May, Maltby recognized for service

By Amy Geiszler-Jones and Joe Kleinsasser

When the Alumni Association hands out its annual awards tonight (Feb. 3), among those being honored are a longtime faculty member and a former director.

Phil May, who has been on the accounting faculty since 1974, will receive the association’s Recognition Award, given to alumni or faculty and friends of the university for particular service to WSU.

Wanda Maltby, who led Student Health Services from 1958-1995, will receive the Laura M. Cross Distinguished Service Award, presented to a current or retired WSU employee who has given extraordinary service.

Came to compute

Phill May	Wanda Maltby

"The reason I came here in 1974 was because the college of business was doing nothing with computing," said May.

It was a matter of coincidence that he was recruited here. In 1974, May was teaching at the University of Illinois and gave a talk on the use of computers in the accounting curriculum. In the audience was WSU’s new business dean, Larry McKibbon, who offered May a job to develop computer applications in WSU’s accounting curriculum.

To start from ground zero sounded just too intriguing for May to pass up. Six years later, he and colleague Mike Foran raised money to buy 20 microcomputers.

"We were truly on the cutting edge among business schools in Kansas," he said. They developed a course that is now standard in accounting curriculums, writing the text materials because only technical manuals existed.

Since then, he’s had other exciting opportunities to put his skill with numbers and computers to work. In the early 1980s, when microcomputer packaged software was an unknown, Vickers Trust, one of the largest trusts in Wichita, asked him to program a full accounting software package on an Apple computer with just 16K of memory.

Along with his consulting assignments, he regularly has his students perform accounting projects in the business community. In 1998, he helped in a forensic accounting project for a local bank to determine how a Wichita woman convicted of defrauding her employer was able to embezzle so much money.

May has been an avid fan of Shocker athletics and more than willing participant in various alumni events. If there’s a Shocker game going on in Levitt Arena or Eck Stadium or even on the road, he and his wife are there. "We’re athletic junkies," May said.

When he’s not cheering on Shocker athletes at games, he’s helping them succeed in the classroom. He tutors athletes, particularly those studying accountancy.

Change was her constant

Many people talk about being service oriented. Maltby lives it. As a result, she had an impact on thousands of students during the nearly 37 years she led Student Health Services.

One employee said, "As far as Mrs. Maltby was concerned, the patient was always the most important person."

If service was her hallmark, adapting to change was close behind.

When Maltby came to WSU in 1958, she was the only employee in student health. Her windowless office was in the Morrison Hall basement.

During the next 20 years, Maltby and student health moved several times. First she moved to the first floor in the Commons Building, now known as Wilner Auditorium.

The cloakroom was converted into exam rooms and a stall was taken out of a bathroom and converted to storage space, according to Maltby.

She again rolled with the tide of change when student health was relocated to a little white house on Harvard Street, where Ahlberg Hall is today.

Three bedrooms became exam rooms. The bathroom and kitchen were transformed into laboratories.

Next, Maltby moved to Fairmount Towers. The dorm rooms were converted into waiting rooms, laboratories and offices. Maltby said that she felt like a prison matron as she walked down the long hallway, locking and unlocking doors each day.

Finally in 1980, Maltby and Student Health Services found a permanent home in Ahlberg Hall.

When she retired as director of Student Health Services in 1995, her staff was the equivalent of 10 full-time and part-time employees and eight visiting physicians.

Student health grew from about 2,500 patients a year in 1960, to about 17,000 patients in fiscal year 1994.

Although officially retired, Maltby still pinch hits for Student Health Services on occasion, sometimes giving flu shots and other times helping as a nurse practitioner.