Creating Positive Impact out of Heartbreak
Colton Kaase Memorial Summer Scholars Scholarship to aid student-athletes
Mike Brohard
He fully understands the demands.
The challenging academic standards of an engineering student. The physical and mental pulls of a student-athlete. The often sanity-challenging process of being one in the same simultaneously.
This, too, had been Todd Bandhauer’s life, decades ago when he was the starting quarterback at Iowa State. Now an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Colorado State, as well as the owner of a start-up company (AtmosZero), he brought together a group of nine CSU student-athletes who were engineering students trying to navigate their schedules.
They were formed to serve as a support system, but also as mentors for each other. As he explained, engineering students obtain their degree in single-year stages -- freshman rarely see a sophomore or a junior. Bring them all together, they could lament together, advise each other and provide encouragement with an exact understanding of what each was facing in a given moment.
Colton Kaase, a freshman on the track team last year, was part of the group. News of his passing after an offseason workout stunned everyone who knew him, a young man who his parents, Juli and Kenneth, said really found a place he fit away from where he grew up in Bellville, Texas.
“He felt very much at home there,” Juli said. “The outreach, support and love people have shown – we’ve had people call or message us to tell us how they met Colton, or they had a class with him or met him through athletics -- it’s been extremely touching.”
Hearing the news, Bandhauer was frozen. In one year, he had come to see Kaase as a perfect fit in the group, equally dedicated to the two journeys he had undertaken at Colorado State. He knew him best as a student, but tracked what he was doing during his first season on the track team.
Immediately, he was moved to action, but stalled by the overwhelming emotions. Day by day, an idea was starting to take root.
“I remember when I heard about Colton’s passing. One of my friends in the mechanical engineering department, Jason Quinn, we have these tiles we’re putting down for the students who have graduated at the Powerhouse,” Bandhauer explained. “He made one for Colton, which I thought was a really good idea. Emotions were high for me right in the moment, but I wanted to do something more sustainable and long-term, because I really liked Colton; he was a great kid
“I knew months down the road when emotions waned, it would be a good time to approach his family. I talked to assistant track coach J.J. Riese, and I needed his help talking to them. We thought about it, and we talked to the parents, and they were wonderful about it. I was really thankful they were OK with me getting this started, and it’s awesome to finally have this come to fruition.”
The result was the Colton Kaase Memorial Summer Scholars Scholarship.
Bandhauer sees the scholarship as the perfect mirror to honor Colton, established to aid a student-athlete exactly like him.
What Bandhauer knows firsthand is while the curriculum for an engineering student is quite a load, the classroom is not enough. Getting direct, real-world experience in the field is what will truly set up their future in the field, and for a student-athlete constantly training on campus, those experiences are hard to find.
The scholarship was devised to create those pathways, to help fund summer internships and work studies while allowing them to continue to train.
“One of the big outcomes I hope to come from this is for people who are faculty think I would like to support student-athletes, and I have a research program where I’m supporting an undergrad,” Bandhauer said. “It would be awesome if it were an athlete who has 15-30 hours a week to come in and learn, be it health and exercise science, sociology, fashion design. I would like people to say I’d like to do this and support student-athletes, and I have an opportunity, so tell me what to do next.
“The same for local companies. We’re almost 200,000 people in Fort Collins, and we have major employers here. If you want to support a student-athlete, it would be great to have them supported, so let me know. That’s what I’d like to see.”
Bandhauer didn’t just establish the scholarship, he made the first major donation to fund its growth. Knowing less than 10 percent of student-athletes on campus are engineering students, he wanted to establish the scholarship to be available to all the nearly 400 student-athletes on campus to get the work skills they’ll need to pursue their career goals.
We were very touched. We just thought it was the perfect way to honor him because he was very dedicated to his scholastics and also athletics.Juli Kaase
That’s where Sierra Puente, the director of RAM Life came into play.
“In my professional career, I view myself as a synthesizer. I take stuff from here and there and synthesize it into something else,” Bandhauer said. “To me, I look at this in the same way. Sierra is doing her program and has identified a need, and I’m trying to do that, so it was a great way to work together. We already have the plan laid out.
