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president's column

Options and opportunities

by Barry C. Bartel '84

There are many larger schools where a student is faced with more options, but I am convinced that there is no place with better opportunities than Bethel College. Opportunities to participate in multiple activities; to find your space; to interact with professors as colleagues; to experience the campus community; to make the Bethel experience a special one.

In my inaugural response last year, I claimed that day as a special meeting of our history and our future, of our heritage and our dreams. Each day is such a day, as we build on our foundation even as we seek to be true to the early desire to “open wide the doors of the institution so that all may have an opportunity to partake of whatsoever advantages may be offered by it.” Three things are now emerging to strengthen the opportunities Bethel College offers.

First, in its meeting October 5, the Bethel College Board of Directors approved a $21 million campaign with three main components: 1) renovate the Old Science Hall and add a nursing wing in what will be called the Academic Center, for $8.5 million; 2) increase the endowment of the college to strengthen core programming, for $8.5 million; and 3) meet the annual Bethel College Fund goal, for $4 million. As major campaigns go, we now enter the “quiet phase” of seeking major donors and lead gifts. It is quiet but not secret and we wanted you to know that we are moving forward.

Second, with the last major history of Bethel College published in 1954, it is time for another! I am pleased that Keith Sprunger, Oswald D. Wedel Professor Emeritus of History, has agreed to author a new history of Bethel College. This will be a major project guided by an advisory committee consisting of Sprunger, Robert Kreider, Jim Juhnke, John Thiesen, Mark Jantzen, Penny Moon, John Sheriff and Dale Schrag. The publication of the history will coincide with the college’s next milestone anniversary.

Which leads to the third: With the incorporation of the college on May 23, 1887, Bethel will celebrate 125 years in 2012. Sondra Koontz and Lori Livengood will chair a committee to plan anniversary celebrations and to anticipate the anniversary with events leading up to 2012. The capital campaign, the history and the anniversary complement each other as we move the college forward.

As we provide opportunities for students, these activities provide opportunities for you. This is where our size is our strength. On campus, each student can make a difference. As supporters and alumni, each person can make a difference for the college. And our graduates make a difference in the world.

This issue of Context gives a few more examples of how Bethel alumni carry our core values into their careers, communities and churches to tackle the world’s tough problems on our behalf. In some ways, a liberal arts education makes us all entrepreneurs, able to apply our skills and critical thinking to a wide variety of settings, recognizing, as our Web site describes, the “interrelatedness of intellectual pursuits and ethics, learning and faith, research and compassion.” This issue focuses on people who have applied those entrepreneurial skills in business settings.

Our redesigned Business Administration major helps students develop entrepreneurial skills, with emphases in Management and Marketing, Finance and Economics. Take a look at the Web site and encourage students thinking about business to consider Bethel.

Merriam-Webster’s Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary defines an entrepreneur as “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.” The kind of innovative entrepreneurial spirit needed to take risks, to be successful against all odds and to provide opportunities for others created Bethel College 120 years ago. We celebrate that entrepreneurial spirit as we continue to provide opportunities for students and supporters and as we celebrate how our graduates make a difference in the world.