Dr. Marshall Stanton to Sign Book on KWU Tenure at Homecoming

Dr. Marshall Stanton has written only one book.

"It's enough to tell the story," said Stanton, former president of Kansas Wesleyan University.

Stanton will sign copies of his book, "From a Precipice to Grand Opera: KWU During the Stanton Presidency 1984-2002," at 2:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 24, in the Student Activities Center, during Homecoming 2025.

The book is a collection of anecdotes, notes from his presidency, and facts and figures to document how Kansas Wesleyan turned around from almost closing to stability.

When Stanton became president, the university was nearly ready to close, he said.

"Blind faith is a fundamental part of this book," he said. "I never felt that we were going to fail even though all the signs were there. We were bankrupt. We had $3.3 million in debt with six buildings, payable to the federal government. That debt was starving the institution."

He found a way to retire the debt, hired a football coach to turn the team around and expanded academic programs.

"There were no books that told the Wesleyan story from the perspective of the intellectual, aspiration and spiritual dimension," he told David Burke, a writer from the Great Plains United Methodists for an article. "There are books that are pretty much, 'This happened then,' that kind of process. This is a deeply personal dimension of the presidency. What's it like to sit in that office?"

That Marshall was even considered as president came as a surprise to everyone, including him. He had no training is academia but had spent 28 years as a parish pastor, then as district superintendent of the Hutchinson District of the Kansas West Conference of the United Methodist Church, a position that placed him on the KWU Board of Trustees. When the previous president resigned, he was asked to fill in as interim, then as permanent president.

He approached the university as he would any parish that was losing energy and membership.

"What I discovered was you add programs to the church and you add interest and members and money. I just transferred that concept here," Stanton said.

When he came on board, the endowment was $1.7 million. When he left, it was $17 million.

In between, Stanton turned the university around financially, renovated buildings, beautified the grounds and hired coaches to turn teams around. The theatre and music programs made huge gains, producing, literally, grand operas in conjunction with the Salina Symphony.

There is always more to the story, he said, but there won't be another book from him.

"I've had some thoughts about what I might have been put in, and it's infinite," Stanton said. "I've done enough, I've told the story and it leaves some things in the book that made the most difference to the institution."

Story by Jean Kozubowski