By RORY MOORE
Tiger Media Network
Fort Hays State University’s Forsyth Library teamed up with the Office of Scholarship and Sponsored Projects to host the On-Campus Exhibition and Open House for the 2025 Scholarly and Creative Days (SACAD) on Thursday. Hosted since 2005, the celebration showcased the creative talents of students, faculty and staff.
The full-day event consisted of scholarly exhibitions across the main campus: Academic Posters, Applied Industrial Technology Projects, a Community Engaged Showcase, Art and Creative Works, Meet the Authors and Musical Performances in multiple locations. It concluded with the Spring Jazz Concert in the Beach-Schmidt Performing Arts Center.
Academic posters hang in the Ballroom of Memorial Union. 
Big Brothers Big Sisters and Can We Just Talk promote their causes at the exhibit. 
Many posters covered issues of criminal justice like cases that resulted in wrongful convictions. 
Some posters covered topics in behavioral sciences like Manipulation and Power by Kerstin Brown and Maddie Schlyer. 
Kyle Horn goes over his poster during the Meet the Authors session. His poster covers the topic of AI models and his idea of AI-based meal planning. “I created a custom grocery list bot to simplify and make more efficient shopping habits,” he said. “The input for the bot would be meals you want to eat throughout the week, and then the output would be an itemized list of the grocery shopping list to make more efficient shopping habits.” 
The Small Jazz Group kicks off the Spring Jazz Concert concluding the SACAD. 
Dawson McNeal, Jackson Byerly and Adam Ward show their musical skills for the final part of the all-day event.
The Academic Posters were displayed in Memorial Union’s Ballroom and Black & Gold Room and were part of an exhibition of works submitted by participants.
“We have a spread of different topics from the hard sciences to the humanities,” said April Terry, SACAD coordinator and associate professor of criminal justice. “We had people submit from psychology, sociology, social work and the other behavioral sciences, but it’s anything someone deems to be scholarly work they want to promote.”
Some students created posters for courses or to raise awareness of issues about criminal justice.
“Most of the students focused on cases where there was a wrongful conviction, so understanding what led the police, prosecution, judge and appellate courts to make mistakes in those cases [were shown], and how that mistake was rectified,” Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Morgan Steele said. “A lot of them are highlighting aspects about the Criminal Justice field and what issues investigators and prosecutors have to take into consideration.”
Products made by TEECA Fort Hays are displayed in the Center for Applied Technology. 
The main objective of TEECA’s SACAD project was board games, which were made out of recycled materials. 
A Batter Up game with a Fort Hays theme. 
The Manufacturing team shows how their products work. 
Heather Blundell shows how TEECA’s miniature windmill operates.
The Applied Industrial Technology Projects were showcased at the Center for Applied Technology, where the Technology and Engineering Education Collegiate Association (TEECA) Fort Hays chapter presented industrial works like a board game made from recycled materials and mechanical arms.
“We have to build, design, and manufacture a certain number of projects every year,” said Jake Kirchhoff, a junior and TEECA Manufacturing team member. “This year, we had to make a Backgammon game. We made one for each team member, which ended up being about eight games.”
Like the other creators, TEECA Fort Hays wanted to foster creative thinking through its works by showing ingenuity and innovation.
“We’re showcasing TEECA and what we do here,” Kirchhoff said. “[We want to show] that we have creative minds.”
Other works were displayed inside the Schmidt Foundation Center for Art and Design, where art pieces of various mediums were hung on display.
“There’s more than just empirical and non-empirical that needs to be looked at as the creativity of the university,” said Jennifer Sauer, Forsyth’s librarian for scholar and electronic services. “You can see the depth of thought and inquiry in all of the artists: self-expression and the handling of current events. We have some amazing artists within the undergraduate and graduate divisions.”
