The Kansas Board of Regents approved Kansas State’s new Campus Master Plan at their meeting on Sept. 17. Included in the plan is a complete remodel/repurposing of Kedzie Hall, which currently houses around 4,500 square feet of camera inventory, journalism labs and classroom usage for the A.Q. Miller School of Media and Communication.
According to the Next-Gen Campus Master Plan report, “The Southern portion of Kedzie Hall will be re-purposed as the WildCat one-stop for enrollment/administrative functions to serve students within a centralized center of excellence.”
Michelle Geering, director of news and communications, wrote in an email with The Collegian,“By creating a centrally located student support resource network, the university can better serve the academic, wellness and enrollment needs of our students.”
The project is expected to begin in 2028 or 2029, she said.
The Kedzie renovations would reallocate spaces currently used for A.Q. Miller School classrooms, labs and faculty offices for administrative space, leaving some professors of the school, like Nick Homburg, wondering what this means for them.
“[Administration is] looking in different spaces,” Homburg said. “There’s a chance we could go to Nichols. I know they don’t want to put us in yet another building, and there’s a lot of ideas floating around, but there is no definite direction where we may go.”
Currently, students can find classrooms, lab space, equipment checkout and staff offices near each other in Kedzie Hall.
“We’re all centrally located,” Homburg said. “Students have easy access to me, to the checkout room, to the labs, and if they have a problem, I’m literally five steps away. You’ve got this beautiful little system where everything is centralized. Even the dean said this is the best learning environment we’ve got on campus because we utilize all our space.”
Homburg said he worries that moving additional A.Q. Miller professors, offices and courses out of Kedzie will make it harder for students of the school to find support.
“My fear is that if we wind up with our classrooms being one place and our checkout rooms being another place and everything just disjointed, it will affect the learning environment of the students,” he said. “That’s my biggest fear. I know they’re trying to avoid that, but the spaces I’ve looked at aren’t conducive to building this kind of learning environment, and that scares me because I’m here for the students.”
Homburg believes the ideal solution would be for K-State to construct a new building for the A.Q. Miller School.
“In a perfect world, we’d find donors and get a brand new building,” Homburg said. “That way we could merge everybody together, including all the student media and all that, which would be great.”
Andrew Smith, director of Wildcat Electronic Media and assistant director for news & sports media at the A.Q. Miller School, said constructing a new building for the School would require outside funding.
“The department, about 10 years ago, did a look into what it would be for a new building,” Smith said. “Those things, you need a lot of money and some deep pockets and donors. I mean, you look at the engineering building, you look at the business building — those don’t just grow out of the ground, obviously.”
Fundraising for a project like “The Kedzie Shift,” Smith said, requires passionate alumni, which the A.Q. Miller School has no shortage of.
“The alumni want what is best for the current student body,” Smith said. “Having dealt with alumni for the last nine years, they are passionate about their tradition and what they had, but they are also passionate about making sure that the upcoming set of students has what they need to be correctly trained in journalism arts, so to speak.”
Besides the A.Q. Miller School, Kedzie Hall is also home to Collegian Media Group, a private enterprise operating as a 501(c)(3) made up of three student publications: The Royal Purple yearbook, Manhappenin’ magazine and The Collegian newspaper.
CMG director Spencer O’Daniel believes the students of CMG value their tradition in Kedzie, but are still open to the idea of collaborating with other student media outlets.
“Collegian Media Group’s home is the north side of Kedzie, so staying in this building and our original newsroom is important to us,” O’Daniel said. “At the same time, I know our professional staff and students would be excited at any future space additions where CMG could merge with Wildcat 91.9 and Channel 8 news in one centralized student media hub.”
Smith said the “CMG portion of old Kedzie is not necessarily” going to move out of the building after renovations.
“A lot needs to be worked out,” he said.
However, Smith is sure the Kedzie renovations would not affect the employment of A.Q. Miller or CMG faculty.
“We are a very active and vital department — one of the leaders in arts and sciences of growth, and that’s exciting,” Smith said. “The decision for this specific facility [Kedzie] doesn’t have anything, necessarily, to do with A.Q. Miller. All it has to do with is the university … trying to advance their needs.”
Ben Stark, assistant dean for infrastructure and faculty support for the College of Arts and Sciences, declined to comment on the Kedzie renovations.
“Details are still forthcoming from the masterplan and president’s office,” he said in an email to The Collegian.
Regardless of where the department ends up, Smith said one thing is certain: Commitment to student success will not falter because of “The Kedzie Shift.”
“Our leadership at the A.Q. Miller School is very supportive of student media, students and student journalism, so no matter which direction they go, it will be to enhance that,” Smith said. “Not to make it smaller, but to centralize it rather than consolidate.”
