Written by  Beth Bohn on ksu.edu.
The 2016 graduates are part of the 149th class to graduate from Kansas State University.MANHATTAN — It’s graduation time for around 3,000 Kansas State University students. They are scheduled Friday and Saturday on the Manhattan campus.

Commencement speakers will include the university’s head football coach, an infectious disease expert, an aviation CEO and a former Kansas Farm Bureau CEO.

Degrees to be awarded include 2,800 bachelor’s, more than 460 master’s, nearly 90 doctorates, 115 Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and 10 associate. More than 240 students are earning degrees through K-State Global campus distance degree programs.

Graduate degrees will be award on the Manhattan campus May 13. The Graduate School ceremony will be at 1 p.m. in Bramlage Coliseum.

Scattered showers are possible this morning and afternoon, mainly in far eastern Kansas according to the NWS of Topeka. From here, expect dry conditions and a gradual warm up through the work week.

Early This Morning: Cloudy. Northwest winds up to 5 mph.

Today: Mostly cloudy. Highs in the lower 60s. North winds 5 to 10 mph.

Tonight: Partly cloudy. Lows in the lower 40s. Northeast winds up to 5 mph shifting to the southwest after midnight.

Tuesday: Mostly sunny. Highs in the lower 70s. West winds up to 10 mph.

Tuesday Night: Mostly clear. Lows in the upper 40s. West winds 5 to 10 mph.

Wednesday: Sunny. Highs in the lower 70s. North winds 5 to 15 mph.

Wednesday Night: Clear. Lows in the mid 40s.

Thursday: Sunny. Highs in the mid 70s.

Thursday Night: Mostly clear. Lows in the lower 50s.

Friday: Mostly sunny. Highs in the upper 70s.

Friday Night: Partly cloudy. Lows in the upper 50s.

Saturday: Mostly sunny. Highs in the lower 80s.

Saturday Night: Partly cloudy in the evening then becoming mostly cloudy. Lows in the upper 50s.

Sunday: Mostly cloudy with a 50 percent chance of rain showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the mid 70s.

Volunteers spread out across the community on Saturday for the annual Operation Clean Sweep.

Junction City Police Captain Chuck Leithoff said it was a gorgeous day with big numbers. “We had about 275 folks out cleaning up or more. And they got done in record time. They were on it. We even threw in some extra places like Fifth Street Park and Homer’s Pond, and the entrances at I-70 and Washington Street”

Leithoff noted a lot of tires and fence posts were picked up, along with the normal every day trash items. Other areas cleaned up included the wetlands area on East Ash, The Bluffs at South Park, the Tom Neal Industrial Park, areas on Rucker Road and Thompson Drive, East Street, Sertoma Park, Sixth Street viaduct, and the FEMA land on Grant Avenue.

This was the eighth year for the clean up. Armour Eckrich and the City of Junction City provided lunch for those who participated. B & B Busing also supported the effort.  Volunteers reported to Spin City for Operation Clean Sweep and were then disbursed to the various locations in the city for the effort. They returned to Spin City for lunch.

There was some revenue generated for Geary County during a property tax sale on Friday at Brown Real Estate & Auction Service LLC in Junction City.

Sheriff Tony Wolf reported that there were some lots with structures on them, such as houses and trailer houses, that did sell. “They sold fairly well. In a ballpark estimate right now we got a little over $20,000 recovered tax money.”

A number of vacant undeveloped housing lots on the west side of the city did not sell during the sale. “This is just one of the motions that we have to go through in order to move forward on them.” Wolf noted there were 158 lots in the Sutter Woods Addition area and a lot in the Doc Hargreaves Addition didn’t sell.

The next step is for local officials to work on trying to get the vacant lots in the City owned land bank for potential future sale and development.

According to the National Weather Service of Topeka, there are 4 important things to remember today for the weather in Northeast Kansas:
1. Saturday is a warm, dry, and breezy afternoon with highs near 80 degrees and winds from the south gusting up to 35 mph. A few storms are possible late this evening, however severe weather is not expected.
2. Much of the area is in a Slight Risk for seeing severe storms Sunday late afternoon into the early evening hours. Large Hail, Damaging Winds are the primary hazards with an isolated tornado or two possible in the early evening.
3. Another round of storms late Monday evening could be capable of producing large hail and damaging winds however confidence in exact location of these storms is low with the better chances in southern KS.
4. It is still a few days out, but begin to be thinking about your plans for Tuesday afternoon and evening as we are expecting to see severe storms across portions of central and eastern Kansas. All severe weather hazards will be possible with these storms. Stay weather aware this weekend!

Tonight: Warmer. Partly cloudy in the evening…then mostly cloudy with a 30 percent chance of rain showers and thunderstorms after midnight. Lows around 60. South winds 15 to 20 mph.

Sunday: Breezy. Partly sunny with a 50 percent chance of rain showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the upper 70s. South winds 15 to 25 mph.

Sunday Night: Mostly cloudy in the evening then becoming partly cloudy. A 50 percent chance of rain showers and thunderstorms. Lows in the mid 50s. Southwest winds 5 to 15 mph. Gusts up to 30 mph in the evening.

Monday: Sunny. Highs in the mid 70s. Northwest winds 5 to 10 mph.

Monday Night: Partly cloudy. Lows in the mid 50s.

