award honorees.
Seven WSU alumni, faculty, staff and friends were applauded Feb. 12 at the Wichita Marriott, continuing a tradition of celebrating achievement as well as service to the university and society.
A crowd of well-wishers paid tribute to the 2008 award honorees, who joined an ever-growing list of noted individuals who have excelled in their professions and contributed to their communities in myriad but always extraordinary ways.
WSU Alumni Association President Dan Unruh ’86 recounts, “At our annual awards banquet, we recognize some of our most accomplished alumni and friends who have left an indelible mark on our lives and in our communities. The diversity of their contributions to society is a source of great pride for all of us.”
The Alumni Achievement Award, established in 1955, is the highest honor given to WSU alumni by the alumni association. Recognition Awards are presented to alumni, friends, faculty or staff for outstanding public service and/or for particular service to Wichita State. The Laura Cross Distinguished Service Award recognizes WSU staff or retired staff who have given exceptional service to the university.
The Young Alumnus Award is presented in recognition of the accomplishments of a wsu graduate 40 years old or younger. And the Award of Distinction is given to individuals for contributions that are of a special and unique order.
Contributing to the success of the awards banquet were many individuals and companies, including members of the awards selection committee; Bonnie Bing Honeyman, who served as emcee; Larry Hatteberg, the voiceover talent for award recipient videos; Tom Fowler and John Goering, musicians; Cocoa Dolce, which donated specially crafted chocolates as event favors; Standard Beverage Corp., which provided champagne and wine; and Gardner Design, which created a three-dimensional design for the event invitations.
2008 ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Marilyn B. Pauly
Marilyn Pauly ’72 has blazed a most distinguished path through the course of her career in banking. She began work in the financial services industry as a part-time clerk at Bank IV Wichita while a student at Wichita State, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in 1972. That year, there were 20 women, Pauly included, among the 298 WSU business administration graduates.
In 2000, this wife, mother and Shocker sports fan retired as president of Bank of America, Kansas, after three decades of accomplished work. Today, she serves as vice chairman of Commerce Bank, where she oversees credit administration and is involved in the bank’s business-development and community-relations activities.
“Marilyn is first and foremost a community leader. Her commitment to Wichita is famous,” says John Clevenger, president, CEO and chairman of Commerce Bank. “Anyone who knows Marilyn knows she’s a consummate professional. She brings a high degree of intelligence and an unparalleled work ethic to everything she does.”
One of nine siblings (six are WSU alumni!) who grew up on a farm near Conway Springs, Kan., Pauly gathered eggs, fed chickens and milked cows, among other chores. While in high school, she worked at a grain elevator — and also served as class president. She credits her interest in banking to a scholarship she received from a Conway Springs bank. From that spark, her career caught fire.
After joining Bank IV Wichita in 1969, she steadily rose through the ranks — assistant vice president (1975), vice president (1981), senior vice president (1986), executive vice president (1990) — and served as bank president from 1993 to 2000. She achieved many “firsts” during her tenure. For example, she became at the age of 24 the youngest woman in Bank IV history to be named an officer. And, a month after she was elected president, Jim Maag, then senior vice president of the Kansas Bankers Association, said: “There are not many women nationally who lead banks bigger than Bank IV. In the history of Kansas banking, there are none.”
Her professionalism and executive sense of fair play were widely noted. In the mid-1990s, Kansas Senator Bob Dole recommended her to serve on the President’s Glass Ceiling Commission. Pauly and 20 other women and minorities from across the country were then appointed by Congress to the commission and mandated to study discrimination in the work place and what could be done to overcome the barriers to more diversity in higher positions.
In 1993, U.S. Secretary of Labor Lynn Martin penned a letter of thanks to Pauly. The letter reads, in part, “Best wishes to you on your efforts to level the playing field so that qualified minorities and women have more of an opportunity to move up the corporate ladder.”
In addition to her many career accomplishments, Pauly has a rich history of commitment to civic and community activities. About her involvement, she says simply: “I enjoy making a difference when I can.” She serves as a member of the Visioneering Wichita Steering Committee and on the boards of the United Way of the Plains, YMCA, Catholic Care Center and Riverside Health Foundation.
