The Joy of Giving

“It’s all about the relationships,” says Darin Kater, WSU Foundation and Alumni Engagement (WSUFAE) senior vice president of development, about his work at the nonprofit. Kater, who has been at WSU since 2008, oversees the WSUFAE’s gift development team – and is one of the staunchest supporters of the organization’s mission to “elevate, celebrate and advance Wichita State through engagement and philanthropy.”

“It’s absolutely all about our relationships with people,” agrees Stacie Williamson ’05, WSUFAE vice president of alumni engagement. “It’s a joy to work with not only those who contribute financial resources, but also those who give of their time, talents and enthusiasm as mentors, volunteers, Shocker fans and university supporters of all kinds.” Check out the WSUFAE’s many engagement opportunities online at wichita.edu/alumni.

This May, at a celebratory awards event in Wichita, Steve Feilmeier ’85 accepted the 2023 Fairmount Founders’ Award, which the WSUFAE presents annually to recognize individuals who provide outstanding service and support to Wichita State. Mike Lamb ’80, WSUFAE vice president who is set to retire at the end of June, attended the event and says one of the most fulfilling things in his career has been seeing “the joy of giving” in action.

Steve Feilmeier ’85 honored with 2023 Fairmount Founders’ Award

Few people seem to grasp with the same degree of business clarity both the big corporate picture and the myriad fine details comprising it. Steve Feilmeier ’85 – who started his long-running career with Koch Industries in 1997 as controller for the Koch Chemical Group, served as CFO of Koch’s global financial network and now is CEO of the Koch Investments Group – is one who does.

On top of that, his friends and colleagues say, he focuses in on people as individuals, and is as loyal of a person as they come. Since earning a master’s degree in accounting from WSU’s Barton School of Business, Feilmeier has stayed vitally connected with his alma mater. A member of WSUFAE’s National Advisory Council and of the Barton School Dean’s Advisory Board, he, along with his wife, Regine, have contributed to many WSU campaigns, notably the construction of Woolsey Hall and the expansion and renovation of Charles Koch Arena.

For his generous and decades-long support of WSU, Feilmeier was recognized with the WSU Foundation and Alumni Engagement’s Fairmount Founders’ Award during a gala dinner and ceremony on May 4 at Wichita’s Mark Arts. “Steve is an asset in so many ways for Wichita State and our organization,” says Elizabeth King, president and CEO of the WSUFAE. “This award is our way of saying thank you for his decades of commitment to the university.”

Full Circle of Service

The newly constructed Woodman Alumni Center was just opening its doors to the public in 1989 when J. Michael Lamb ’80 started what would grow into a 28-year career at Wichita State. So it’s quite fitting that as this university advancement and alumni affairs professional prepares to take his leave of the Shocker workforce, one of his final projects is serving as the lead WSUFAE staff member on a major renovation project of the Woodman Center.

“Without a doubt,” Lamb notes, “the highlights of my WSU career — three years with the WSU Alumni Association, 24 with the WSU Foundation and one with our newly merged organization, the WSU Foundation and Alumni Engagement — have all centered on relationships: relationships with loyal alumni, ambitious students, generous donors and gifted colleagues.”

After earning a bachelor’s degree in sociology at Wichita State and then putting together a résumé featuring 18 years of experience in nonprofit work, including nine in higher education roles, Lamb joined the WSU Foundation in 1998. “I started in annual fund and major gift roles, ” he says. “But credit goes to Elizabeth King, WSUFAE president and CEO, for seeing the potential in an expanded planned giving role that has defined much of my work here. We’ve grown our investment in planned giving from one to three staff, and this program continues to engage an increasing number of donors in legacy gifts.”

Three decades of relationship-building at WSU has made too many wonderful memories for Lamb to share even a quintillionth of them but, he says, it wouldn’t feel right not to try. “It was a delight to work with Kathleen Walsh,” he begins. “She attended Fairmount College, which became the University of Wichita before she graduated.” Walsh ’28/39 received the Fairmount Founders Award for her lifetime giving in 1999.

“What a treat it was,” Lamb says, “to drive a shuttle bus full of the WSU Madrigal Singers on their way to perform at the grand opening of the WSU west campus.” He adds, “It was a unique opportunity to work with Earl Youngmeyer toward the gift that eventually created the Youngmeyer Field Station for biological and geological research.”

And, he continues, “I had the opportunity early in my fundraising career to work with Emylou Keith and her sister, Betty Dutcher. They served in the U.S. Army Nurses Corps during WWII. When they graduated, they were the only female veterans in their graduating class of 1950.” Lamb worked with Keith to set up estate plans for a $1 million gift to the Barton School of Business to fund a scholarship and faculty support. Keith, Lamb says, made the gift in honor of her sister.

“It was Emylou,” Lamb reports, “who taught me that in addition to the financial support generated for the people of WSU, our donors also benefit from the joy of giving.”

