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Since 1984 the Arthur Capper Cooperative Center has provided research and education for cooperatives
at Kansas State University. Meeting the needs of coops in the future will require engaging
industry in new and innovative ways.
I am confident that we can meet this challenge because of a strong relationship between Kansas
State University and the cooperative community.
There are a couple of key cooperative principles that the cooperative community is founded
on that relate and that’s our commitment to community and our emphasis and strength
on education, particularly cooperative education. And there was a need to emphasize coop education
for local coops, their management, directors, and then reach out to those outside the coop
community, especially university students and get them integrated into the coop family
and learning about coops and when we looked for a partner to do that with, it was just
natural with Kansas State’s tradition and the land grant vein to look for extension
and research opportunities and it fit very well to combine the two and look to K-State
to be able to develop that partnership.
Industry in the classroom is awesome. Because it’s forever changing, I mean we all know
how quickly everything changes. So it’s vital to have them in the classroom, to come
speak us, come tell us what it is they’re seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling, what they
see for us, and then also case studies. And up to date case studies are imperative, because
doing the case studies and working through that is something that you’ll apply those
and you can be like ‘Oh, I’ve actually developed a strategic plan for a company before,’
and so you can take that with you into the future.
Industry has a chance to greatly impact a student’s learning ability. For instance,
just what I did coming in and speaking with the classroom, exposing them to real world
risk based lending applications can be very key and can be provided by industry itself.
So this summer I was a research intern with Arthur Capper Cooperative Center coordinated
with Farmers’ Cooperative Elevator Company located in Cheney, Kansas. And I feel like
I helped them this summer on a grain facilities research project is what it started out being,
and we researched a lot of different production data as well as trends that are happening
and looked at the future of Farmers coop and maybe where they may be headed in the future
and the changes that they need to make to keep up with the changing times.
Sometimes there’s people that are involved at K-State and sophomores or juniors in college
that can teach us a lot about our own coop. They come in and look at it with a different
eye set than what we have and they’re able to educate us as far as what’s really going
on and find different things that can help us for the future. The K-State symposium,
I think brings a different venue to, not only our directors, but also the employees. I think
they both complement themselves, the director development program, and the symposium to
give our directors, our employees a chance to hear key not speakers from around the United
States, and not only get that education on timely topics, but also to get the networking
that they can get from fellow cooperators around the state and around the Midwest.
As an industry, we look at the Arthur Capper Center, I guess for lack of a better analogy
as another tool in our toolbox. We need to leverage that tool for the extension, the
research, and the education piece that it’s there for. And we need to utilize it as a
resource just like we would our accountant, legal, et cetera that way; and the Arthur
Capper Center can ultimately bring significant unbiased data to the table that as management
board will enable us to make better decisions for the future of our coops.