“I also like to be a catalyst to make things happen, so the one thing I bring unique is I am faculty, and I can talk to other faculty. I also understand the needs and obligations and stresses of being a faculty member. I can talk to them, Sierra can talk to the student-athletes and it’s a synthesized synergy between what she and I are doing to help them to learn how to apply for a job, communicate with employers. Athletes don’t have a lot of time.”
RAM (Real and Meaningful) Life was created to help fill those gaps. Puente’s goal is to help prepare CSU student-athletes for the next step, which could be a professional career. However, the majority of student-athletes will not follow such a path, leading to two others RAM Life helps pave: furthering their education in their field of study or helping them find gainful employment.
While they are still on campus, finding internships and work opportunities helps put a plan in motion. She feels the Colton Kaase Memorial Summer Scholars fund will provide countless opportunities.
“As a student-athlete development department, I am trying to aid in this balance with RAM Life by providing relevant opportunities and exposing student-athletes to unique opportunities that they traditionally would not receive,” Puente said. “I believe student-athletes earn just as much development off their playing field as they due on their playing field at this competitive level, and the Colton Kaase Memorial Summer Scholars fund is a unique and perfect way to make this happen.
“Unlike a traditional internship which might be unpaid or paid minimum wage, the Colton Kaase Memorial Summer Scholars fund will provide financial stability for these student-athletes to stay and train in Fort Collins over the summer. In addition to the hands-on experience, RAM Life will step in and offer career development assistance such as resume building, cover letter crafting, workplace expectations, best practices with communication, overall support and more. This first class of scholars will be catapulted for their future career while paving the way for Colton's legacy to impact future Rams. Colorado State University is a unique place full of individuals with great ideas who are willing to go the extra mile and work together to create one-of-a-kind opportunities such as this.”
Puente will work to find local companies who are looking for summer interns and are willing to work around the time demands of athletes. In the case where internships are not funded, the scholarship can help fill the void.
Bandhauer has consistently hired student-athletes as interns to help with summer research at his lab, and he will continue to do so. He knows there are other members of the faculty who have similar needs, and he’d like to see them look at student-athletes to fill those positions.
Last summer, he funded track athlete Lars Mitchel at his facility. He also knows there are area businesses in a multitude of fields which have similar needs.
At the same time, Puente has student-athletes entering her office asking about opportunities they can pursue to gain real experience in their field. Combining their lists, Puente and Bandhauer feel they can make a real impact.
“Throughout the year, there are a handful of student-athletes who reach out to me in search of a summer internship, and a majority of them are STEM majors not sure of what they want their career to look like,” she said. “That is why exposure is so important with RAM Life to show these student-athletes opportunities they might not think about. Combining these individual conversations, Todd's influence within the Powerhouse community, and head coaches’ references, there is no doubt the first class of Colton Kaase Memorial Summer Scholars will set this program up for years to come and make an impact on campus.”
The Kaase family was appreciative of the scholarship’s development, especially since they feel it matches their son exactly. He was someone who was just as passionate about earning his degree as he was excelling on the track, so providing opportunities for his peers to chase their goals is seen by them as a perfect fit.
Kenneth has been appreciative of Bandhauer’s leg work to see this come to fruition. As a family, they look forward to hearing about the student-athletes who have benefitted from the program.
“We were very touched. We just thought it was the perfect way to honor him because he was very dedicated to his scholastics and also athletics,” Juli said. “It was a really good fit. We were very touched. He would very much be in support of this.
“We would love to hear stories and find out how this has impacted other kids.”
Bandhauer looks forward to telling them those stories, of which he hopes there will be plenty. His idea was to have the scholarship in place for this summer to help at least a handful of participants, then to have word grow throughout the campus and the Fort Collins community to see it exponentially grow through the years.
As an educator, he’s always looking to make an impact. With Colton Kaase in his thoughts, he wants them to be widespread.