Through the years, she has also contributed time and talent to Exploration Place, the American Red Cross, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Heartspring, Kansas 4-H Foundation — and to her alma mater, where she has served on the Wichita State University Board of Trustees and currently is a member of the WSU Foundation Board of Directors. In 2000, she was honored as the recipient of the WSU President’s Medal.
“I have enormous admiration and respect for Marilyn in her business career — but also her passion to be a great community volunteer,” says Elizabeth King, CEO and president of the WSU Foundation. “And, of course, she’s a wonderful Shocker!”
For her trailblazing professional achievements in banking, coupled with her generous and heartfelt contributions to improving her community, Marilyn Pauly is the 2008 recipient of the Wichita State University Alumni Achievement Award.
2008 UNIVERSITY RECOGNITION
Dean E. Headley
Without a doubt, Dean Headley ’82 is most widely known as the co-author of the Airline Quality Rating research project. For 18 years now, this associate professor and chair of the department of marketing and entrepreneurship at WSU’s W. Frank Barton School of Business, has researched the quality of commercial airline performance and announced the annual AQR findings to an ever-growing national and international audience.
Headley and his research partner, Brent Bowen of St. Louis University, have made appearances on ABC's Good Morning America, NBC's Today Show, 20/20, CNN and C-Span, among numerous other TV news outlets. They’ve given interviews on many national radio segments, and their research has been featured in articles published in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, Business Week, and U.S. News and World Report, to name a few of the national press clamoring to cover the AQR.
Although Headley’s skill as an airline researcher may cast the widest net of public attention, he is also an award-winning educator who specializes in marketing research and services marketing. Through the years, the many class research projects he has assigned and overseen have not only provided his students with invaluable hands-on experience, but also benefited a number of local businesses, organizations and university entities (including the WSU Alumni Association, University Communications and the WSU Athletic Department), by gifting them with the research results.
In addition to his many academic accomplishments, Headley is an avid fisherman and master craftsman of custom fishing rods. He enjoys golfing too, says his wife Esther ’79, but if there’s time for only one outdoors activity, it’s going to be fishing.
For his high-flying accomplishments, and how those accomplishments reflect positively on Wichita State, Dean Headley is the 2008 University Recognition Award honoree.
2008 DISTINGUISHED SERVICE
Ruth E. Matz
Ruth Matz has been an organizing, energizing presence in Wichita State’s athletic department for 27 years now. She started her Shocker career in 1981, when she accepted a position as secretary to then-WSU athletic director Ted Bredehoft.
Through the years, she has taken on duties that have ranged from overseeing the distribution of letters of intent and of student-athlete eligibility, to event and travel planning. One of her many responsibilities today is managing the Champions Club in Charles Koch Arena.
Matz says one of her most memorable work projects came in 1989 when the Shockers won the College World Series. The baseball team was invited to the White House to meet President George H.W. Bush, and it was Matz who was responsible for organizing the trip and obtaining security clearances for the
travel party. “It was,” she says, “a hectic two days, but it just doesn’t get more fun than that!”
For her dedicated work in supporting student-athletes, athletic directors, fans and staff, as well as the wider university community, Ruth Matz is the Distinguished Service Award honoree.
2008 YOUNG ALUMNA AWARD
V. Kaye Monk-Morgan
As director of the federally funded Upward Bound Math Science Regional Center at Wichita State, Kaye Monk-Morgan ’93/96 is charged with advancing the interest of disadvantaged high school students in science, technology, engineering, math and health-related fields.
It is a charge she is devoted to and uplifted by.
Wichita native Monk-Morgan received WSU’s prestigious Harry Gore Scholarship in 1989. After her graduation, she served as a residence hall director at WSU’s Fairmount Towers, where she managed a 300-student dormitory.
Two years later, she became project director of the Neighborhood Freedom Corps, a federally funded program that centers on individual service and personal development. In 1996, after earning a master’s degree in public administration, she returned to WSU to work in the Office of Admissions. Then in 1997, she accepted the position of director at the Upward Bound regional center.
Away from the office, Monk-Morgan makes time for community and other university service, including serving on the wsu Alumni Association Board of Directors. For her unflagging commitment to helping others overcome obstacles of circumstance, this Gore scholar, wife, mother and consummate professional well deserves the 2008 Young Alumna Award.
