Class Notes – Spring 2026
Comings, goings, appointments, retirements, honors, accolades and other Shocker news. Former students are designated by fs. Honorary alumni are noted as hn.
DANIEL M. CARNEY ’53/04, BUS ADM, who co-founded Pizza Hut with his brother, Frank, in 1958, was inducted into the WSU Barton School of Business “Beyond” Hall of Fame during a ceremony in February. His exceptional contributions to his alma mater and the wider community have been recognized through many awards, including the WSU President’s Medal in 1997, the Alumni Achievement Award in 2002, and the Wichita Area Chamber of Commerce’s Uncommon Citizen Award in 2007. A 2011 inductee into the Kansas Hall of Fame, he lives in Wichita.
ROBERT E. SHIELDS ’68, POL SCI, was inducted into the WSU Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame during an afternoon ceremony on Feb. 3, 2026, in Wiedemann Hall. A retired attorney considered to be one of the top litigators in the Southeast, Shields vigorously pursued cases against tobacco companies and is a noted expert on hazardous waste and toxic torts. He resides in Atlanta, Georgia.
WARREN E. PICKETT ’69, PHYSICS/MATH, ’71 M PHYSICS, an international expert in the field of high-temperature superconductors, is a 2026 inductee into the WSU Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame. Pickett worked for 18 years as a scientist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory before taking a position as a distinguished professor of physics at the University of California. He lives in Davis, California.
JERRY (TRAUGHBER) SMARRT ’69, M SEC ED, ’88 M SPAN, ’98 PHD CSD, is completing 50 years of teaching at Friends University, where she is a professor of Spanish. During her career, she created and implemented the Latino Leadership Program, established a study abroad program with La Salle University, Cancun, and designed coursework for study/travel abroad to Cuba, Venezuela, Costa Rica, France, Portugal, Spain and Mexico. She lives in Wichita.
PAUL S. ALLEN ’70, BUS ADM, who recently made the transition from CEO to chairman of the board after nearly four decades as chief executive at Allen Gibbs & Houlik, an independent CPA and advisory firm based in Wichita, is a 2026 inductee into the WSU Barton School of Business “Beyond” Hall of Fame. Allen has held leadership roles in many civic organizations, including the Wichita Regional Chamber of Commerce, as well as on numerous Wichita State-affiliated boards. Honored in 2012 with the WSU Board of Trustees Award and in 2006 with the WSU Recognition Award, he resides in Wichita.
SCOTT W. STUCKY ’70, HIST, is a 2026 inductee into WSU’s Fairmount College Hall of Fame. Appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces in 2006 by President G.W. Bush, he became chief judge in 2017 and, since 2021, has served as senior judge. A 1973 Harvard Law School graduate and the 2022 WSU Alumni Achievement Award honoree, he lives in Potomac, Maryland.
“Voice of the Shockers” hangs up his headset
MIKE KENNEDY ’71, a six-time Kansas Sportscaster of the Year, called play-by-play action for Wichita State Shocker men’s basketball for just shy of a half-century. After becoming the full-time radio voice for the Shockers during their 1980-81 Elite Eight season, he hung up his headset at the end of this one. Kennedy covered many Shocker sports over the course of his storied career — football, women’s basketball, volleyball and baseball, among them — and is known for calling such historic moments as the 1981 “Battle of New Orleans,” when WSU defeated the Kansas Jayhawks 66-65 in a Sweet 16 game, and the 1989 College World Series, when WSU batted down the Texas Longhorns to win the national championship. A banner in Kennedy’s name was dropped from the rafters at halftime of the Feb. 21 Wichita State vs. Temple game at Koch Arena. Players, including Kenyon Giles, lined up to fist-bump him, and, yes, the Shockers defeated the Owls, 69-57, on Mike Kennedy Night.
MACK C. MOORE ’71, SEC ED-HIST, ’83 SEC ED, is author of Almost Born on the 4th of July, an autobiography that features his days as a Wichita State undergrad. Retired from a 33-year career in education, he resides in Wichita.
LEIGH WALLACE ’80, ART-P, ’96 M ART-P, is one of five artists named a winner for her “Tree” pen and ink drawing in the 2025 BLICK Pen and Ink Challenge. She lives in Shell Knob, Missouri.
WILLIAM “BILL” K. GARDNER ’81, BUS ADM, ’83 ART-GD, owner of Wichita-based Gardner Design and founder of LogoLounge.com, has had a new book, “The LogoLounge Guide to Iconic Branding: Trendcasting for Logos the Last,” published by Rockport Publishers. Gardner resides in Wichita.
STEVE FEILMEIER ’85, ACCT, retired executive at Koch Industries, is a 2026 inductee into the WSU Barton School of Business “Beyond” Hall of Fame. The 2013 WSU Alumni Achievement Award recipient, he lives in Wichita.
