Alumni Award Recipients 2012

Bethel's 2012 Distinguished Achievement Award winner, Toshihiro "Ted" Fukudome, by his own description enjoys "challenges to the status quo."

That may have been why he decided to make the most of his talent for English, at which he excelled in school in his hometown of Miyakonojo, Japan, and to seek the advice of a young teacher of conversational English and a Mennonite service worker, Doyle Preheim '63.

Through Preheim, Fukudome went to Freeman (S.D.) Junior College and then on to Bethel, where he majored in economics and business, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1972.

His first job after graduation was with Sanrio Company Ltd. as international coordinator and assistant to the executive vice president. Now globally famous for its "Hello Kitty" brand, Sanrio was then a small company with fewer than 100 employees.

"Due to my English-language skills," Fukudome says, "I was involved in all aspects of the company's international business affairs. In hindsight, the experience at Sanrio gave me early exposure to high-level business interface and strategic thinking processes and prompted me to pursue an MBA program."

One of Fukudome's key responsibilities during his four years with Sanrio was maintenance of license agreements with U.S. companies including United Features Syndicate and Hallmark Inc., including frequent visits to the head offices. Because Hallmark was based in Kansas City, Mo., his trips there allowed Fukudome to renew a Bethel friendship with Connie Harms '71. They were married in 1974.

Fukudome left Sanrio in 1976 to pursue his MBA at the American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird) in Glendale, Ariz.

He then spent 11 years with Nippon Polaroid KK, the Japan branch of the U.S.-based instant photography and Polarizing® sunglasses manufacturer and supplier. He held various positions within the company, including national wholesale sales manager, new product development marketing manager (USA) and eventually marketing director for consumer products. In that position, he contributed to 75 percent of total company revenue between 1986 and 1988.

From 1988-91, Fukudome was director of marketing for Tupperware KK. A major responsibility was to create and build a marketing group "capable of carrying out and interpreting extensive consumer research to guide in determining products best suited [to] Japan," he says.

He also worked on development of a series of nontraditional Tupperware container products, "a concept, as I understand it, that has been exported globally to other Tupperware affiliates."

Fukudome next went to Mattel KK for four years as president and representative director, as well as general manager for Mattel Toys-Northeast Asia. "I made a successful Mattel reentry into Japan," he says, "as Mattel had failed and pulled out of Japan years earlier. I expanded my territorial responsibilities to cover Korea and Micronesian countries."

Mattel's reentry into Japan succeeded, he says, because of an initial strategy of using a local marketing company as an incubator through which he was able to recruit most of his sales, marketing, IT and other administrative employees; effectively deploying strategies that anticipated "the possible breakdown of traditional toy distribution strategies" (he notes that Toys R Us had come into Japan at about this same time); and "extensive and intensive image rebuilding."

From 1996-97, Fukudome worked as an independent consultant, working on various marketing-related projects for Polaroid, UNICEF and Interplay KK, the Japan office of a U.S.-based computer games and entertainment company, which led to a position as representative director during that same time period.

Fukudome became president and representative director for ACCO Brands Japan, a Chicago-based office products/supply company, in 1997. While Connie has retired after teaching 25 years at the American School in Japan in Tokyo, Ted is not quite at that point yet.

He says of his position at ACCO Japan, "I brought the company to a healthy financial position from an ailing [position], with operating income grown in excess of 20-fold. In its 51st year, it has 60-plus employees and is one of the very few successful foreign companies operating in Japan."

Connie now lives most of the time in Boston while Ted maintains a busy travel schedule. The Fukudomes' son, Eugene, a general surgery resident planning to specialize in plastic surgery, and his wife Angela, an ophthalmologist specializing in glaucoma, live in Boston along with the Fukudomes' grandson, Max. Daughter Marie (who pronounces her name the Japanese way, Mah-ree-ay) works for the Hyatt Hotel Group in Chicago.

Fukudome's hobbies are his daily workout at the gym as well as playing golf and listening to classical music. In addition, since March 2011, he has dealt with the extraordinary challenges to his company and his country in responding to the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that struck northern Japan.

