FHSU set to celebrate veterans during Military Appreciation Week

Transcript

James Bell 

Fort Hays State University is set to celebrate Veterans this week, President Tisa Mason talks to us about that and more on this episode of the Post Podcast.

 

Tisa Mason 

We're really excited. And actually, I would say a year or so ago, when the fabulous Senator Jerry Moran was on our campus, we talked about what we were doing with the National De-escalating Training Center, which we started actually in August of 2020. And we're a part of a national network that is definitely working on education to provide both in person and online, law enforcement professionals with some new skills in their toolkit and techniques to defuse potentially dangerous situations, which we know happens all the time. Or more often than we want. And not just with law enforcement, it happens in all of our lives. And so these are really, you know, great skills. And we're really excited about that. So this grant is going to help us as the $1.25 million grant from the Department of Justice, and really, Senator Moran was very instrumental in facilitating the awarding of this grant. So we're excited we're going to have on campus to celebrate his efforts and our ability to move forward. He'll be here on November 23, when we will, officially and ceremonially accept the grant.

 

James Bell 

Love it. Um, is there? Is there an event planned yet? Or is it still kind of in the works a little bit

 

Tisa Mason 

It is planned.

 

James Bell 

Okay. Well, we'll keep an eye out for some details there. Um, oh,

 

Tisa Mason 

4 p.m.

 

James Bell 

Yes. Okay, there we go.

 

Tisa Mason 

4 p.m. at the Fischli Wills Center.

 

James Bell 

I love that, because officially wills what a perfect opportunity, if you haven't yet to get in there and see that new building that thing is amazing.

 

Tisa Mason 

It's fun to have it there too, because it's about success. That's a building about student success. And this is about world of success.

 

James Bell 

Absolutely. And from my understanding, you had some contributions that kind of helped technology-wise with that whole thing, right?

 

Tisa Mason 

Well, you know, I'm a huge fan of our Teaching Innovation and Learning Technologies team, which are our instructional design teams that build and work with faculty on all our outstanding distance learning. And so the team that is working with the De-escalation Training Center, matched up with TILT the Teaching Innovation and Learning Technology so that they could create really immersive safe paced scenario based learning experiences for the people that will be going through this program. So again, we're I'm we're married, marrying, so to speak, rich content and skill building with a history of strong online learning platforms. And that's one of the things that we're really good at.

 

James Bell 

Yeah, I was gonna say online education. When you think online education, at least in the Midwest, I think Fort Hays is always the top of that conversation. Oh, very cool. Well, moving on. Also, you know, it's we're coming up on Veterans Day. Oh, I think it's a, you know, week or so week and a half away from now. And you're going to be celebrating that as well down at Fort Hays State.

 

Tisa Mason 

Yeah, I love the opportunity to say thank you to our military and of course, Veterans Day gives us the ability to do that, especially for those who are serving now. And we're going to have lots of activities on campus. Participants can see a flag in a poster display that celebrates our heritage with the connection to the military. We have a strong connection with military, military programs, and other ways that we work with our service members of whom we for whom we are very, very grateful for. That will happen in both the Memorial Union and Fishchli Wills Center for Student Success. We also have an opportunity to folks to leave messages in recognition of family members who have answered the call to duty. Again, very grateful I'm and the daughter and the sister of a veteran so it hits home with me for sure. On Thursday at 11 o'clock. We're going to host our annual Veterans Day ceremony on the quad side of the Memorial Union. And then at our outstanding we're going to win football game on Saturday. We will have a Military Appreciation and a Senior Day. I understand from Matt Cook will be managing horses, people and motorcycles for that game so it should be a fun football game.

 

James Bell 

Very cool. Yeah, go out it very least cheer on the Tigers and help us celebrate those military professionals that yes, are very important to us. Every, all of us really. There's one other thing we want to hit on before we go. And that's, you know, the COVID thing. Fort Hays State, you know you guys have done a pretty good job. I think down there you we haven't seen a whole lot of activity there. But one of the things that I think is been huge in the news is the D-one schools, the vaccine mandates they are mandating, but Fort Hays is going a different way, right?

 

Tisa Mason 

Yeah, we have not implemented a vaccine mandate. We did have an incentive program I think we talked about at this point, I think we are a little above approximately 80 percent of our faculty and staff. I don't recall the percentage off the top my head for the students, but I know that it's over 50 percent of our students as well. Most importantly, we have to be careful of our residential students, and isolation and our high has been well, it was three students till the other day, we're up to four students. But it's been very minimal. We've really done really well with people making local decisions. But what happened recently is the federal government said that they were going to put language in federal contracts. So research institutions are particularly going to have to make decisions about a vaccine mandate whether they wanted to do one or not, and turning down contracts from the federal government because there's a lot at research institutions. For Fort Hays State right now, although we have grants and contracts. At this point, we reviewed all of them, not one of them, includes the language. So we are watching, we are studying, if we get a contract that hasn't, we'll have a conversation about whether we turn it down or move forward. And our hope is not to have to do a mandate. It's really unfortunate, quite frankly, that we've been put in this position but so far, we're holding strong we do not have to mandate and we are going to continue with our excellent success on mitigating the spread of the virus on our campus. Another shout out to the doctors and Student Health and the faculty and the staff and everyone who has come together, our students to make our environment safe.