TED KIMBLE ’85, POL SCI, retired in February from the WSUFAE as associate vice president for development. His career includes serving as development director for the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute at the UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and as a director of development for neurosciences at the University of Kansas Foundation. He lives in Wichita.
ANDREW TOTMAN ’86, M ART-P, earned a rave review for “Seasons, Tides, and Lunar Cycles,” his solo exhibition of non-figurative monotypes at Belco Arts, Canberra, Australia. Described as “a feast for printmakers,” the exhibition closed March 22. The master printmaker at Heavy Pressure Studio in Sydney, Australia, he is a noted industry specialist creative and art educator who has taught at universities in Alaska, California and Kansas, as well as in Australia.
KATHY (BRADSHAW) SEXTON ’89, ENG, ’92 M PUB ADM, is a senior management consultant at Wichita State’s Public Policy and Management Center, where she draws on her 30-year career in public service, including her time as city manager of Derby, Kansas. She lives in Wichita.
GRACE (XIAOGAO) WU-MONNAT ’91, M PE, runs the Grace Wu Kung Fu School in Wichita and was recognized by the city of Wichita in February on the occasion of the school’s 40th year of teaching Kung Fu, Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi, Bagua and Wude (martial ethics). A member of the Amateur Athletic Union’s Chinese Martial Arts Hall of Fame, she resides in Wichita.
BRIAN W. HINKLE ’92, M ART/P, studio artist and art educator, judged the 51 entries in Gallery 12’s “12 Squared Open Exhibition,” selecting three works for top honors. Noted for his own work in oil paintings and handmade enamels, he has taught drawing, painting, portraiture and enameling at Mark Arts since 1996. He lives in Andover, Kansas.
V. KAYE MONK-MORGAN ’93, CHEM BUS, ’96 PUB ADM, ’21 PHD ED LEAD, president and CEO of the Kansas Leadership Center, was honored by Wichita Public Schools with a “My WPS Story” in February. A first-generation college grad, she was noted for 26 years of service to WSU, including as vice president for strategic engagement and planning. She lives in Wichita.
DONALD “DON” W. ROBSON ’93, M ART-PAINTING, has been an associate professor of studio art at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, since fall 2025. Previously, the artist and educator served on the faculty and as art department chair at Concordia University Nebraska in Seward.
MISTY M. BRUCKNER ’95, M PUB ADM, who is a recipient of the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office Bronze Medal Award for Public Service, is director of the Public Policy and Management Center at Wichita State. She resides in Wichita.
CHIU FAI STANLEY CHOI ’95, FIN, is founder, owner and executive director of the Hong Kong-based Head & Shoulders Financial Group, a firm with some 25 years of experience in derivatives, private equity and blockchain.
Shocker alumna directs McNair Scholars Program
SHUKURA BAKARI-COZART ’97/00 is the new director of Wichita State’s McNair Scholars Program, a federal TRIO program funded by the U.S. Department of Education. She brings 20-plus years of working in higher education and the nonprofit sector into her leadership role with the program, which was set up at WSU in 1995 to offer opportunities in research, scholarship and preparation for graduate school studies to McNair Scholars. Bakari-Cozart, who holds degrees in English and counseling from WSU, is a proud TRIO alumna. She believes deeply in the program’s overall goal of helping high-achieving, underrepresented and first-generation undergraduate students earn advanced degrees.
MARY S. HARRISON ’98, ENG, is an English language arts teacher at West High School in Wichita. One of five co-owners of Kirby’s Beer Store, an iconic campus bar noted for its live music, she is also a founding member of the band Brave Boy. She resides in Wichita.
TERI MOTT ’99, GEN ST, has joined the marketing team at KMUW after serving as creative communications manager at Wichita State’s Ulrich Museum of Art for almost four years. A noted local arts advocate, writer and actor, she was a late-night deejay for KMUW’s now defunct After Midnight music program during the late 1980s. She resides in Wichita.
GENEVIEVE A. WALLER ’01, ART HIST, had asolo exhibition, Noblesse Oblige, at Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery, Lindsborg, Kansas, through April 19. Waller, who works primarily with camera-less photography, installation and sculpture, is founder and editor of the art journal DARIA: Denver Art Review, Inquiry, and Analysis as well as visual art editor for Wichita-based arts and culture publication The SHOUT. She lives in Aurora, Colorado.
NIGEL SORIA ’03, BUS ADM, ’05 M ECON, is a research economist and data scientist at WSU’s Public Policy and Management Center. He holds a PhD from Rice University and has interests in labor economies, health economies, and child and family welfare. He resides in Wichita.