The Bethel College Alumni Association presents the Distinguished Achievement Award to acknowledge character and citizenship, achievement in a chosen profession or vocation, and work of benefit to humanity.

The Distinguished Achievement Award acknowledges character and citizenship, achievement in a chosen profession or vocation, and work of benefit to humanity.

Melanie Zuercher

Growing up on a wheat farm in western Harvey County, Bethel's 2012 Outstanding Alumnus Award winner found no shortage of things to dismantle and reassemble.

Glen Ediger, now of North Newton, says, "My best education was growing up on a farm and seeing how things worked. I was always taking things apart and putting them back together."

One of three sons of Lydia Ediger '38 and the late Albert Ediger of Inman, Ediger says he built "a loader for my pedal tractor, at least six treehouses - I made a pair of sandals out of tires, leather and rivets. I would just go in the shop and start building with whatever I could find."

Today, Ediger is a designer, consultant, model builder and inventor with around 100 U.S. patents and nearly as many foreign patents to his name. He has been director of design at Vornado Air Systems near Wichita for 22 years, and has led marketing and engineering there. He has received design awards and had pieces exhibited across the United States.

When he came to Bethel College, he had no idea his profession even existed.

"I intended to do architecture - go to Bethel for two years and then transfer to Kansas State," he says. "But standing in the registration line, on a whim, I decided I would major in art. I had never had an art class in my life but I always drew. I doodled on bulletins at Hoffnungsau Mennonite Church [in rural Inman]. I had the ability to imagine things, such as an aerial view of the church, that I had never seen."

He ended up staying at Bethel all four years, majoring in art with a minor in industrial arts. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1975. "It was the early '70s, so I could do a lot of directed studies in industrial arts - I worked with Rod Frey '67, Emerson Wiens '60 and Wes Pauls."

Ediger lists Bethel Professor Emeritus of Art Bob Regier '52 as one of his most important mentors. "His perspective on design was influential. It can be summed up in one lecture called 'The Moo-Cow Creamer,' about design integrity." Ediger says he also strives to emulate, at least in small part, his mentor's perfectionism.

Ediger did two-dimensional art (graphic design, drawing) in college and then "popped into the third dimension" after college. He was first self-employed as a graphic designer while also doing construction work for his brother, LaVon Ediger '62, and then convinced well-known Newton businessman Lloyd Smith to hire him at S/V Tools.

"Every job I've ever had, I've talked my way into," Ediger says. "I've gone there saying, 'I'd like to do this.'"

At S/V Tools, Ediger got into both product and package design. He invented the world's first "Fin-Grip" screwdriver. One of the product he's proudest of is the Fiskars (which ultimately bought S/V Tools) hand drill, still popular and in production after 30 years.

Ediger was a designer for S/V tools for three years and design director for Richard TenEyck for five years. He was involved as an independent consultant in design and model-building for everything from truck toppers to lawn mowers, tractors to ice scrapers, fishing reels to large Bell helicopters, V-2 Osprey models and NASA mock-ups.

In 1988, Ediger was consulting with Mike Coup, the founder of Vornado. He has been with the company ever since as director of design.

"I've been part of every air product [Vornado has] made," Ediger says. "After 23 years, I think I've helped make it a respected brand. I never expected I would be a career heater and fan designer."

Ediger travels widely and frequently, around Kansas, the region and the world. "My first 'Cool!' reaction was when I went to Alaska and saw a Zebco fishing reel I'd designed. Vornado is in Asia - it's really growing there - and Europe, in Brazil, all over North America." The company makes fans, heaters, humidifiers and air cleaners and has most recently moved into steam cleaning and steam ironing products.

When he's not working or traveling for work, Ediger has a multitude of hobbies - woodworking, restoring antiques, riding his Harley-Davidson V-Rod motorcycle and tinkering with his old Porsche, among others. He's an active volunteer, including regular stints at the Harvey County Homeless Shelter. He says one of the things he's proudest of was 13 years directing Venture Clubs for children in grades 3 to 6 at Bethel College Mennonite Church, his home congregation.

