Kansas City Kansas Community College

Dr. John Soptick has always been one to keep everything in order and it won’t be any different when he ends a 22-year teaching career at Kansas City Kansas Community College.

Retiring after 30 years of teaching math at the end of the spring semester, Soptick plans to make the most of his retirement years.

“The first thing I want to do is take a course in Conversational Spanish,” he says. “I want to continue going to the College’s Wellness Center or some other fitness center; I want to continue to tutor math privately and also teach part-time, either at this college or somewhere else.

“I have an interest in baking and want to pursue that to some extent. I want to do volunteer work like Heart to Heart or the American Red Cross and I’ve thought about being a teacher’s aide or a para-professional, probably in a Catholic grade school. I’m also interested in travel and have made several trips to Europe including Yugoslavia, Slovenia and Croatia.” He’s also an avid sports fans and will keep close tabs on the Chiefs and Royals.

Most of all, he’ll continue to play the accordion. A well-known Wyandotte County musician, Soptick has played polka music professionally with the Ed Grisnik Orchestra for 39 years. He also plays for many Octoberfest dances and often plays for a “polka mass” with the ethnic choir from KCKCC and with the Holy Trinity Folk Choir for masses about twice a month.

“I took lessons for 12 years starting at age nine and competed in the U.S. Accordion championships in New York in 1964,” says Soptick. “The competition was really tough, like the Olympics.” He’s also taken lessons from Don Lipovac, KCK’s premier accordionist and nationally known polka artist, and plays with Lipovac’s accordion most Wednesday nights.

Of Croatian and Slovenian heritage, he’s been a fixture at the annual Wyandotte County Ethnic Festival, both as a musician and serving up apple strudel at the Slovenia table and is famous for baking home-made cookies for his math students. “I learned how to bake from my mother,” he says. “She could make provitica, home-made bread and all kinds of wonderful pastries.”

Born and raised in Wyandotte County, Soptick attended St. Peter’s Cathedral grade school and Rockhurst High School although continuing to live in KCK. His undergraduate days were spent at Rockhurst College where he earned a BA in Mathematics in 1966. He would go on to The Ohio State University for post-graduate work, earning a Masters in Educational Research in 1968 and a Ph.D. in Education Research with a minor in mathematics education in 1972.

Loss of federal funding cost Soptick his first two jobs, the first as educational research assistant at Mid-Continent Regional Education Laboratory in Kansas City for three years followed by a similar position with the national headquarters of the American Nurses Assn. in Crown Center for one year. In 1976, he began a three-year job working in market research for Hallmark Cards. “I was the only one to work at Hallmark with a Ph.D.; I’d hear people walk by my door and say he’s the one with the Ph.D.”

His yearning to teach surfaced in 1980 when a math job opened at Donnelly College. “I wanted to have more personal interaction with people and loved being with students,” he says. “I was academically oriented, all my courses had been geared towards education and I was used to taking math courses because I was involved in statistics and research.”

He was on the same Donnelly faculty with Dr. Charles Wilson, Loretta Bates and Steve Spartan, all of whom would join him at KCKCC, but for only one year. “It was a valuable first year experience,” says Soptick. However, a $5,000 increase to his $11,800 salary lured him to teach math and computer science at his alma mater, Rockhurst College, as well as adjunct teaching at Johnson County Community College.

Seven years later, he saw an ad for a math teacher at KCKCC and applied. “They had an opening and I was looking,” he says. “The emphasis in the community college level is on teaching; four-year institutions push you into publications and working on grants. I grew up in Wyandotte County and it was the perfect fit.”

Soptick’s wife of 31 years, Bernadette, worked for TWA and has traveled extensively. She recently retired from the Jones Store/Macy’s after working 22 years in customer service. “We have 15 nieces and nephews and have baby sat them all,” he says. Soptick lost his father, who was employed at Sears for nearly 44 years, in 1973 and his mother in 2008.

Retiring, said Soptick, was a very tough decision. “I still like teaching and enjoyed my years at the college very much. It’s a very caring and very friendly community and I’ve made some lifelong friends here, which is another reason why it’s hard for me to leave.”