ESU Alumni Association to Recognize University Service Citation Recipients

by Phillip Tutor

Emporia, KS (11/04/2024) — The ESU Alumni Association's University Service Citation Award honors both alumni and friends who have made unique and significant contributions to Emporia State, its students and its staff members.

This year's recipients will be recognized during the ESU vs. Central Missouri football game on Saturday, Nov. 9.

The 2024 recipients are:

Diane Beatty

In ways both subtle and unmistakable, Diane Beatty (BSB 78-Accounting) embodies Hornet alumni who are dedicated to lifelong service to Emporia State University. Since earning her degree, she has provided support to the university and its students in numerous and multi-faceted ways.

During her time as an accounting student at Emporia State, Beatty was a member of the Accounting Club and Phi Beta Lambda. With the knowledge she acquired at ESU, she built a 36-year career with ConocoPhillips, working her way to general manager of their Upstream Financial Services Department, the role she retired from in 2015.

All who know Beatty know she is profoundly generous. Her gifts have established a number of scholarships and funds - the Diane Beatty School of Business Fund, which supports business faculty; the Thomas Learning Space Capital Outlay Fund, which provides the business school with a technology-based learning environment; the BizHornet High-Impact Learning Opportunity Fund, which supports the BizHornet Center; and the Thomas Scholarship, which promotes educational opportunities to all students. During the Together, Forward campaign, she gifted matching dollars to other donors establishing new funds to support high-impact learning within the School of Business and Technology.

Beatty wants to help as many students as possible have access to the knowledge and opportunities for success that ESU gave her. She believes removing financial barriers is an important way one can give back, but she doesn't think it is the only way alumni can make a significant impact.

"Money is important. But what I also see as important is the mentoring of the students who are coming in," she said. "People's involvement is just as critical as their dollars."

To that end, Beatty's volunteerism and participation touch most corners of campus. She's served in multiple roles on the ESU Foundation's Board of Trustees, including as board chair. She also serves on the School of Business and Technology Dean's Advisory Council, the Presidential Search Committee and is a member of the Black & Gold Circle and the President's Club.

At the heart of her commitment to her alma mater is her desire to pay it forward by assisting today's students just as she was assisted during her undergraduate days.

"I'm deeply honored," said Beatty, whose family includes four generations of ESU graduates dating back to the university's days as Kansas State Teachers College. "I volunteer because Emporia State allowed me to be successful in my career. It set me on a path. My instructors helped me see what my potential was, and so when I was able to give back, I felt like I needed to do that for the next generation."

Tyler Curtis

The connections Tyler Curtis (BSE 01-English and Social Sciences; MS 04-Educational Administration) enjoys with Emporia State University are as deeply rooted as the picturesque trees opposite Plumb Hall. He's a two-time graduate, a former employee and an unabashed supporter of all things black and gold.

"Emporia State really does what I think it professes to do, which is transform lives," he said. "It transformed mine."

Curtis, ESU's former director of Alumni Relations and assistant vice president for University Advancement, is steadfastly committed to giving back to his alma mater with his time and talents. As an undergraduate, Curtis was active in Phi Sigma Kappa, Associated Student Government and several leadership organizations. As an alumnus, he's a member of the Kellogg Society, which honors individuals who have made planned estate gifts to ESU; he's served as a Day of Giving ambassador; and he received the Outstanding Advocate Award in 2023. He also has assisted in the creation and maintenance of several scholarship funds at ESU.

Today, Curtis is the chief development officer for the Kansas Methodist Foundation and serves as a commissioner for the city of Emporia.

"Emporia State has been a part of my life for 26 years now," he said, "and it's been a huge reason for any success that I have had. I really do give credit back to ESU. It's an honor and privilege to serve the university."

Curtis' fondness for his years as an ESU student extends beyond the normal recollections of Greek life and Hornets games. He vividly recalls faculty members who went beyond the basic job descriptions of teaching classes and keeping office hours. They cared about students' well-being and welcomed conversations, he said. If Curtis were to advise today's students, he'd encourage them to take advantage of the smorgasbord of activities and organizations a university campus offers.

"There is a transactional piece to the university experience," he said. "You pay tuition, and you get to go to class and learn from people. But there's so much more to university life."

Curtis wants today's current students and young alumni to recognize the value of the relationship between graduates and their alma mater. Given that graduates can gaze in the rear-view mirror and see the myriad things the university has done for them, he believes they should also welcome opportunities to assist their alma mater.

