KU faculty to visit 4 northwest Kansas communities on Thursday, May 23

LAWRENCE -- On Thursday, May 23, more than 40 University of Kansas faculty and staff members will hear Kansans in northwest Kansas discuss challenges facing their communities.

On the fifth day of the six-day tour, KU faculty will visit sites in Nicodemus, population 22, in Graham County; Logan, 568, in Phillips County; Palco, 270, in Rooks County; and Hays, with about 20,000, in Ellis County.

Angela Bates-Tompkins, president of the Nicodemus Historical Society, will meet the faculty in Township Hall, one of five structures at the Nicodemus National Historic Site. Nicodemus is the only remaining western town established by African Americans after the Civil War. Bates-Tompkins and area residents hope visitor interest in Nicodemus will help revitalize the area.

In Logan, the KU faculty will tour the Dane G. Hansen Memorial Museum, established in 1973. The museum has attracted national publicity and visitors as well as about 300 traveling exhibits, many from the Smithsonian Institution. The current exhibit is a KU collection representing American Indians of the Northwest Coast, on display through June 2.

Polly Bales, president of the museum association and a KU alumna, will welcome the faculty and her guests to the museum for lunch and into her home for homemade pecan pie and coffee.

After lunch, the faculty will make four stops in Palco, hometown of Don Steeples, KU McGee professor of geology. Steeples annually guides the KU Wheat State tour through Palco's high school, grain elevator and his family farm with his brother, David of Stockton. This year the faculty will also visit a saddle-making shop and a machine shop that does an international business despite the lack of rail service.

Steeples' personal commentary provides the KU faculty, many of whom are new to Kansas, a near-textbook account of challenges facing farmers and many farm communities. Empty store fronts on Palco's main street hint of a busier time. In his tour notes, Steeples writes that telecommunications technology may be key to attracting professionals who want to return to (or settle in) a more peaceful and slow-paced environment.

Steeples recalls that from 1950 to 1970, Palco High School turned out nearly one MD, Ph.D. or lawyer a year with typical graduating classes of fewer than 25 students. "I believe this is a remarkable achievement of a small rural school," he says. Edith Couture, Palco social science teacher, will show the KU faculty the school's two-way interactive technology labs where students participate in distance learning classes such as college algebra, German, Spanish, art, science and speech.

At the John Steeples ranch, Don's cousin will talk with the faculty about his saddle-making business that evolved as part of his 250 cow-calf operation. Steeples creates tack and other leather items used in ranching for customers from Wyoming to Missouri. Historical societies and cowboy reenactment groups also call on Steeples for craft demonstrations.

Near Don Steeples' farm, Doug Kysar has a 28-year-old machine shop business that has blossomed into a high-tech firm doing business coast-to-coast and indirectly abroad. The shop started as a part-time venture in the 1970s oil drilling boom, supplementing Kysar's income as an industrial arts teacher in Hill City. When the oil boom went bust in the mid-1980s, Kysar and his wife wanted to stay in the area.

Using the Internet and road trips, Kysar has partnered with a robotics company in Oregon and a conveyor systems firm in Illinois to produce tooling solutions and parts for manufacturers with assembly-line production. Kysar Machine Products Inc. employs seven area residents and uses e-mail, phone, up-to-date software and UPS to do business coast-to-coast.

"We have some outstanding and skilled people here. They give us the benefit of their dedicated hard work, and we in turn strive to provide them with some good benefits to make it worthwhile to stay in this part of the country," Kysar says. He adds that a few weeks ago engineers from Los Angeles flew to Hays, drove to Palco and were stunned by the wide open spaces, the slow pace of rural life and the low cost of housing.

The faculty will conclude the day with dinner at the Ross and Marianna Beach Ranch near Hays. Several area residents will join the KU faculty as guests of the Beaches.

Itinerary for Thursday, May 23

7 a.m. Load the bus
7:30 a.m. Depart for Nicodemus
9:30 a.m. Arrive at Nicodemus for bus tour of town and presentation
10:45 a.m. Depart for Logan
11:30 a.m. Arrive at Dane Hansen Museum for Lunch, tour and dessert
1:30 p.m. Depart for Palco
2:30 p.m. Arrive Palco High School for distance learning demonstration
3 p.m. Walk over to Palco Grain Elevator for demonstration
3:30 p.m. Depart for Steeples Wheat Farm and the Palco Machine Tooling Company
4:10 p.m. Visit the Palco Machine Tooling Company and Steeples Wheat Farm
4:40 p.m. Visit the Palco Saddle Making Shop
5:25 p.m. Depart for Beach Ranch
6:15 p.m. Arrive at the Beach Ranch for picnic dinner
7:45 p.m. Depart for the Holiday Inn, Hays
8:15 p.m. Arrive at the Holiday Inn in Hays