2008 AWARD OF DISTINCTION
The Honorable Wesley E. Brown
Wesley Brown was born in Hutchinson, Kan., in 1907, the year there were only 8,000 cars in the United States. The year the art of Cubism and the electric vacuum cleaner were invented — the year Oklahoma became a state.
Brown recalls the early years of his life as happy, with a few exceptions. For instance, he was once run over by a horse and buggy. Luckily, he suffered no long-term ill effects.
Even in grade school, he always had a job. He mowed lawns and sold the Saturday Evening Post for a nickel. In high school, he had a paper route and was a soda jerk at a Hutchinson drug store. After graduating high school, he set out for college and in 1933, after earning a law degree from the University of Kansas, he entered the law profession. Over the course of his lauded career, he was Reno County Attorney from 1933-38; was a partner in the private firm of Williams, Martindell, Carey & Brown of Hutchinson; served as a bankruptcy referee for the state of Kansas; and was nominated by President Kennedy as a federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas.
After his Senate confirmation and taking the oath of office, he began hearing cases on April 13, 1962. In 1979, he took senior status, but continues to hear cases at the U.S. Courthouse in Wichita — at the age of 101. For his long and distinguished service on the federal bench, The Honorable Wesley E. Brown is the recipient of the Award of Distinction.
2008 ALUMNI RECOGNITION
Charles and Liz Koch
Charles and Liz Koch’s philanthropic endeavors touch nearly every sector of our community, and beyond. From arts and education, to athletics, environmental stewardship and human services, their generosity has advanced learning, fostered entrepreneurship, improved our quality of life and roused our spirits.
Charles Koch Arena is one example. There’s simply not a more spirited venue in the region. Koch Industries’ donation of $6 million to Wichita State’s $26 million Roundhouse Renaissance campaign eight years ago helped ensure the Shockers a state-of-the-art sports arena for years to come. The donation stands as the largest single corporate gift ever made to the university.
As chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, Inc., Charles Koch has guided the business his father co-founded in 1940 through legendary growth, prompting Forbes magazine to describe Koch Industries as one of the largest private companies in America. With about $100 billion in revenues, Koch companies’ global reach includes Flint Hills Resources’ refining and chemicals operations; Koch Chemical Technology Group; Koch Minerals; Koch Fertilizer; Koch Supply and Trading; INVISITA, maker of STAINMASTER® carpet fiber and LYCRA® fiber; and Georgia-Pacific, maker of Quilted Northern® tissue and Dixie® products.
Charles Koch credits Koch Industries’ success to Market-Based Management®, the business philosophy he developed and continues to refine. Described in his 2007 book, “The Science of Success,” MBM® brings the power of the free market into Koch companies. Employees are encouraged to learn and live by MBM Guiding Principles, applying them in their professional and personal lives. These Guiding Principles, which include integrity, compliance, value creation and Principled Entrepreneurship™, have played key roles in both Charles’ and Liz’s lives.
Liz Koch — president and a director of the Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foundation, a director of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and trustee of Koch Cultural Trust — also serves on the executive committee of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship and as chairman of the board of Youth Entrepreneurs Kansas, which she and Charles founded in 1991.
Along with Youth Entrepreneurs Atlanta, which she also founded, YEK's mission is to provide high school students, especially those at-risk, with business and entrepreneurial education and experiences to help them prosper and become contributing members of society.
Among the Kochs’ many other charitable involvements is a longstanding relationship with the Salvation Army. Liz Koch serves on the advisory boards for the Wichita Salvation Army and the National Salvation Army. After the city of Greensburg, Kan., was destroyed by a tornado in 2007, Koch companies, working with the Salvation Army, stepped forward with one of the largest gifts of cash and in-kind services to support disaster relief efforts.
Both Charles and Liz Koch have deep roots in Wichita. They were born here and raised their two children here. With hard work and vision, they have created real, long-term value for Wichita State University, the wider Wichita community, and beyond. In 2006, the Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foundation contributed $1 million to the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in the Flint Hills. At that time, the gift was one of the largest private donations for conservation in Kansas history.
For their unbounded commitment to bettering their local — and global — community, Charles and Liz Koch are the 2008 recipients of the WSU Alumni Recognition Award.
— Contributing David Dinell ’05, Brendan Kachel, Molly Walsh