He is also a current member of the Kauffman Museum Board of Directors, the last three years serving as chair - a fitting position for a man who visits as many museums as he can wherever he goes. All those museum visits, he says, give him even more reason to say he is "proud to be associated with a museum like Kauffman Museum."

Currently keeping Ediger busy is an exhaustive and extensive research project on threshing stones. When Ediger's wife, Karen (Unruh) Ediger '76, inherited a stone from the family farm near Goessel, the idea of researching them soon engaged Ediger's long-time interests in history and engineering design, as well as sports (the threshing stone inspired Bethel College's mascot, the Threshers).

In anticipation of Bethel's 125th anniversary year in 2012, Ediger began searching out and photographing threshing stones. Most of those he's located are in south central Kansas but he has found examples of threshing stone-like tools in China as well as traced them to their origins in the Ukraine, from which Mennonite farmers brought the design concept to Kansas and the Great Plains.

He's still looking for stones and invites visits to the website threshingstone.com. To coincide with the 125th anniversary celebration at Fall Festival 2012, Kauffman Museum will host a special exhibit on threshing stones. Ediger eventually plans to publish a book on his research.

The Bethel College Alumni Association gives the Outstanding Alumnus Award on the basis of character and citizenship, service to church/community or college, or other outstanding achievements, honors and recognition.

The Outstanding Alumnus Award is given on the basis of character and citizenship, service to church/community or college, or other outstanding achievements, honors and recognition.

Melanie Zuercher

Bethel's 2012 Young Alumnus Award winner is no stranger to the effects of armed conflict, which may be one reason why his academic career has been devoted to studying them.

Jaroslav Tir, Boulder, Colo., majored in history and mathematical sciences, minored in economics and political science, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bethel in 1995. Just last August, he took a position as an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado-Boulder, specializing in international relations with a focus on causes and management of armed conflicts.

Before coming to UC-Boulder, Tir taught political science at the University of Alabama for two years and then in the Department of International Affairs at the University of Georgia for eight years. He spent six months in 2008 as a Fulbright Senior Scholar on the faculty of political science at the University of Zagreb.

Originally from Croatia, Tir came to Kansas in 1990 as a high school exchange student.

"I'm especially grateful to John '66 and Lila Bartel '68 from Topeka," he says, "who hosted me in the 1990-91 school year and were instrumental in having me stay in the U.S. to go to Bethel, as opposed to having to return to Croatia just as the wars of Yugoslav disintegration were starting. The broader Mennonite communities, in Topeka and also Bethel's, also helped enormously through fund-raising efforts and moral support."

He adds, "Intellectually, my thanks go to Professors Keith Sprunger and Arnold Wedel '47, who engaged and developed my interests in history and mathematics, and to Bethel grad Gary Goertz '76, who showed me that these interests can be interwoven and combined with my other passion, international politics."

Tir earned an M.A. (1997) and a Ph.D. (2001) in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His dissertation received the Walter Isard Award for Best Dissertation 2000-02 from the Peace Science Society International.

He is a researcher, consultant and prolific writer who has garnered numerous honors, awards and grants. His research spans territorial disputes, environmental conflict and security, domestic and ethnic conflict, and diversionary theory of war.

He is the author of Redrawing the Map to Promote Peace: Territorial Dispute Management via Territorial Changes, Innovations in the Study of World Politics Series (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2006), as well as numerous articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and other published essays and book chapters.

Among Tir's many honors are a National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Defense/Department of the Army/Army Research Office grant for the project "NSCC/SA: Avoiding Water Wars: Environmental Security through River Treaty Institutionalization," on which he is working (with Douglas Stinnett) through 2012.

In addition to the Fulbright Senior Scholar grant at the University of Zagreb in 2008, Tir was also awarded a Fulbright Follow-on Grant for research in Croatia in summer 2010. He received the Gerald Schrag Mathematics Award at Bethel College in 1992, the above-mentioned dissertation award from the Peace Science Society International in 2002 and the Richard B. Russell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Instruction at the University of Georgia in 2007, among many others.

