Qualla: Kansas State University

Kansas State University: Introduction

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit J. Corbett, Public domain. On October 28, 1939, a camera pointed at a football field in Manhattan, Kansas, and broadcast the homecoming game between Kansas State and Nebraska. It was only the second college football game ever televised. The station behind it, Kansas State's own experimental broadcast operation, had been pushing boundaries for decades -- its predecessor, station 9YV, began transmitting daily morse code weather forecasts in 1912, becoming the first radio station in America to air a regularly scheduled forecast. This instinct for practical innovation runs through Kansas State University like the Konza tallgrass runs through the Flint Hills surrounding its campus. Founded on February 16, 1863, during the Civil War, K-State was the very first land-grant college created under the Morrill Act -- an institution designed, as its early president George Fairchild put it, "not so much to make men farmers as to make farmers men."

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Image: J. Corbett | Public domain

Kansas State University: A College Born in Wartime

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Author unknown, Public domain. Kansas State Agricultural College, as it was originally named, nearly did not land in Manhattan. Governor Charles L. Robinson of Lawrence vetoed the bill establishing the school there, and an attempt to override the veto failed by two votes. A separate 1862 bill to make Manhattan...

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Image: Author unknown | Public domain

Kansas State University: Konza Prairie and the Quartz Laser

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Patricia DuBose Duncan, Public domain. South of Manhattan, the Konza Prairie Biological Station preserves one of the last remnants of native tallgrass prairie, a landscape that once covered 170 million acres of North America. Co-owned by The Nature Conservancy and Kansas State, Konza serves as a field research station...

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Image: Patricia DuBose Duncan | Public domain

Kansas State University: Breaking Barriers in Royal Purple

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Journal authors: Wilson Sterling, James Burrill Angell, Carrie M. Watson, Arthur Graves Canfield, D. H. Robinson: no specific photographer citation for photo, Public domain. Kansas State's official color is Royal Purple, making it one of very few American universities -- alongside Syracuse and Harvard -- with only a single official color. The Wildcats compete in the Big 12 Conference, and the school's athletic history includes a chapter that deserves...

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Image: Journal authors: Wilson Sterling, James Burrill Angell, Carrie M. Watson, Arthur Graves Canfield, D. H. Robinson: no specific photographer citation for photo | Public domain

Kansas State University: From a Prairie Campus, a Global Reach

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Defense Dept. photo by Cherie A. Thurlby, Public domain. Since 1986, Kansas State has ranked first among all public universities in its combined total of Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, Goldwater, and Udall scholars, with 147 recipients. Fred Albert Shannon won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1929 while teaching at K-State. Alumni include ...

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Image: Defense Dept. photo by Cherie A. Thurlby | Public domain