The Olathe Innovation Campus has a focus on graduate work in research bioenergy, animal health, plant science and food safety and security.

[13][14] K-State is the third-oldest school in the Big 12 Conference and the oldest public institution of higher learning in the state of Kansas.

[16] When the college opened for its first session on September 2, 1863, it became only the second public institution of higher learning to admit women and men equally in the United States.

[13] Twelve years after opening, the university moved its main campus from the location of Blue Mont Central College to its present site in 1875.

"[13] During this era, in 1873, Kansas State helped pioneer the academic teaching of home economics for women, becoming one of the first two colleges to offer the program of study.

However, in modern practice, the "Agriculture and Applied Science" portion has usually been omitted even from official documents such as state statutes.

[27] He was succeeded by Richard Linton, a former dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Science at North Carolina State University (2012–2022).

[17] A commission to establish a state university in Lawrence was called for later in the same legislative session, provided that town could meet certain requirements, and finalized later that year.

Originally named the Industrial Workshop, this section of Seaton Hall is the oldest remaining education building on the Manhattan campus.

Anderson Hall, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has housed the university's administrative offices for more than a century.

[30] Since 1986, Kansas State ranks first nationally among public universities in its total of Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, Goldwater, and Udall scholars with 147 recipients.

The institution petitioned in 1925, and three years later received, a charter of Mortar Board National College Senior Honor Society.

[43] The BRI, in Pat Roberts Hall, is a safe and secure location in which scientists and their collaborators can study high-consequence pathogens.

The excimer laser, which made LASIK eye surgery possible, is a technology developed by Kansas State researchers.

[47][48] After a series of efforts to secure a more high-powered signal for the university – including a brief cooperation with John R. Brinkley's notorious KFKB – Kansas State was granted a license for KSAC, which began broadcasting with 500 watts of power on December 1, 1924.

[48] On March 9, 1932, the Federal Radio Commission granted Kansas State a license to operate the television station W9XAK.

[49] K-State Research Exchange, referred to as K-REx, is a local branding of Kansas State University's implementation of DSpace.

[52][53] Kansas State University graduate students are required to submit an electronic version of their thesis, dissertation, or report, and then are made openly available through the K-State Research Exchange (K-REx), and become indexed by search engines.

The university also offers an annual cycle of performance art at McCain Auditorium, including concerts, plays and dance.

[57] The former All-University Convocation lecture series – which began with a speech by Harry Golden on April 3, 1963, and ended in 1997[58] – brought to campus prominent leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Supreme Court Justices Byron White and William O. Douglas, Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, Rep. Shirley Chisholm, and thinkers such as Arthur C. Clarke, Benjamin Spock, Betty Friedan, Buckminster Fuller, and Saul Alinsky.

[63] Student media include KSDB-FM "Wildcat 91.9", KKSU-LD "Channel 8", the Kansas State Collegian, and the Royal Purple Yearbook.

Since the early 2010s, K-State students have chanted obscenities at sporting events toward their rival, the University of Kansas, to Darude's Sandstorm and the Wabash Cannonball.

Sports sponsored by the school include football, basketball, cross country and track, baseball, golf, tennis, rowing, women's soccer, and volleyball.

Harold Robinson became the first African-American athlete in the conference in more than two decades and the first ever to receive a scholarship, playing football for Kansas State in 1949.

The 46th Governor of Kansas, who served as Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom under President Donald Trump, Sam Brownback, and one U.S.

[74] In line with its roots as a land grant college, a number of Kansas State's most eminent faculty in its earliest years were in the areas of agriculture, science and military.

In 2008, CASE and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching honored Michael Wesch as national Professor of the Year.