Tir has led the Croatia Maymester Study Abroad program, teaching "Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict" and "Croatian Politics and Identity," 2007-10 as well as upcoming this spring, for the University of Georgia. He has also led study abroad in Paris and Quito, Ecuador, where he was a founding program director for the Ecuador Conflict Resolution Study Abroad Program at the University of Georgia.

He is a member of the American Political Science Association (Conflict Processes section), the International Studies Association (Scientific Study of International Processes section) and the Peace Science Society International.

Personally, "I very much enjoy traveling along with my wife Carolyn, originally from Topeka," he says. "We love to learn about the history of other places, explore different cultures and ways of life, observe varied architectural styles and meet the locals. We've been all over Europe but have particularly fond memories of our travels to more exotic locations such as South Africa, Turkey and Hawaii.

"Other activities we enjoy are bicycling and hiking in the mountains - moving to Boulder recently has certainly been helpful in getting to partake in these activities more frequently."

Tir spoke in convocation March 9, where he received the 2012 Young Alumnus Award. His convocation topic was "Supply Side of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Trade Ties and Locations of UN-Led Deployments."

The Awards Committee of the Bethel College Alumni Association names one or more Young Alumnus Award winners each year. The Young Alumnus Award recognizes character and citizenship, achievement or service rendered, and honors and recognition received. The recipient must be 39 years of age or younger and present a convocation program for Bethel students, faculty and staff.

The Young Alumnus Award recognizes character and citizenship, achievement or service rendered, honor and recognition received. The recipient must be 39 years of age or younger and present a convocation program for Bethel students, faculty and staff.

Melanie Zuercher

The Bethel Deaconess Hospital/Bethel College Nursing Alumni Association has named Marie and Martha Voth of North Newton its Outstanding Alumnus Award winners for 2011-12.

The sisters grew up 14 miles north of Newton in the Goessel community. Though now retired in North Newton, they are lifelong members of and still attend Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church in Goessel.

They graduated from the Bethel Deaconess Hospital School of Nursing in 1962 and from Bethel College in 1965 with bachelor's degrees, majoring in nursing and minoring in psychology.

The Voths spent their nursing careers in hospitals, including Bethel Deaconess Hospital and Newton Medical Center, Martha as a head nurse on the medical floor and Marie as charge nurse on evenings and surgery. They also spent two years as volunteers with Mennonite Central Committee at Grenfell Mission Hospital, St. Anthony, Newfoundland.

Phyllis Miller, Bethel's director of nursing, says, "They are remembered as nurses who always worked quietly and efficiently. I worked for a summer on the medical floor and I remember them and their strong sense of professionalism and what role models of nursing they were."

Verda Deckert '64, retired Bethel nursing professor, remembers that, with the Voths being identical twins, "there was the inevitable - when they worked back-to-back day and evening shifts, patients would remark that 'she is really working long days!'"

The sisters have remained active as volunteers since they retired from nursing. "They love flowers and have been faithful volunteers at area gardens, including Botanica in Wichita, Kauffman Museum and Bethel College," says Geri Tyrell '07, Bethel assistant professor of nursing. "They have also worked for the Kidron Bethel Auxiliary to raise funds for the needs of health-care residents, and have generously supported the Bethel nursing program over the years."

The sisters may be best known these days for their work in wheat marquetry - three-dimensional small pieces and framed images made from wheat straw. They have created more than 100 pieces, some of which have gone to other countries while much of it hangs in Newton homes and businesses.

"I remember their image of the Liberty Bell," says Miller, "that was on display at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., for a while and is now at the Mennonite Historical Museum in Goessel."

The Voths enjoy traveling and have been to more than 50 countries and every continent but Antarctica. Deckert says they would come and share about their trips with former co-workers, which "everyone greatly enjoyed."

The BDH/BCNAA Outstanding Alumnus Award is given on the basis of dedication to the nursing profession, demonstrated leadership ability and creativity, and outstanding professionalism, to an alumnus who has promoted and elevated the general nursing image and is held in high regard by peers and the community.

There was a special recognition for the Voths during Fall Festival last October, and they will be honored along with other alumni award winners at the annual Alumni Banquet Saturday, May 19.

Melanie Zuercher