, alongside his family and graduate student clinicians, celebrated his participation in Aphasia Friendly Readings. Kurt had been working toward this goal during weekly speech therapy sessions and as part of a home program for several weeks leading up to his well-attended event by friends and family, both in person and on Zoom.

Aphasia-Friendly Readings is an aphasia treatment approach that was initially developed by a former client’s spouse, Harold Regier, and then adapted for the clinic by Dr. Erin O’Bryan, CCC-SLP assistant professor in the Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders. Inspired by his wife’s journey with aphasia and difficulty communicating, Harold took notice of her increased ability to speak when participating in reading scripts at church.

He brought the idea of this approach to Dr. O’Bryan in 2020, and she has been conducting research and teaching the method to other professionals ever since. The approach allows for maximal client engagement and family participation by developing a script regarding an important life event/memory as a collaborative therapy activity involving the person with aphasia, family member and speech-language pathologist.

Once the script is established, the person with aphasia and their family member practice reading it, with cuing and guidance from the speech-language pathologist, until the person with aphasia feels that they have improved enough that they are ready to share their story with an invited audience, such as friends and family.

 “This experience was a good reminder that every person has a story to tell, and it was rewarding to be a part of helping Kurt tell his story,” said Tailyn Mellema, graduate student in speech-language pathology. “Even though words are hard for him to say, he has so many memories and ideas to share with the people around him. My favorite part of the experience was seeing all of his friends and family members show up to support him when he presented. It was so evident in his smile that he was excited to share his story with them and encouraged to hear all their kind words.”

Kurt’s aphasia-friendly reading was centered around a passion of his choosing: tattoos. He presented information regarding his large variety of tattoos, plans for a new tattoo and the meaning behind some of them. The story was accompanied by photographs and his mother partnered with him to complete the reading. Kurt’s speech was easily understood and without errors for the three pages of double-spaced reading he completed.

Friends and family commented on how impressive it was to witness someone who typically has difficulty in conversation speak clearly about a past experience that was important to him.

“This approach helped me understand more about Kurt than what he is able to share just in casual conversation,” said Alex, Kurt’s sister. “I realized there are details about his life that he remembers, and by bringing them out through this story reading, I can have more conversations with him about the things that make Kurt, Kurt.”

According to Aphasia.org, aphasia is an impairment of language, affecting the production or comprehension of speech and the ability to read or write. Aphasia is due to injury to the brain — most commonly from a stroke, particularly in older individuals. But brain injuries resulting in aphasia may also arise from head trauma, from brain tumors or from infections. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association estimates 2 million Americans are living with aphasia.

Kurt has been living with aphasia and traumatic brain injury since 2016 and has been a client at The Evelyn Hendren Cassat Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic for the past five years.

“… Be open and willing to trust the process of the speech clinic and the goals that the clinicians set,” said Denise, Kurt’s mother. “Be patient with your aphasia family member as they know that others get frustrated when they can’t tell you the right words or explain what they mean. Also, be willing to spend extra time with them to help them with words, reading and daily tasks, so they feel important. Consistency and having a regular routine are also important for rehabilitation.”

The Evelyn Hendren Cassat Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic provides services for speaking, hearing, swallowing and spoken and written language impairments. For information about this specific aphasia treatment approach, or for other inquiries, please call 316-978-3289 or go to: wichita.edu/slhclinic.

Have a book that you would like to suggest for consideration for the Wichita State Common Read program? Send in your nominations for the next common read book for the 2026-27 school year.

Wichita State Common Read is the university’s common read program designed to spark conversation between students across majors on campus. The program strives to take educational concepts learned in the classroom and provide meaningful connections with out-of-the-classroom programs and activities. The WSU Common Read Committee will be convening in spring to review nominations.

Track and field coach John Wise sits down with Shocker play-by-play man Mike Kennedy for an interview. They talk about his entire career from the early days working as a student on campus to today where he is still making memories over 40 years later.

He talks about his job during the football plane crash in 1970, the baseball team’s national championship in 1989, going to the Final 4 with men’s basketball in 2014 and his recent battle with cancer.

The Wichita State Accounts Receivable Office would like to inform students that the IRS requires WSU to report all tuition charges with a valid social security number and legal name. To be eligible for the 2024 Higher Education Tax Credit, you must have your SSN on file with WSU by Dec. 31, 2024.

Please complete the W-9S form by logging into your myWSU portal, going to myFinances tab, under Accounts Receivable Links click on “Provide your SSN to WSU with the W-9S form.” Please return within seven days by mail to: WSU Accounts Receivable, 1845 Fairmount Box 38, Wichita, KS 67260-0038. Accounts Receivable recommends students protect their private information by not emailing this form.

For questions, contact Accounts Receivable at wsuaccountsreceivable@wichita.edu or call 316-978-3333 for assistance.

Crowd of small symbolic 3d figures linked to one, isolated

The AI boom has brought about many new, free products to the community. Information security has been investigating these AI driven products and how they represent themselves is not always what you expect.

Examples include:

  • When you accept the terms and conditions to use the free model, any emails, text or chat messages, pictures and videos on the device can be collected and used to train, regardless of the sensitivity.
  • Messaging, audio and video is being used to infer and report out a possibly inaccurate picture of an individual’s engagement and participation in meetings.
  • Personal information collected in these systems is being sold to outside entities or reused without consent.

Is there an AI assistant you want to use? If so, reach out to the to the Data Management Committee by email at DataTransferReview@wichita.edu before engaging with free services. “Free” often means data, sensitive or not, becomes their data. Often times, ITS has cheaper, better and safer integrated solutions.

For more information on the safe and ethical use of generative AI, visit WSU Generative AI Guidelines.