Announcing ESU's Year of Celebration

Emporia, KS (07/08/2025) — We are thrilled to announce the launch of ESU's Year of Celebration marking one of the most transformative eras in Emporia State University's history. This will culminate at Homecoming, October 31-November 2.

Over the last decade, higher education nationwide has faced significant challenges - declining enrollment overall, online & distance education becoming more popular, deepening deficits and years of inaction. Covid accelerated these trends but was not the cause of them. For many universities, including Kansas public universities, this meant fewer on-campus students, reduced on-campus activity and decreased tuition revenue.

To address these challenges at ESU, the Kansas Board of Regents (KBOR) appointed Ken Hush as interim president in November 2021. His charge was to analyze the total university enterprise, identify inefficiencies and, in tandem with KBOR, take action to reduce waste. When President Hush came on board, the trajectory of the university, like many others throughout the U.S., would have been no longer financially sustainable beyond June 30, 2024.

After serving eight months as interim, KBOR selected Hush - an Emporia native, ESU alum and business leader - to continue and serve as the 18th president of Emporia State University and to continue to lead a bold, trendsetting and unanimously approved turnaround. With a KBOR mandate to reimagine higher education and bring business-minded solutions to campus, change came quickly and decisively.

As then KBOR chair, Cheryl Harrison-Lee said, "We have to re-engineer education. If there's anything we learned from Covid, it is that we are not able to do business like we've always done it. That's not just in our business community; that's also in our academic institutions. And, so, what we believe Ken brings is that business perspective of looking at being results oriented, looking at metrics and measurements and scorecard, dashboard, making sure that as you are looking at serving the customer that you are also working to achieve certain goals. And that there's a high level of accountability."

After three and half years the university has turned the corner and is on a positive path forward. We have achieved a $30M financial correction that eliminated a $19M budget deficit. At the same time, we invested in people and programs. The majority of savings & efficiencies captured by the university have been immediately passed on to students and their families.

ESU's Year of Celebration marks the significance of this turning point in our history. It took all of us to get here - all employees, the ESU Foundation, students, alumni, community, state government leaders and a multitude of supporters. We will be celebrating all year in gratitude and in recognition of how far we have come together.

Highlights of our progress

University

• $ 19 million(M) dollar budget deficit eliminated (approximately half of our state general fund in 2022).
• $ 11M invested in student activities, majors, recruiting and employees.
• $ 166M in inefficiencies & waste from the past two decades identified and eliminated.
• $ 225M annual regional economic impact generated annually, contributing to a thriving community.
• ONE ESU leadership team established with activity group of 14 leaders (vs. 4) resulting in more responsive & unified decision making.
• Additional city, county & ESU foundation funding originated.
• 20% decrease to deferred maintenance by demolishing empty / outdated buildings resulting in millions of savings.
• 15% improvement in campus space optimization, resulting in millions of savings.
• Secured two $5M private gifts for the nursing building, the largest private gifts in ESU history and allowed us to be debt free on the new building.
• Fully self-funded new construction Nursing & Student Wellness Center, the first new academic building on campus since 1979. This project has not required state money and will be debt free, which avoided $8M interest expense for the state / ESU.
• Unprecedented ESU Foundation Support:
  • $ 10M additional for student scholarships.
  • $ 3M in additional unrestricted funds.
  • $ 1M / year additional funds available via their increased spend rate.
• $ 5M additional in employee compensation, the highest university investment in employees in history.
• Increased Community Impact - Hosted 2024 Division II National Track & Field Championships (to host again in 2026). Increased outreach that attracted outside entities to host events at ESU (Shrine Bowl, Kansas state-wide high school band camp, HS State Football Championships), bringing an additional 20,000+ visitors annually to the community generating nearly $10M in additional economic impact.
• Unprecedented State Support generating $40M+ over the previous three years (compared to ~$100,000 / year previously) allowing us to invest in new strategic initiatives.

Students - Students - Students

Unprecedented Student Support

KBOR Goal #1: Access and Affordability

• NO increase in tuition & fees for our students for two consecutive years resulting in millions in savings for students and families.
• Decreased student fees for fall 2024.
• Highest investment in student employee opportunities in history
  • Increased student minimum wage $2.50 / hour, adding approximately $1M into our students' pockets during their time on campus.
  • Reinstated 300 student jobs (previously eliminated).
  • Reinstated 50 graduate assistantships (previously eliminated).
• Eliminated campus parking fees for all students & employees.
• 141% more student scholarships awarded; 70% of students now receive one or more scholarships.
• Launched new $21 per credit hour courses for area high school students with an increased scholarship to cover 80% of original cost, resulting in increased enrollment by 155%.
• Expanded in-state tuition to lower 48 states U.S. resulting in increased out of state recruitment efforts.
• Highest student retention rate in 15 years, increasing the probability of students graduating on-time and with less debt.
• Rebuilt and re-invested in new student enrollment and recruiting (funding previously decreased). Return on investment demonstrated through new student enrollment increases.

Academic Programs

• Accreditation reaffirmed:
  • Total University - Higher Learning Commission reaffirmed accreditation at the highest level. Specifically stating "ESU has reallocated resources to better align with ESU's mission, goals and expectations of the Kansas Board of Regents during the past three years to curtail declining enrollment trends. Initial results indicate this proactive and collaborative process is positively impacting student enrollment and alignment of resources."
  • School of Business - ESU is one of 6% of business schools in the world to earn AACSB reaccreditation.
  • Nursing Program - ESU received new ACEN accreditation
• Opened ESU Cybersecurity Research & Outreach Center after securing $1.5M in new Federal funding.
• Newly Named Opportunity College & University by Carnegie Foundation an institution that creates significant financial mobility for its students.
• Opening January 2026 - fully self-funded Nursing and Student Wellness Building.

Thank you for being part of this extraordinary journey. Whether you're a student, alum, faculty member, staff, supporter or trusted advisor - this celebration is for you. More recently, the outgoing KBOR Chair talked again about the importance of leadership, and we totally agree. We have achieved the objectives that KBOR charged us with three and a half years ago. And that is what we celebrate today.

Specifically, we thank past Kansas Board of Regents Chair, Cheryl Harrison Lee who cast a bold vision for what higher education could be. Additional statements are from her public comments were our guiding light over the past three and a half years:

• Be student-centered with unwavering support for access and affordability.
• Take the best practices of the business world and bring them over to the education world.
• Seize opportunities for collaboration.

A special thank you to past Regents Cindy Lane, Mark Hutton and Wint Winter who were side-by-side with us throughout the initial analysis and action phase, and to our own ESU Foundation for their renewed dedication to increase support for students and the university. Their unprecedented support demonstrates their commitment to help current and future Hornets students

For over three years Emporia State has been asked to publicly share our focus on capturing efficiencies and improving value creation for higher education. Everything we do is designed to support students, families and to reduce risk exposure and burden for Kansas taxpayers.

We are grateful to have completed this work proactively, and to be able to uniquely demonstrate how leadership can bring positive change for the university, system and state. We now have a cleaned-up state agency that can focus on the exciting work of creating a differentiated, extraordinary university experience for our students.

Let's honor our progress. Let's build our future. Welcome to the ESU Year of Celebration.