Dr. Kirk Schulz
 

Dr. Kirk H. Schulz, president of Kansas State University will be speaking on "The Future of Kansas State University in Addressing the Land Grant Mission".  Dr. Schulz was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1963. He was raised in Norfolk, Virginia, where he attended Norfolk Christian High School. Following graduation from high school in 1981, he attended Old Dominion University for 3 years, after which he transferred to Virginia Tech in 1984. Kirk enrolled in the Chemical Engineering program there, graduating with his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering in 1986 and 1991, respectively. He did his doctoral work in metal oxide surface chemistry under the direction of Dr. David Cox.

Following graduation from Virginia Tech, Kirk took a faculty position as an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Following 4 years at UND, he moved in 1995 to Michigan Tech as an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1998, and assumed the Chairmanship of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Michigan Tech that same year. Kirk served on the faculty at Mississippi State University from 2001 to 2009, assuming a series of administrative positions of increasing responsibility. At MSU, he served as Director of the Dave C. Swalm School of Chemical Engineering from 2001 to 2004, Dean of the James Worth Bagley College of Engineering from 2004 to 2006, and Vice President for Research and Economic Development from 2007 to 2009.

In early 2009, Dr. Schulz was selected as the 13th President of Kansas State University. Kirk is a member of the ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC) and is an active member of AIChE, ASEE, and ABET. In recognition of his work in chemical engineering, he was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2007 and a Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) in 2008. He is married to Noel Nunnally Schulz, who is the Pasley Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at K-State. They have two sons, Tim (18), a freshman at Mississippi State University, and Andrew (14), a student at Manhattan High School.

Lon Frahm

Lon Frahm is the 6th generation of his family to farm in Thomas County, Kansas. His great-grandfather was one of the first in the area to adopt summer fallow practices. In addition to managing Frahm Farmland, Lon serves as Chairman of the Board for Midwest Energy based in Hays, the largest combination gas/electric utility in the state. Recently, he was named 2009 Top Producer of the Year during the Top Producer Seminar in Chicago. He will be hosted by Eric Atkinson from KSRN radio for a Thursday night discussion, "A Conversation with A Top Kansas Producer".