Mike Traeger, along with Terry Huffman, Randy Sims and other friends, founded the Gentlemen Leadership Society in 2024 to provide high-achieving students with two crucial resources at a pivotal time in their lives.

First, he wanted GLS to offer impact financial scholarships. While his K-State experience was ultimately far from ordinary, Traeger endured the same financial challenge that has plagued countless students for generations: Attempting to balance student life with part-time work was keeping him from the high-impact experiences he knew were essential to shaping the future he wanted.

“I worked two, sometimes three summer jobs so I could devote more time to studying, networking and pursuing leadership opportunities during the school year,” Traeger said. “I knew that if I ever got to a point where I could give something back to K-State, I’d do it in a way that allowed a young student with great leadership potential to avoid the burden of working during the school year, and to help make their education at K-State more affordable.”

Second, he wanted GLS to showcase what today’s students can gain from aligning with others who share the same values and ambition. Traeger joined a fraternity and lived with students from diverse backgrounds, ages and talents, and formed bonds he still treasures today. To replicate that experience, GLS pairs scholarship recipients together as roommates in a K-State residence hall their freshman and sophomore years.

“Our community allowed us all to have the kind of collective experience from which a fraternal bond could spring to life,” Traeger said.

Traeger currently lives in Edina, Minnesota, with his wife, Michele. They have four children and eight grandchildren. He was a founding Director of Catholic Community Foundation of Minnesota. With the establishment of the GLS Michael E. Traeger Scholarship Fund in 2024, he now devotes time to expanding the GLS community of alumni and students.

Like many college friends who scattered far and wide following graduation, Traeger stays connected to a large group from many eras. But with his core group—lifelong friend Roger Schenewerk in particular—he never disconnected.

“From the beginning over 50 years ago, Roger and I found a friendship chemistry, along with rooming together for two years, that allowed a fraternal bond to form.” Despite time and distance (Roger in Kansas, Mike in Minnesota) that bond has become stronger. Today, both families own cabins on the same lake in Wisconsin.

It’s what Traeger wants most for the GLS students—the opportunity to form a fraternal bond that only grows stronger despite long distances, demanding careers, growing families and the many other complexities of life.