SHAUN ROJAS ’07, POL SCI, is the senior director of civic engagement at the Kansas Leadership Center and founder of the Young Latino Professionals of Wichita.
EDEN E. (PAGE) QUISPE ’08, ART-EL ED, an artist who creates richly layered textile works that explore motherhood, family, culture and memory, is in the spotlight this summer for a solo exhibition at the Wichita Art Museum: Eden Quispe: Narrative Threads is on view through August 16. The museum has acquired her “Where the River Flows Everything Will Live” for its permanent collection. She lives in Newton, Kansas.
SHANNON M. JOHNSTON ’09, M ART-PAINTING, has been awarded academic tenure at Newman University where she serves as associate professor of art and chair of the arts and humanities department. She lives in Wichita.
HOWARD Y. LAKOUGNA ’09, CE, who is the senior program officer for digital technology at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he leads initiatives focused on artificial intelligence and digital public infrastructure in emerging markets, has been selected by the African Leadership Institute to be among the 2026 cohort of associates from 15 countries to participate in the Archbishop Tutu Leadership Fellowship program. Lakougna lives in Bothell, Washington.
MEGHAN (HAYES) MILLER ’09, ART-PAINTING, ’22 M ART-SCULPTURE, and MIKE D. MILLER ’13, ART-SCULPTURE, had an interactive, immersive exhibition, “When the Extraterrestrials come, they will judge us by the quality of our Art!”, on display at Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City, Missouri, through May 29. The couple’s work encourages visitors to engage physically with the pieces, from a confetti-blasting bike to a giant tie-dye inflatable, or “tieflatable.” Kinetic sculptures, rotating contraptions and hand-operated installations invite playful exploration. The Millers reside in Towanda, Kansas.
ASHLEY B. SCHEIDEMAN ’09, M HIST, who has held senior positions across the nonprofit, workforce development, and corporate sectors, including serving as executive director of Make-A-Wish Kansas and as executive director of stakeholder relations and business development at Youth Entrepreneurs, has joined the WSUFAE as development director for the WSU College of Education. She lives in Wichita.
COURTNEY E. LONG ’10, M MUS-THEORY/COMP, an assistant professor at WSU who holds a doctorate from the University of Northern Colorado, is a music theorist, composer and saxophonist who performs regularly as a soloist and with various ensembles. She lives in Wichita.
COURTNEY (LOONEY) BENGTSON ’11, COMM, ’13 M COMM, is starting her own advisory practice after 12 years at the Wichita Foundation, most recently in the role of executive vice president. Early in her career, she was communications/special events coordinator at the WSUFAE.
Marcus Pyles ’11 heads up EuroAmerica LLC right here in ICT
Marcus Pyles likes to break things. In fact, the aerospace engineering grad enjoys crashes and crumples and smashes and scrunches so much that he has made destruction the core of his business. Well, not precisely. “I help people break things for a living,” he clarifies. “Crash testing? Automotive or aerospace safety systems? I can probably help with that.” As president of EuroAmerica, which he bought in 2024, Pyles and his crew offer precision testing and measurement services to industry clients in the auto and aerospace sectors. “I’m a thinker and a ponderer,” he says. “Working through ideas and concepts is enjoyment in itself.”
He credits his time as a student research assistant at Wichita State’s Aircraft Icing Lab with helping set his career path in 2006. Over the next 17 years, he added to his expertise at Pratt & Whitney and then, for eight years starting in 2016, as a research engineer at the Crash Dynamics Lab at WSU’s National Institute for Aviation Research. There, he says, they focused on “destructive testing for certification of aircraft seats using crash test dummies,” and where, he adds, there were lots of satisfying “big booms.”
MICHAEL DEVADER ’12, M SP MGT, is a communications specialist and deputy public information officer at DeKalb Public Health in Atlanta, Georgia. His work history features stints as Atlantic Sun Conference associate director of communications and with gameday communications staff for the Atlanta Falcons.
ERIC D. HARRISON ’12, COMM-EL MEDIA, a co-owner of Kirby’s Beer Store along with his wife, Mary, and three others, is a singer-songwriter and guitarist who has released several solo albums, including Gratitude (2020) and is a founding member of the Wichita-based band Brave Boy. He is also the director of digital marketing for NexLearn, an e-learning and training company. He lives in Wichita.
EMILY E. RITTER ’12, ART-PRINTMAKING, is director of visual arts education at the Lawrence Arts Center in Lawrence, Kansas, where she oversees the development and implementation of visual arts programming for ages 6 and up. She also recently presented a solo exhibition, Ecologies of the Self, at the WSU School of Art, Design and Creative Industries’ Clayton Staples Gallery, featuring more than 30 works created over the past decade.