Tuesday: Mostly cloudy with a 40 percent chance of rain showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the mid 70s.

Tuesday Night: Rain showers and thunderstorms likely. Lows in the mid 50s. Chance of precipitation 70 percent.

Wednesday: Breezy. Mostly sunny with a 30 percent chance of rain showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the lower 70s.

Wednesday Night: Cooler. Partly cloudy. Lows in the mid 40s.

Thursday: Mostly sunny. Highs in the upper 60s.

Thursday Night: Partly cloudy in the evening then becoming mostly cloudy. Lows in the mid 40s.

Friday: Partly sunny with a 30 percent chance of rain showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the upper 60s.

Officers with the Riley County Police Department arrested Travis Ryan Moreland, 24, of Chapman, KS on Friday, April 22, just after 12 p.m.

Moreland was booked on three charges of aggravated robbery.

Bond for Moreland was set at $50,000, and as of 6 a.m. on Saturday, April 23, he was not confined at the Riley County Jail according to the RCPD Arrest Report.

There was a lot of smoke in and near Junction City Friday, but it was primarily from controlled burns of grassland.

Geary County Rural Fire Chief Garry Berges reported that rural firefighters only responded to one call….a rekindled grass fire that burned about five acres near Red Road and Skiddy Road.

Release by K-State News and Communications Services

A Kansas State University dean and an instructor were recognized at the White House on April 13 for their work with First Lady Jill Biden’s Operation Educate the Educators.

Biden invited Debbie Mercer dean of the College of Education  and Sandy Risberg, instructor of curriculum and instruction, to participate in Operation Educate the Educators: Sharing Successes and Setting Sights for the Future.MANHATTAN — A Kansas State University dean and an instructor were recognized at the White House on April 13 for their work with First Lady Jill Biden’s Operation Educate the Educators.

Risberg served on a panel that included one representative from each of the program’s four pioneer institutions — Kansas State University, Old Dominion University, George Mason University and University of Southern California. As part of the panel, Risberg explained the efforts Kansas State University has taken in preparing future educators to serve military-connected students.

Since signing on to the program in 2011, the College of Education:

• Created a documentary, AWalk in My Shoes: Military Life”featuring veterans, military spouses and military-connected children who share intimate details about their lives and what they wished their teachers would have known about them as they advanced in the P-12 school system.Since signing on to the program in 2011, the College of Education:

• Established a noncredit class, Teaching Military Connected Students, which offers future employers evidence that they are prepared to educate and build relationships with military-connected students.

• Spiraled concepts from Operation Educate the Educator throughout the curriculum. For example, when discussing students from diverse backgrounds, professors and pre-service teachers explore the strengths and challenges military-connected students bring to the classroom.

In Biden’s remarks to Operation Educate the Educators stakeholders, she publicly thanked Mercer for participating in the event and also for facilitating the previous week’s discussion with Kansas State University pre-service teachers and faculty at Fort Riley Middle School on April 6.

“The work that you are doing — that your student teachers are doing in the classroom — is so important. Thank you,” Biden said. “Not only does it make a difference in the life of each and every student, but, as you can imagine, it means so much to our service members when members of their community reach out to support military families during deployments.”

Jess Holliday, a senior in secondary education-social studies, Soldier, who is student teaching at Fort Riley Middle School, was featured in a video that was shown at the event.

“The big thing I think for me personally is this focus on building relationships with your students, because we’ve talked about how the outside world impacts students’ lives in the school,” Holliday said in the video. “The Educate the Educators program is important because not only does it help teachers connect with military-connected kids, but it’s going to help them connect with all kids.”

Mercer said Biden’s commendations about the College of Education are actually an accolade for the university as a whole.

“This program is indicative of Kansas State University’s embracing of military-connected students, because while the College of Education is preparing teachers, the entire university has a welcoming atmosphere for veterans transitioning out of the military,” Mercer said. “The event was affirming, and it energized me to strategize how we can take this program to the next level.”

Some of those next steps under consideration:

• Coordinating military-focused coursework pieces to build on each other so student-teachers are optimally prepared to positively impact student learning for military-connected students.

• Prioritizing continuing education related to Operation Educate the Educator for faculty within the college.

• Making the school counseling program more systematic and robust.

• Expanding the use of recent findings from Kansas State University’s military initiative standing committee, which had a discussion in March with K-12 school leaders from across the state.

“Military-connected students are a special and unique population,” Mercer said. “If military-connected students are in a school system where the teachers understand, are supportive and build that type of culture with other students, it’s better for everybody involved. That’s what we want to create at Kansas State University.”

There will be an open house / dedication for the new Junction City Municipal Court on May 5 at 10 a.m. at the Court facility at 701 North Jefferson Street.

The public is encouraged to attend.

There will be guest speakers, a judicial trivia quiz, and other announcements.

The Riley County Police Department responded to a single vehicle collision in the 5200 block of McDowell Creek Road on April 21, 2016 at approximately 6:50 p.m.

This collision involved a 2013 Kawasaki motorcycle driven by Dylan Ocasio, 21, of Junction City, Kansas.

Police arriving on scene found that the motorcycle lost control and left the roadway and crashed in a field after colliding with a driveway.

Riley County EMS transported Ocasio to Via Christi Hospital for treatment of injuries that he sustained after being ejected from his vehicle.