Having come full circle in his professional career, Lamb is looking forward to new demands on his time. “My wife, Susan, and I,” he says, “will spend more time with our four energetic and engaging grandchildren and families — and enjoy expanded travel opportunities.”

The Ace of the Whole Production

An ace performer on some of the world’s finest operatic stages and an avowed advocate for fine arts education, Rodney Miller takes a bow this spring after his 19^th year as dean of Wichita State’s College of Fine Arts (CFA).

“My career highlights here at WSU come with the caveat that the pronoun I would have to use is ‘we,’” Miller says as he reflects on his years as CFA dean. “Everything that was accomplished during my tenure was accomplished because there were excellent colleagues in place who did much of the work to reach specific objectives.”

He counts four college-wide achievements as among the most notable and professionally full-filling of his career. The first is the addition, in 2019, of a fourth school, the School of Digital Arts, to the three — the School of Art, Design and Creative Industries, the School of Music, and the School of Performing Arts — that were in place when he first came to WSU in 2004 from the University of Nebraska at Kearney, where he had accepted his first deanship in 1998.

The second and third achievements of note, he reports, are intricately connected and deeply gratifying to him as a fine arts educator. “The number of endowed scholarships and the overall level of giving to the college has increased dramatically,” he explains. “And fine arts enrollment is at its highest level in the history of the college. This year we achieved our goal of 1,000 students for the first time ever.”

The fourth is more personal. “I keep thinking of things,” he says with a smile. “Another memory to add to the list would be seeing students from my early years who have now achieved honors and accolades in their respective artistic endeavors — be it on Broadway, at the Metropolitan Opera, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

His own creative and scholarly pursuits run the gamut from winning the National Verdi-Puccini Competition in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1978 to teaching voice and conducting quantitative research analysis. With specific academic interests that range from 20^th century American vocal music, both popular and classical, to administrative and sociological theory as it applies to higher education in the United States, Miller taught voice at Indiana University and Taylor University before beginning his academic career in earnest in 1983 at Illinois State, from which he would earn a doctorate in 1988. In 1991, he accepted the position of vocal studies director at New York University, where he served as an associate professor until 1998. From 1995 to 1998, he was assistant dean and professor in the School of the Arts at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

He and his wife, Pina Mozzani, CFA professor of voice, languages, articulation and distance education, were both professional opera performers before embarking on their academic careers. Mozzani will also retire after the spring semester concludes. “Pina and I have lived in Wichita longer than we have lived anywhere in our lives,” Miller says. “So we have no plans to move anywhere. We are keeping our options open. Certainly, more frequent trips to Chicago will be in order to see our first grandchild, who’s just turning six months old.”

With some 400 opera performances in the United States and Europe to his credit, as well as an additional 450 concert, recital and musical theater production performances, Miller has played many roles over the course of his professional life. When Mittelbayerische Zeitung critiqued a production of La Bohème, the newspaper out of Bavaria, Germany, had this to say about Miller’s performance: “The ace of the whole production was Rodney Miller as Colline, who sang the coat aria not with the usual cliché sentimentality, but with an honest feeling that brought real tears to the eyes of the audience members.”

The same might be said of Dean Miller’s role at Wichita State.

“My Favorite Shocker Memories”

Watching legendary operatic bass-baritone Sam Ramey ’68 perform the role of Blitch in Susannah on the same WSU stage he sang on as a student

My working relationships with colleagues and my dean’s office staff

Our Wichita State Shockers’ Final Four run in basketball

Serving as interim director for the Ulrich Museum of Art and being on hand for the dedication of three new outdoor sculptures: Stratosphere, Ernest and Ruth, and Lumen

Being at the very first athletic competition WSU had as a member of the American Athletic Conference when the WSU volleyball team defeated Temple at Temple

Hearing former WSU President John Bardo tell his executive team that our college’s production of the musical Chicago was the finest one he had ever experienced on a stage

With the establishing of our School of Digital Arts, taking possession of MindFire Academy and turning it into Shocker Studios

New Dean for the College of Fine Arts

Marie Bukowski will take up Wichita State’s CFA deanship, effective July 9. Hailing from Kent State University, where she served as the associate dean of graduate programs and faculty affairs in its College of the Arts, Bukowski comes to WSU with almost 30 years of teaching experience. She has taught many classes in the arts, including in painting, lithography and design.

“I am thrilled to join Wichita State as the next dean of the College of Fine Arts,” she says. “The college is poised to further elevate learning, scholarship and its strategic goals. The arts play a pivotal role in providing valuable cultural experiences to the community, and I look forward to engaging in collaborations and partnerships to create innovative programming.”

Kathy Downes posts 43-year library sciences career

Kathy Downes arrived at Wichita State in 1979. Armed with a bachelor’s degree in biology, physical sciences and library sciences from Mississippi University for Women and a master’s degree in library sciences from Kentucky University, she was set to start her career as a biomedical librarian at University Libraries.

She thought she would stay at WSU for a couple of years.

