King to serve as winter graduate commencement speaker

Now in his 23^rd year at Chadron State College, King says he was pleased when he was hired by a college with a strong reputation for successfully training teachers and school administrators. Since then he has been deeply involved in making sure those standards are upheld, and is known for his enthusiastic approach to both his life and his work. He is among those individuals who never seems to have a bad day, has a strong work ethic, but always has time to listen and help those seeking his assistance.   

King came to Chadron State in 1993 as assistant to the dean of the School of Education and Physical Education. The dean was Dr. Thomas P. (Pat) Colgate, who insisted that Chadron State’s educational program be of the highest quality while meeting the needs of its constituents in rural America. King said Colgate was an outstanding mentor and he has tried to build on their experiences together.

Soon after Colgate retired in 2002, King was appointed to head the college’s Education Department. By then King had been promoted to full professor and was involved in expanding the scope of the program offerings and utilizing the technology that had become available for delivering higher education to more students, some of whom seldom had classes on campus. 

While some colleges and universities have de-emphasized the training of educators, Chadron State, which opened in 1911 specifically for that purpose, has continued to make it a staple in its curriculum. The college’s enrollment of students studying education on both the undergraduate and graduate levels has continued to grow.

While King has headed the Education Department, it has received full reaccreditation several times from both state and national agencies that have reviewed the program. Now the department’s longest-tenured member, he emphasizes he is fortunate to be surrounded by such capable faculty and staff, both past and present.

“I have worked with and learned from some amazing individuals at Chadron State,” he said.     

King was born and raised in southern California. After growing up riding horses his family owned, he had a strong interest in agriculture and studied it at both Pierce College in Los Angeles and at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, where he earned a bachelor’s of science degree in ag education in 1981.

He then taught agriculture in California high schools for five years while also studying for a master’s degree in agriculture at his undergraduate alma mater. After earning the degree, he received a fellowship to seek another master’s degree in education at the University of California-Davis. 

While completing that degree, he was recruited to study toward a doctorate in agricultural and extension education at Iowa State University (ISU). After receiving that degree in 1991, he worked in international agriculture programs through the ISU College of Agriculture and traveled to several South and Central American nations and to Eastern Europe prior to coming to Chadron State.

At CSC, King has accompanied students on three Study Abroad Programs that spent 10 days in England, Scotland and France, was a sponsor for a Chadron State group during spring break that helped with cleanup in New Orleans and Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina, and spent three weeks with a student-based group in South Africa and Swaziland this past May.

He has presented papers on open resource education at international conferences at Vancouver, British Columbia, and Park City, Utah, and co-authored a paper on agri-marketing that was presented in Minneapolis this summer.

He was president of the 18-member Nebraska Association of Colleges of Teacher Education in 2005-07 and has been coordinator of several Western Nebraska Excellence in Education and District Future Farmers of America Leadership Conferences on campus.

King’s wife, Stephanie, is a native of California and also was teaching high school agriculture courses when they met. She is employed by the Natural Resource Conservation Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The couple has two children, Olen, who is in his third year of teaching high school language arts in Sudan, Africa, and Taylor, who is married to CSC graduate Joel Schommer, has four children and lives in Brainard, Nebraska. Taylor is in the final stages of completing a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Chadron State.