University honors Mann's 19 years of dedication to ESU

Chris Hunter / The Bulletin

Roy Mann hugs a guest on Thursday at his reception at the Sauder Alumni Center.

After 19 years of service to Emporia State Director of Alumni relations Roy Mann will be retiring at the end of the semester.

“Roy has an outstanding personality,” said Amy Schneider, junior elementary education major. “He made every event we do fun. You always have a good day when you spend it with Roy. Whoever takes his spot will have some big shoes to fill.”

A reception was held for Mann on April 17 to honor his service as director of alumni relations in university advancement, secretary-treasurer for the alumni board of directors and advisor of ESU ambassadors.

Many of Mann’s coworkers, friends and family attended the reception to commemorate the projects he had created to increase ESU alumni participation with the university and his service as advisor of ESU ambassadors.

“You would never have even known that Roy was your boss,” said Nikki Metz, Assistant Director of Alumni Relations “He always went above and beyond to help ESU. Infact, I think he loves ESU so much that he may bleed black and gold.”

Mann recently accepted a new position in which he is going to work to help raise money to develop and build churches.

Merl Kobb, president of the ESU Alumni board, said in his speech at the reception that two contributions came to mind when he thought of Mann. The first was his ability to create active friendships with a large group of people. The second was his ability to create trust with other people. Kobb said that the second is because people trust an individual when they are able to believe in that individual’s qualities and principals.

Drew Donahoo, senior communications major and chair of ESU ambassadors spoke of some of the trips that the ambassadors had taken, especially one to Texas in which Mann was driving the van and was very tired. Donahoo had kept him awake by challenging him to answer the song title, year it came out, and artist of every song they heard on the satellite radio during the night drive. Donahoo admitted that Mann got almost every song right.

“I want to thank Roy for all that he did and how he pushed all of us ambassadors to do our best,” Donahoo said. “He did this by leading by example, his attitude and he gave us tips about how to talk to alumni.”

Following Donahoo, President Michael Lane spoke about Mann’s skills as director of alumni relations. Lane said that Mann helped the university to receive its largest financial gift ever received, to the sum of 1.873 million dollars.

“You all know and appreciate what Roy has done for the university,” Lane said. “Now he is going to go and do what I think are the only two things he loves more than ESU, which is church music and church development. If he is as good at that as he is at fundraising at ESU we will see a good deal more churches in Emporia.”