When Kiah Duggins was an undergraduate student at Wichita State University, Bobby Gandu, who heads enrollment and admissions at WSU, said she pushed herself and those around her to be the best versions of themselves. 

“​​She would challenge us here at Wichita State and ask us, ‘How can we be better? How can we better serve underrepresented students?’” Gandu said. “Or if she saw something that she didn’t agree with and she wanted to push for something better for her campus, colleagues and students, she didn’t hesitate.” 

Duggins was among the 67 victims of the Flight 5342 plane crash last week in Washington, D.C.

Duggins, a Wichita native and Wichita State alumna, was returning home to D.C. after visiting her family while her mother underwent surgery. 

Wichita State staff and faculty remembered Duggins as an ambitious scholar, an advocate for her fellow students and a funny, uplifting person.

Gandu said he met Duggins when she was a Wichita East High School student. 

“She was really an incredible young talent as a high school senior who we knew had a real gift to go further,” Gandu said. “Kiah would walk in the room, and you knew that she was playing chess while the rest of us were playing checkers.” 

After graduating with her undergraduate degree from Wichita State, Duggins went on to Harvard Law School. Post-graduation, she worked as a civil rights lawyer for the Civil Rights Corps. 

Duggins entered Wichita State as a Barton scholar, a scholarship for business students that is awarded to one incoming student each year. 

Dorothy Harpool, director of Engagement and Prominence and a senior educator at the Barton School of Business, said she was on the committee that awarded Duggins the scholarship.

“I remember her as a star,” Harpool said. “We always have amazing high school students, and so for somebody to stand out like she did, it says a lot about her personality and just her aura.”

After that, Harpool said Duggins got involved in everything she could: student government, community organizations and the local business community.

Duggins was also a White House intern where she worked on Michelle Obama’s “Let Girls Learn” campaign. She told The Sunflower about her experience in 2017 while she applied to law school. Duggins was also recognized with WSU’s Senior Honor distinction the same year. 

“There wasn’t an opportunity that she passed up,” Harpool said.  

Duggins ran a mentorship program for underrepresented female high school students. She called it “The Princess Project.”

“(The Princess Project) was about helping them know that they can pursue and achieve their dreams if they continue on (with) being a good student and being active and engaged in our community, getting good grades and then going on to pursue college and scholarship opportunities,” Gandu said. 

In a TEDx Talk she gave at Wichita State in 2017, Duggins explained that, as a child, she didn’t feel represented by most depictions of princesses. Later, she saw this same lack of representation in her school’s gifted program, noting that students of color often didn’t have the same access to information and resources to prepare themselves for higher education.

Duggins said that The Princess Project provided mentorship and information to students heading to college. 

“I’ve learned that when we do not see the metaphorical Black princesses in our lives, sometimes we just have to become them,” Duggins said in the TEDx Talk. 

Her advocacy carried into other projects she worked on at Wichita State, including the establishment of the Shocker Food Locker — now the Shocker Support Locker — a place for WSU students, faculty and staff to get free groceries donated by the community. 

“(It) wasn’t that long ago that it got started through the work of Kiah and many of her peers, but now it is an incredibly important resource for our current students,” Gandu said. 

Duggins was also in the Student Ambassadors Society, helping recruit other students to Wichita State. Jessica Newman is an assistant educator at WSU’s Elliott School of Communication. She worked as an admissions representative when Duggins was in the society. 

“All of those types of things (that Duggins did) were less about her and more about her wanting to better the community around her,” Newman said. “She’s always seemed very grounded, even though she excelled in pageants, even though she went on to be this incredible civil rights attorney, she always seemed grounded, and I feel like she always had her core community at the heart of everything she did.”

Newman said she encourages others to “keep the Duggins family in their prayers and in their thoughts.”

“I think Kiah and her legacy is a testament to her family, and my heart has been breaking for them, you know, in such a big way because they were all so impactful to our community,” she said.