TIMOTHY R. STONE ’12, ART-PAINTING, ’22 M ART-PAINTING, has had a solo exhibition, Din of Silence, earlier this year at Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery, Lindsborg, Kansas. Featuring new paintings that explore the unease and tension held in the space between our physical and digital lives. He lives in Hutchinson, Kansas.
VAMSIDHAR PATLOLLA ’13, M ME, ’18 PHD ME, is co-founder and chief technology officer at Shocker Composites LLC, which recycles carbon fiber waste into sustainable materials. He developed the technology while a graduate research assistant at WSU’s National Institute of Aeronautical Research. He resides in Wichita.
MICHAEL S. STAAB ’13, AEROS E, an aerospace systems engineer, has held positions at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Blue Origin, General Atomics and Icon Technologies. Now with Redwire Corp., he is Distinguished Engineer for Vehicle Autonomy & System Fault Protection, office of the chief engineer, Redwire Space Missions, Littleton, Colorado. He lives in Castle Pines, Colorado.
RON D. BAKER ’15, BUS FIN, former WSU basketball stand-out and NBA player, is a licensed agent at Hayden Outdoors Real Estate, specializing in selling farm, ranch, rural residential and hunting properties. He was a project manager at Ascension Via Christi. Recognized with the WSU Young Alumni Award in 2024, he resides in Wichita.
JOSEPH W. SHEPARD ’16, CJ, ’18 PUB ADM, is a Wichita City Council member. Prior to his election in 2025, he was the inaugural director of Lead For Kansas, a part of Lead For America, chief of staff to the CEO, and director of alumni and community partnerships. A two-term student body president at WSU, he lives in Wichita.
ARELY NAVARRETE VELAZQUEZ ’17, POL SCI, ’25 M BUS ADM, is a grant coordinator for the International Rescue Committee, the humanitarian non-profit organization founded in 1933 at Albert Einstein’s request. She also volunteers as a technical advisor to the Kansas Hispanic & Latino American Affairs Commission. A former WSUFAE stewardship director, she lives in Park City, Kansas.
CORINTHIAN G. KELLY ’21, M PUB ADM, is the owner of Left on Read, a Wichita bookstore. He is also the director of partnerships and belonging at Wichita Public Schools. Hailing from Newport News, Virginia, he has served as a management intern in the Segdwick County Manager’s Office and worked with the Stand Together Foundation and WSU’s Public Policy and Management Center. He lives in Park City, Kansas.
NICOLETTE BLASGEN ’22, IE, is a program manager at NIAR’s Automation Research Center. Her experience prior to joining ARC in 2024 includes industrial engineering work on the 737 fuselage assembly line at Spirit AeroSystems. She resides in Wichita.
SARAH E. (BUIE) CARSWELL ’22, H SCI, ’22 H MGT, has joined the WSUFAE as marketing specialist. A Gore scholar at WSU, where she earned two bachelor’s degrees from the College of Health Professions, she previously worked on campus in the WSU Office of Undergraduate Admissions and at Wichita’s Exploration Place. She lives in Wichita.
TAMMY D. PHAM ’22, H SCI, ’25 M PA, is a physician associate with Kellum Family Medicine in Schertz, Texas. The clinic serves the San Antonio metropolitan area.
LILY PARKER ’23, STRAT COMM, ’25 M COMM, is an English teacher at Circle High School in Wichita. Previously, she was a marketing specialist at the WSUFAE and on The Shocker magazine staff, as well as an instructor in WSU’s Elliott School of Communication. She lives in Wichita.
HANNAH M. COPELAND ’25, MUS ED-INSTR, who was active in Wichita State’s orchestra programs as a student, is the orchestra teacher at Curtis Middle School in Wichita, where she resides.
TAMMY M. NGUYEN ’25, BUS MKT, is a development coordinator at Boys & Girls Clubs of South Central Kansas in Wichita. As a student, she was a marketing intern at the WSUFAE and active in the Vietnamese Student Association, for which she served as historian. She lives in Wichita.
ZACHARY OAKLEY ’25, AEROS E, works at Textron Aviation as a technical publications engineer. As a WSU student, he was an intern and section leader in NIAR’s digital twin program, creating 3D reprsentations of advanced aerospace structures to increase the longevity of aging aircraft. He lives in Wichita.
HAYLEE THURMAN ’25, AE-MGT, is an automation technical lead at NIAR’s Automation Research Center in Wichita, where she resides.
SLOANE DYER ’26 , MFA, an artist known for her mixed-media works, has been appointed interim curator at WSU’s Ulrich Museum of Art. In this role she will work with the curatorial team to develop, research and realize current and future exhibitions. A Kansas-based, Choctaw artist whose thesis work explored identity as resistance, she lives in Wichita.
