Founded in 1902 on the plains of western Kansas, Fort Hays State University is the second youngest of the state's six universities. An ongoing five-year series of centennial activities will culminate in the year 2002.

From a humble but exciting beginning, when just two faculty members and a 19-course curriculum greeted 34 students, our university has grown to a faculty of nearly 300, a support staff of 250 and a student body of 7,500. The university now offers hundreds of courses in each of its four main colleges -- Education, Arts and Sciences, Business and Leadership, and Health and Life Sciences -- and the Graduate School. The FHSU Virtual College provides many of the courses through various media to sites across Kansas and beyond.

FHSU is governed by a Board of Regents appointed by the governor of the state of Kansas.

FHSU is located in Hays, the largest city in northwest Kansas. Hays began as a wild frontier town and has grown into a progressive community of about 20,000 people. The old and new blend beautifully to form a city that is small enough to be comfortable yet large enough to provide abundant cultural, commercial and entertainment opportunities. In 1996, Hays was recognized as an All-America City.

The university sits on a campus of 4,160 acres of land that once was part of the historic Fort Hays frontier military post, and it recently expanded to include the relocated Sternberg Museum of Natural History on a site adjacent to Interstate 70 in northeast Hays. Big Creek, with its shady, grassy banks, meanders through the main campus, providing a tranquil learning atmosphere and serving as a natural laboratory for students in the biological sciences. With its stately limestone buildings and profuse flowers, trees and shrubs, our campus has often been called the prettiest in Kansas.

FHSU is academically superior to many comparable universities, offers students an electronic learning and living environment, and is richly endowed by heritage and tradition. Students come to our university for a multitude of reasons, but surveys show that their overwhelming reason is "the university's reputation for academic excellence and its caring faculty."

The university supports one of the most extensive and successful intercollegiate sports programs of any comparably sized college or university in America, boasting numerous All-America athletes and national championships. More than 350 athletes compete annually in eight men's and eight women's sports. FHSU is a member of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, which comprises 14 schools from the states of Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska and New Mexico.

The university also serves as the cultural center of western Kansas, featuring fine arts exhibitions; performing arts presentations by faculty, students and traveling professional troupes; and a noted Presidential Lecture Series.