After taking a position at Wichita State that he believes was not at the appropriate level for his expertise, Chris Stone is leaving to pursue a more favorable role in New York.

In the fall, Stone will be starting a tenure-track position at Marist University in Poughkeepsie, New York.

“I’m currently underemployed,” Stone said. “I’m overqualified for my position as a faculty member, I’m not in a tenure track position and I wanted to be on the tenure track.”

Stone has been with WSU for seven years, currently as the department chair of management in the Barton School of Business. He is also the coordinator for the graduate human resources program. 

“Taking care of people is one of my passions; that’s why I was interested in management or behavior in the first place, so being a department chair gives me the opportunity to do that,” Stone said. “Take care of my faculty, make sure they get what they need from the dean, kind of serve as a buffer between them and the administration.”

Alongside his current position, he serves as Faculty Senate president and has been a part of the senate on and off during his time at WSU.

“It’s been interesting, it’s really busy,” Stone said. “You know, a lot of people asking you for things. I really enjoy learning how the campus operates.”

Until a few years ago, Stone also advised WSU’s Society of Human Resources Management chapter. 

“It was challenging, because I was the SHRM advisor before COVID, then COVID happened and everyone was like, ‘Hey, we’re going to do things online,’” Stone said. “Well, nobody wants to go to events online, and SHRM is mostly about networking, so it’s really hard to build a community around that.”

Graduate business student Fabiola Ayarza-Anorga, who was a part of SHRM and took multiple classes with Stone, said that Stone has been a mentor to her during her time at WSU, and his influence on her academic and professional journey has been very meaningful to her.

“I could put a lot of trust on him because I felt very comfortable talking to him,” Ayarza-Anorga said. “… He was potentially very important, not only for me, but also for other students who really needed the support of somebody who understands and listens.”

Ayarza-Anorga works at the Shocker Career Accelerator and is now the co-advisor for WSU’s SHRM chapter. She said that everything she learned from Stone has greatly helped her in both of these positions.

“He has been one of the persons who have been pushing me to apply for so many jobs during my career,” Ayarza-Anorga said. “Not to lose faith, not to lose my goal, who I am, always make sure I remember all my talent I have.”

Stone’s first full-time position after finishing college was at Emporia State, but for about a year before that, he was a part-time adjunct professor at WSU. 

He was at Emporia State for about three years, starting in 2015, as a management professor, and in his third year, became associate chair of that department. 

Stone said he first left Emporia State University because his wife was a faculty member in WSU’s College of Education. At Emporia State, he was on a tenure-track, but accepted a non-tenure track position at WSU so he wouldn’t have to commute. 

“But then my wife left the university,” Stone said. “I followed her to this job, and so she’s going to follow me. Kansas was never going to be our last stop; that was never in the cards. The opportunity came up, so I applied for the position.”

Stone said his wife left the university in 2022 after the College of Education went through leadership changes that left her feeling unsupported by the administration at the time. 

“She wanted to be a professor and teach teachers, so it was heartbreaking for her,” Stone said. “Because of that, I do hold some kind of resentment towards the institution, but also as an organizational studies, organizational behavior guy, I understand that the greater institution, the entire university, is not a human entity.” 

His first experience with teaching was during his PhD program, where he worked as a graduate research and teaching assistant.

He earned his doctoral degree from the University of Texas, San Antonio in 2016. Growing up, he said he lived mostly in the south in the Memphis, Tennessee area. Later, he joined the air force where he lived overseas for a couple of years, then getting stationed in San Antonio and going back to graduate school once his tour ended. 

At Marist University, Stone said he’s excited to be able to teach smaller classes in person as he did at Emporia State. At WSU, he teaches mostly online. 

“I’m so happy for his students that had classes face-to-face with him at some point,” Ayarza-Anorga said. “… He is the coolest teacher and people always remember him because he has a very good mood to talk and (is) always smiling, always open to help other people and listen and interact with students.”

Ayarza-Anorga said that Stone is very personable and provides great support to his students. She said, as an international student from Peru, she’s faced a lot of challenges and has been very fortunate to have him guide her.

“I do enjoy the few relationships I build with my students, but most of them hide behind the turned off camera, you know, it is what it is,” Stone said. “I don’t have the same engagement that I did say, at Emporia State, where I had smaller classes and most of them were face to face, so we’re looking forward to that.”