Yesterday I attended the Kansas State University shindig recognizing this year’s promoted faculty. We have some amazing people working at this place. There were professors hailing from all over the world. Everyone was from somewhere else, it seemed, and I think that’s pretty normal in academia. It’s not very prestigious for everyone to be home-grown.

But I was there too. A Marysville High School graduate, from just up the road to K-State. A military veteran, recruited out of Manhattan, KS. A Cloud County Community College graduate among scholars from MIT and Harvard. And yes, proudly a graduate of, with my final degree earned at Kansas State University.

Doesn’t it seem just a little bit strange that I was the stranger there, the odd one, being the Kansas native with the background I have? But there I was, a professor at K-State. So happy, and so proud to be serving the people of the state that I call home – Kansas.