For more information, contact Michael Dawes, 620-792-9307, dawesm@bartonccc.edu

Dec. 17, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Story by: Michael Dawes
dawesm@bartonccc.edu

Students attending Barton Community College 40 years ago endured unique experiences compared to their counterparts at other colleges of the day. Their environment was also drastically different from Barton students who have followed in their footsteps these past four decades.

At the start of Barton’s first academic year, the campus consisted of just three buildings on campus - the Library, Technical Building, and the Science and Math Building. Those buildings stood in the midst of a massive construction zone, surrounded by mounds of dirt in what previously served as a 160-acre wheat field. Bitter-cold winds blew constantly during the winter with no trees around to offer protection for pedestrians. With only a circle sidewalk and a few sidewalks leading from that centerpiece, spring rains forced students to slosh, squish and plod their way to classrooms. After classes during those rainy times, they regularly helped classmates push their cars out of deep, muddy ruts. Likewise, classmates provided them a push to get out of those same muddy ruts.

Still, given those hardships, most of the 853 who enrolled that first semester, wouldn’t trade their unique college experiences. They signed up for the odyssey in late summer, knowing what hardships lay ahead. Having a college in their backyard was a gift that they truly appreciated, regardless of the obstacles they knew they would face and would ultimately need to overcome in order to climb the academic ladder.

“At that point, because I was paying for it myself, Barton was at the head of my list,” said original Barton student Steve Rothenberger, who graduated from Great Bend High School in 1969 and was the oldest of six children in his family. “I had not decided what my course in life was going to be. I was a bit naïve and still immature at that point; it made sense for me to stay at home to attend college.”

Steve Soeken, who grew up on a small farm, was in a similar situation, having graduated from Ellinwood High School in 1969.

“I just really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do so I did that,” said Soeken, who graduated with a degree in machine tool technology at Barton. “I went there for two years and then I went on to Pitt State. Overall, college was a good experience for me. I studied engineering and came out with a degree that I used for awhile.”

After working nearly six years for Hesston Corporation, which sold off and underwent a major layoff, Soeken returned to the family farm in 1978 to help his father who had been injured in a farm accident at that same time.

Connie Kruckenberg, who also came from a family farm, said she never considered going anywhere else after graduating from Great Bend High School in 1969.

“I thought it was exciting that there was going to be a new college here,” said Connie, who now has the last name Karlin. “My family didn’t have a lot of money. It made a lot of economic sense and I was able to commute to school. It made it easy and feasible.”

Fellow 1969 Great Bend High School graduate Craig Vink considered attending Kansas State University, but attending the new local College allowed him to continue working for his father’s Great Bend business, Office Products Inc.

“Financially, it worked out better to go to Barton for two years and then go on to Hays to finish my business degree,” explained Vink, who now operates the Office Products Inc. store in Larned.

What Barton lacked in physical space, sidewalks and trees, it more than made up for in the quality instruction those first two years. Rothenberger remembers quite a few instructors who came from nearby high schools to teach college students – a new, yet familiar experience for students and teachers. Vink said his instructors are what he remembers most about his Barton experience. “Our instructors were good and they were good people,” he said. Karlin refers to Barton’s first students, instructors and faculty as a “close-knit group because we had to be.”

“I think it made it a lot of fun,” reflected Karlin. “I don’t think we actually saw it as being a burden or something that we had to work through. Thinking back on it, the faculty was resourceful because every nook and cranny that was available, if you could put 10 kids there, it became a classroom. We had classes everywhere there was a space.”

Their college experiences weren’t always about adjustments to confined spaces, wind, mud and construction. Karlin remembers perpetual pitch games happening in the makeshift union in the lobby area of the Technical Building.

“If you had to go to class, you grabbed somebody who didn’t have class to take your place,” said Karlin. “I would dare say anyone who graduated from those first two years could play a mean game of pitch.”

And even though their lunchroom was a bank of vending machines in what eventually became a welding lab in the Technical Building, they also enjoyed typical student activities, like dances, performances, athletics and other extra-curricular experiences similar to other college students across the country.

Those first Barton students were fixtures of a constantly-changing campus environment through the first two-years of the College’s existence. In May 1971, that consistent human element changed when more than 200 students participated in Barton’s first commencement activities in a gymnasium that wasn’t even built during their first semester at Barton. Those original students, who began Barton’s traditions, dispersed to proverbial greener pastures - some close by and others to other parts of the state and country, to pursue education and opportunities. But forever they share a connection – that original band of Barton brothers and sisters.

Words written by student-newspaper editor Sharon Collier in the final Interrobang issue of the 1970-71 academic year appropriately described the significance of that first class’s pending farewell.

“No matter what can be said about this year, one thing must not go unmentioned. We were first. No one can take that away from us, no one else can say that, only us. For we struggled through a first year in three buildings, trying to build a future and now we are the first to say, ‘It is finished.’”

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Fields of Academic Dreams – This aerial photo, taken by Brannan’s Studio, Great Bend, show Barton Community College as it appeared June 4, 1969.