The news last week that Michael Shonrock accepted the position as Emporia State’s 16th president will bring an end to the work of Edward Flentje, who is serving as interim-president for Emporia State University.
Flentje served the university and community well as an interim. During his short tenure he had to work through positive, negative and tragic news events. The positive was that the ESU Foundation is going to support the University by raising more than $7.5 million dollars to fund scholarships. The negative was ESU’s low enrollment numbers for a fourth straight year, and the tragic was the death of two ESU students who died in a house fire.
Through all these events he approached them with humility and honesty, which was a good fit for our community.
Flentje would have made a good president, but he is looking forward to returning to Wichita and going back to work as a professor at Wichita State University.
A couple of conversations with Flentje have stuck with me. One was his shock that a large portion of ESU professors live out of town and if the university wants to grow that needs to be corrected. The other was how when he attended ESU more than 50 years ago, it provided extraordinary opportunity to be involved, from academics, sports, student government and community, and how those same opportunities still exist for students today.
We wish Flentje well, and we hope he will come back and visit often.