Time in Bluemont Hall sparked career path for Kansas Board of Regents President and CEO Jennifer Bonds-Raacke
By Tim Schrag '12
Fond memories surround Kansas State University and Manhattan for Jennifer Bonds-Raacke ’02, ’04, who became president and CEO of the Kansas Board of Regents in July.
Her daughter, Callie, was born here. Her husband, John ’03, ’05, an instructor at Barton Community College, keeps her up-to-date on all things K-State sports-related. Along with their younger daughter, Brooke, they often drive as a family from Hays, Kansas, to Manhattan on holidays to enjoy the hibachi and sushi offerings at Umi Japanese Steakhouse.
The large lecture space of Room 101 in Bluemont Hall is uniquely special to Bonds-Raacke. The 200-seat lecture hall used for a variety of departments is where Bonds-Raacke found her love of teaching working as a graduate assistant in the Department of Psychological Sciences.
“I loved being in the classroom and helping students connect all across campus, and making sure that they felt like they were welcomed and belonged because someone did that for me,” she said. “That’s how my passion developed. I just found the students to be so generous in the classroom in terms of knowing that each faculty member is wanting to share content and do it to the best of their abilities, and I found them to be like great partners in that learning relationship. It wasn't just me. We did this together. We learned together, and that sparked a passion.”
At K-State she learned from faculty members about the importance of collaboration.
“In academia, sometimes you can be in environments where everything is very competitive, and people want to be the best, and it can be cutthroat,” she said. “And that was not my experience at K-State. I learned how you can be the best, and you can support others in being their best. I think about that a lot when I'm making decisions about how to lead, when we need to involve different stakeholders, and the importance of involving those stakeholders along the way.”
She’s stayed engaged with K-State by serving on the Department of Psychological Sciences advisory board, even serving as its president for a period.
Since her time in Bluemont Hall, Bonds-Raacke has taken her passion for teaching and built a career in academic affairs. With stops along the way at Briar Cliff University, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Fort Hays State University, St. Norbert College, St. Martin’s University and the Kansas Board of Regents, she has held nearly every academic rank serving as a professor, a department head, a dean, a provost, a university president, and as university system administrator.
The Board of Regents governs the state’s six universities. It also serves as the statewide coordinating board for the state’s 32 public higher education institutions (six state universities, one municipal university, 19 community colleges and six technical colleges). Bonds-Raacke succeeds Blake Flanders ’86, ’89, ’04 in the role and led the Regents from 2015-2026.
Bonds-Raacke said her career has uniquely prepared her for the role because her experience covers a breadth of institutional sizes and scopes.
“We work with 32 institutions,” she said. “They are varying sizes, with very distinct missions, and so I do think that being at different institutions gives me a firsthand appreciation for how those distinct missions, one, serve the communities that they're in, but then, two, when we think about the state of Kansas, we have diverse educational needs, and we need to have a portfolio of institutions that support any Kansan who wants to attain a higher level of education and what that purpose might be.”
Now a few months into her new role, Bonds-Raacke is ready to be a champion for each of the member institutions and help them leverage their strengths to meet future challenges.
“No one is resting on what they were great at 10 years ago,” she said. “Everyone is following and staying up to date with research. They're engaging with AI. They're making sure that we are leading in areas where we have the expertise.”
Now, she’s focused on meeting with stakeholders across the state and learning as much as she can about the 32 intuitions the board coordinates. Bonds-Raacke said the board is focused on three goals for the school year. The first being to form a task force around AI and the broad impact it can have. The second is around governance ensuring the state institutions under the board have the policies, funding and incentives to provide quality higher education for the next 20 to 50 years. The third focuses on cultivating strategic relationships that foster collaboration and facilitate alignment and leadership across the Kansas public higher education system.
“I really want to take the opportunity to be on all of our campuses, so I can experience things firsthand, and I'm excited for that. I'm also learning that there are many things to celebrate across the state. That all of our institutions share a deep commitment for students. They're passionate about being innovative, whether that's in their pedagogy or their scholarship. And I'm excited to do the tough work because, this is a really difficult time for higher ed, and we have a lot of challenges facing us at the national level and at the state level. I want to engage in that as partners and really face it head on, so that we're successful.”