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Sunflower Girls State now in session
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Budget pressure takes toll on faculty By Andy Hyland ahyland@ljworld.com
John Young/Journal-World Photos
FREE STATE SENIOR-TO-BE KERRIE LEINMILLER-RENICK, center, shares a laugh with members of her city while they decide which governmental positions each will take as they participate in Sunflower Girls State on Sunday at Kansas University’s Ellsworth Hall.
Weeklong event gives participants experience in governmental functions By Shaun Hittle sdhittle@ljworld.com
The 250 or so girls were there to form governments, vote for leaders and create laws. But the chatter in the early stages of the 73rd annual Sunflower Girls State hinted that the civic-minded teens would also be having some fun during the six-day event. “OK, we need a mischiefmaker,” said one member of the fictional city of Kaskakia, meeting on the seventh floor of Ellsworth Hall on the Kansas University campus. For pranks, of course. “I had no idea at first what this was,” said Kerrie Leinmiller-Renick, who just finished up her junior year at Free State High School. “I expect a lot of fun.”
The event invites girls from the across the state who have finished their junior year of high school to gather for a wide variety of government-related activities. It would be a chance to learn about state politics and add another line on the resume and college applications, said Ashyln Evans, also a Free State senior-to-be. Evans has been involved in a Model United Nations program through her school for years, and was encouraged by her mom, who also attended Girls State, to sign up. Evans and the other girls will vie for a wide variety of elected positions through the week. She’s considering a run for lieutenant governor.
Raquel Dominquez, a Bishop Seabury Academy student, was thinking about running for one of the supreme court justice positions. Today, she’ll be taking a bar exam of sorts to make sure she’ll qualify. It fits in line with her career goal of becoming a lawyer. Dominquez said she expects a tough race for the position, but “it’ll be a great experience either way.” Dominquez decided to attend Girls State after a recommendation from a friend who attended the program a couple years ago. “It opened a lot of doors for her,” Dominquez said. — Reporter Shaun Hittle can be reached at 832-7173. Follow him at Twitter.com/shaunhittle.
HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS FROM AROUND the state line one of the hallways in Ellsworth Hall as they play games to get to know each other.
As budget cuts become a more frequent part of life for university leaders, decisions dealing with them are landing in the laps of people who haven’t been formally trained on how to handle those “financial tsunamis,” Kansas University research has shown. And that has had an adverse effect on the leaders’ health, department morale and accomplishing the goals of higher education, according to the researchers, Rick Ginsberg, dean of KU’s School of Education, and Karen Multon, chairwoman and professor of research and psychology in education. Multon said the researchers questioned 56 deans and 45 department chairs around the country as part of their research. “The cuts created some very serious challenges in their work,” she said. Leaders found themselves making decisions about what to cut and which positions to keep open after someone leaves. While there are some books on how to be a better department chair, they mainly focus on conflict resolution and managing people, Multon said. Dealing with budgets isn’t typically covered. Leaders reported they had to do “more with less” and with larger class sizes, fewer faculty and smaller travel budgets becoming “the new normal” after years of declining resources. “You have very little training in that sort of thing,” Multon said. “I was trained as a faculty member: teaching, research, service.” The researchers found that being transparent helps in dealing with difficult budgetary situations. Please see BUDGET, page 2A
Toy story delves into history of World War I By Caroline Boyer cboyer@theworldco.info
At first glance, it might look like Bonner Springs resident Steve Allen gets to play with toys all day. But his home-based business, Timewalker Toys & Collectibles, is a very serious undertaking. For one thing, business is booming for the online retailer of one-sixth-scale figures, largely consisting of World War II military figures and
movie characters. Allen said the company has been virtually untouched by a downtrodden economy. “We’ve never really seen a period of stagnation, even through the worst of the recession,” he says. For another, Allen and his wife, Margaret, have taken on the significant task of introducing a new era to the market, producing a prototype for a World War I line of figures. Already, a copycat figure is being produced by another
Not just a G.I. Joe Allen got into the one-
sixth-scale industry a decade ago as a collector, shortly after it started to grow when a company called Dragon Models started producing fully articulated, historically accurate World War II figures. “A lot of people will look at it superficially and think back to the days of the old G.I. Joes that are 12-inch,” Allen said. “But they’ve come so far Special to the Journal-World now, that the representation STEVE AND MARGARET ALLEN, owners of of a soldier in one-sixth-scale Timewalker Toys & Collectibles, hope to have their first World War I toy available this fall. Please see TOY, page 6A
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manufacturer that caught wind of the Allens’ line, but the Allens hope it is clear their toy is of a higher quality. “They have produced a similar product; ours is distinguished in the fact that it is much more historically accurate,” Steve Allen said. “It’s not to say that their figure is bad, but it’s more of the common kind of output you get from the industry.”
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