Carol Strickland taught school for 39 years and, since retirement, now teaches part-time at The Teachers College and in the department of communication and theater arts at Emporia State University. She also is a volunteer for the National Teachers Hall of Fame and a volunteer mentor for YouthFriends.

Carol and her husband, Glen, moved to Emporia from Oklahoma in 1986. He was hired as director of forensics at Emporia State University and she was hired to teach English, speech, debate, media, English as a Second Language, Applied Communication and forensics at Emporia High School. Strickland, a native of Texas, received both her bachelor’s degree in communication and English and her master’s degree in communication from Texas Christian University. She was named 1999 Kansas Teacher of the Year and was inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame in 2003.


In 1977-78, she was named the outstanding teacher at Connors State College in Warner, Oklahoma.

She achieved the three-diamond coaching status in the National Forensics League from 1986 through 2007, the Kansas Speech Communications Association awarded her the Outstanding High School Speech Teacher award in 1995-96. She also received the Golden Apple in 1997, The Gazette’s K-12 Educator of the Year in 1998, Kansas Master Teacher of 1998, the second team of the USA Today All-Teacher Team in 2000 and was elected in 2007 to the KSCA Hall of Fame.

Carol is past membership chairperson and building representative for the Emporia National Education Association, a current member of the KNEA-Retired executive council, twice past president of Kansas State Teachers of the Year, current director of finance and membership for the National State Teachers of the Year, past secretary and district representative for the KSCA, among other professional activities.

She is a member of the Kansas State High School Activities Association Hall of Fame Committee, a former member of the KSHSAA board of directors, and a member of the KSCA liaison committee to KSHSAA. She also is a member of the Emporia Arts Council, the Emporia Literacy Council; Emporia Friends of the Zoo, and Emporia Friends of the Library; president-elect of the Emporia Area Retired School Personnel, and a member and past board member of the Humane Society of the Flint Hills.

Carol is president-elect of Emporia Area Retired School Personnel and volunteers as a YouthFriends mentor. She was a member of the Leadership Kansas Class of 2000 and in 2007 received a Volunteer Service Award from President Bush to commemorate more than 2000 hours of service to student foreign exchange programs.


Carol resides in the Thorndale Community in rural Emporia with her husband of forty-one years Glen (a member of the Emporia Board of Education) and their nineteen-year-old daughter Dasha who attends Emporia State University.