This spring, she’ll retire after more than four decades of playing key roles in Wichita State’s ongoing development of academic library services. After a stint as interim dean of University Libraries in 2016, she was named dean, a position she describes as simply “a privilege.” She has also coordinated two major Ablah Library facility expansions and worked on numerous enhancements to Ablah’s learning spaces and services, including the E.K. and Kathlien Edmiston 24-Hour Study Room and the Milton A. and Dawn P. Messinger Digital Scholars Commons.

During her years on campus, Downes navigated a sea change in her chosen profession and oversaw University Libraries’ incorporation of transformational information technologies. “The change having the biggest impact,” she explains, “has been the transition from paper to digital not only in the way information is created, recorded, analyzed, preserved, accessed and used, but also in the behind-the-scenes ways libraries are managed.”

But the basic purpose of libraries, she adds, is the same as it’s always been. “For academic libraries, this means supporting the mission of the university by creating and providing our students, faculty, staff and community visitors access to the library services, assistance, instruction and collections needed to support their success and well-being.”

Looking back at a career spanning 43 years brings to mind a whole library of favorite memories. Some are of the campus landscape itself — of “bright spring flowers” and “warm autumn leaves,” she notes. But her favorite favorites are of people. “I would start with my colleagues,” she says, “all the people in public and behind the scenes who with make University Libraries and this university work. I have wonderful memories of our students. I’m awed by their drive, energy, determination —and their exuberance at graduation!”

There are also memories of Fourth of July celebrations at Cessna Stadium and the 1989 National College World Series celebration for the Shockers at Eck Stadium. And, she adds with a smile, “Oh yes, meeting my future husband at Neff Hall’s candy machine is definitely a favorite memory.”

Presented the UP Senate President’s Distinguished Service Award in 2010, Downes says she’ll miss working on campus, but is looking forward to traveling, spending more time with family, taking classes and more community engagement. “There also will be those less glamorous activities such as house repairs, decluttering, and all those other pesky projects that never seem to get done on the weekend.”

The aerodynamic reach of N201WH

An appreciative group of Scott Miller’s former students, including Josh Bosire ’15/20/21, senior experimental flight test engineer at Textron Aviation in Wichita, came together this spring to plan a special, one-of-a-kind retirement gift for their former aerospace engineering professor. “It’s a model of one of our planes,” Bosire explains. “It comes in a personalized case, and the tail number of the airplane is Dr. Miller’s former office number in Wallace Hall.”

Professor Emeritus Miller, former Emylou Keith and Betty Dutcher Endowed Professor and director of the Kansas NASA EPSCoR Program and NASA Kansas Space Grant Consortium, joined Wichita State’s aerospace engineering department in 1988 and served as its chair from 2004 to 2022. With experimental aerodynamics as one of his main research subjects, Miller helped the careers of hundreds of aerospace students lift off – proving the aerodynamic reach of N201WH.

WSU Welcomes Coaches

PAUL MILLS became Wichita State’s 27th head men’s basketball coach on March 22. A longtime Baylor assistant under Scott Drew, Mills took his first head coaching job at Oral Roberts and ran with it, transforming the Golden Eagles from Summit League bottom dwellers to undefeated champions over a six-year span (2017-2023) with NCAA tournament bids in two of the last three years. Mills’ teams are fast-paced, yet efficient, annually ranking among the NCAA leaders in tempo, scoring and three-point field goals while playing tough, gritty defense.

“My family and I are extremely excited about being a part of Wichita State University. The rich history, winning tradition and unbelievable community support will keep us working on behalf of the greatest fans in all of college basketball. We can’t wait!”

TERRY NOONER was named WSU’s 10th head women’s basketball coach on April 17.
With a decade’s worth of coaching experience at the NCAA Division I level, most recently as an associate head coach at the University of Kansas, Nooner has also coached at Texas, Maryland, Alabama and Southern Illinois, along with one season as a player development coach with the NBA Cleveland Cavaliers. A Raytown, Mo., native, he is a former guard and team captain at KU from 1997-2000, when he helped the Jayhawks to a Sweet Sixteen, four NCAA Tournament appearances and three Big 12 championships.

“To say this is a dream come true is an understatement. I couldn’t be happier to land my first head coaching position in the state I love so much. I’m ready to build something special with our women’s basketball program.”

BRIAN GREEN was named the fifth head coach in the modern era of Wichita State baseball on June 5. With nine seasons of head coaching experience, Green comes to WSU after four seasons at the helm of the Washington State Cougars. He went 91-79 overall, including a 29-win season in 2023 that matched the most wins for the Cougars since 2010. Prior to his tenure with Wazzu, Green revitalized the program at his alma mater New Mexico State, authoring college baseball’s biggest turnaround in 2016. Following an 11-38-1 mark in his first year with the Aggies, they posted a 34-23 record the next season.

“What a monumental opportunity to lead Shocker baseball! Sharing the same dugout that Gene Stephenson built is the honor of all honors. Shocker Nation, I can promise you we are coming to work – to work hard and to get to the College World Series.”

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