Janet and Carl Nuzman

Changing Lives by: making several gifts to K-State including: a gift to the West Seaton Renovation Campaign to name a faculty office in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, and through bequests in their wills, creating the Janet Steck Nuzman Teaching and Coaching Scholarship and the Carl E. Nuzman Engineering Scholarship.

K-State connection: Janet Steck Nuzman is a 1953 physical education graduate of K-State. Carl, also a 1953 graduate, earned a bachelor’s degree in agricultural engineering. Janet and Carl Nuzman met when they were students at Topeka High School. After graduation, they both moved to Manhattan to attend K-State, and after four years of dating, they were married the summer before their senior year.

Why they gave: “K-State just meant all the world to me, as I’m sure it does to the kids who are there now,” Janet said. “The education I received at Kansas State prepared me for my life’s work, so it seemed natural to want to give back. I hope that today’s students will consider K-State a part of their family. It certainly is to me.”

Local rivalry: Carl earned a master’s degree in water resources engineering in 1966 from the University of Kansas. Janet also attended KU, earning a master’s degree in education and physical education in 1968.

“Many of my relatives have attended K-State,” Carl said. “When Jan and I were at KU working on our graduate degrees, we kidded my family that we were down there doing missionary work!”