That spirit of volunteerism has long been a hallmark of Curtis' adult life. He expects it will continue, too.

"I'm happy to be a part of the Emporia community," he said. "In some ways, I feel like now that I'm not employed by the university I am better positioned to advocate for the university. I feel like now I have an even stronger voice for the university."

Linda Hurt

Forty miles northeast of Emporia State University's campus is where Linda Hurt (BSB 77-Accounting) first gained an appreciation for communities that support their youngest residents. Her hometown of Lyndon, Kansas, is one of those places, a Midwestern town whose children's sporting events and theater performances repeatedly drew encouraging crowds. That made a lasting impression.

"When I got to Emporia State, the same thing happened," she said. "I had a lot of people here whom I felt were very supportive."

That belief in community support underpins Hurt's commitment to ESU. Now retired from Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, Hurt manages the Hurt Family Foundation. She has years of volunteerism and gifts to her undergraduate alma mater that are rooted in that community spirit: first in Lyndon, now in both Emporia and Southlake, Texas, where she lives with her husband, Bill, and is active in charitable endeavors.

"It was very important to me to give back to a community that was very good to me," she said.

Rarely has Hurt missed an opportunity to lend ESU a helping hand. Besides being a member of the President's Club and Women for ESU, she's served on the ESU Foundation Board of Trustees. Additionally, she was a lead donor in 2017 to the Dr. John C. Rich Distinguished Accounting Professorship at ESU, and several years ago, she and her husband began the Bill & Linda Hurt and Family Fund.

Hurt's career path initially brought her to ESU for a reason familiar to the university's history: She wanted to teach. A talented pianist, Hurt began studying to become a music teacher, but she wasn't keen on instructing high school marching bands. After switching her focus to teaching business, Dr. Harry Stephens and Dr. William Preston suggested that she consider a career in accounting. Their advice forever altered her life.

"They gave me the confidence to know that I could do well in business going forward," she said.

Ultimately, it is the desire to assist ESU's students that has fueled Hurt's philanthropic efforts at her alma mater. She's an unabashed champion of the university's academic mission and its long-time cultivation of first-generation students.

"I think of the university as the students at the university, because, to me, that's what the university is all about," she said. "There is value added to those students' lives (at ESU), and maybe one of them can help someone else with their confidence one day."

Mike Law

With no hesitation, Michael Kennedy Law (BSB 81-Business Administration) believes childhood days spent watching the Hornets play football and basketball is where his affection for Emporia State University began. For him, black and gold sports mattered from day one. "It was a big tie-in for my life growing up," he said.

Now retired after a successful career as a nationally renowned radio personality and executive, Law remains a decorated ESU alumni and a constant figure at campus events and Hornet games. Through volunteerism, board memberships and previously serving as the Hornets' radio play-by-play announcer, there's little the Emporia native hasn't done for the university since earning his degree more than four decades ago. Nevertheless, receiving a University Service Citation has added to his career achievements.

"Honestly, I was quite surprised," he said of the citation. "I certainly thought there were better candidates than me out there. I'm humbled and honored."

Despite a busy radio career that led to enshrinement in both the Kansas Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame and the Country Radio Broadcasters Hall of Fame, Law has found time to serve his alma mater as a supporter of the President's Club, and through service on the ESU Foundation Board of Trustees and the School of Business Dean's Advisory Council. In 2016, ESU honored him with a Distinguished Alumni Award.

Additionally, Law and his wife, Nycki Law, established a fund in 2020 that provides scholarship assistance to student-athletes with financial needs.

For Law, the symbiotic relationship between the university and the City of Emporia makes it all the more important that ESU alumni support their alma mater. As ESU goes, so, too, does the city.

"When I think Emporia, I think Emporia State," he said. "The university is a huge economic part of the city. The success of the town is certainly of interest to me, and ESU is a huge part of the community. It's a connection of all the parts."

For Law, his support of Emporia State University and the community is a way of honoring the faculty and administrators who empowered him to become who he is today. He credits them with creating the foundation he used to build a career in which he became a national radio figure. Giving back is a splendid way to empower the next generation of Hornets to create their own similar success stories.

"It's not just 'ESU.' That's the letterhead," he said. "It's more about the people at ESU who helped me along the way. Those people could have been anywhere, but they were at ESU, and they were a huge asset to me and a benefit to my learning."

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