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– University professor is impressed with small college life and learning– Distinguished Achievement Award
– Outstanding Alumnus Award
– Young Alumnus Award
University professor is impressed with small college life and learning
It’s not every day that a well-regarded medievalist and university professor offers his time, free, to teach a class at a small liberal arts college in Kansas.
On the other hand, this one’s name is on a major structure at that same college.
Actually, it’s his father’s name. Joseph W. Goering – whom everyone in Moundridge has always known as “Butch” – is named for his late father, the Moundridge banker and businessman Joseph W. Goering ’39 (the younger Goering isn’t “Junior” because the “W.” in each name stands for something different). Joe W. Goering Field, Bethel College’s football and soccer field completed in 2005, is named in honor of the gift that Lovella Goering ’42 and her children gave in their husband and father’s memory.
After majoring in history and English at the University of Kansas, Goering earned a master’s degree in arts and religion at Yale Divinity School and a Ph.D. in medieval studies in 1977 at the University of Toronto, where he has taught ever since. His specialty is medieval history, and Toronto has the largest graduate program in medieval studies in the world.
A number of factors played into Goering’s presence on campus for Bethel’s January 2008 interterm. One is that he is currently on a year-long sabbatical. Another is his self-professed desire to dodge his sisters’ attempts to make him feel guilty for not spending more time with their mother, who lives in Moundridge.
“If there’s any area of European history that we’re weak on at Bethel College, it’s probably medieval history,” says Dale Schrag ’69, who directs Church Relations and is a Reformation scholar himself. “This was a priceless opportunity to expose our students to a quality professor from a major university.”
Schrag grew up in Inman and was, like Goering, a varsity debater. Goering thinks the two might have met first as high school students at a debate tournament at Bethel College in the mid-’60s. Schrag remembers that they would see each other at Christmas during their college years, but lost touch when Goering headed for Yale and Schrag for voluntary service in Colorado.
Then, years later, Schrag’s father, the late Richard Schrag ’37, was visiting family in Toronto and needed to be hospitalized. One day Paula Goering came home and told her husband, “We have a patient who is a Schrag from Moundridge – you need to go see him.” Goering did and found it was the father of his old friend. Later, when Richard Schrag was home and Goering was visiting family in Moundridge, Richard urged Dale to contact Goering again, thinking they might still have some common interests.
It turned out they did. “We started talking that day,” Goering recalls, “and we’ve basically never stopped.”
During one of those visits, Schrag likely mentioned the possibility of Goering’s teaching a class at Bethel sometime. With a sabbatical for 2007-08, Goering approached Schrag with the offer to teach an interterm course in medieval theology in January 2008.
Goering had an interterm class of seven, not all of them history majors. He was impressed by his class and by Bethel in general, he says.
“This probably shouldn’t have been surprising, but I’m amazed at how hard the students worked,” he says. “Medieval theology is unlike anything they’d read or studied before but they weren’t buffaloed by it. They struggled with the material and figured it out. You can find students like that at the University of Toronto, of course, but with a much bigger pool to draw from.”
Goering says he very much enjoyed eating lunch in the cafeteria, noting that around-the-table discussions typically went well beyond just “surface small talk” and that there was a real sense of community.
Visiting with Schrag, an examiner for Basic Issues of Faith and Life during January, as well as with other Bethel faculty and staff, Goering learned more about Bethel’s senior capstone course, which he also appreciated.
“It’s an ambitious requirement, to have all seniors – in any and every field – read from the Bible and from literature and be able to talk about it coherently and with some knowledge, to be able to pass an oral exam,” he says. “At the University of Toronto, you wouldn’t have that kind of common enterprise that brings together all disciplines, that relates to life experience and that has a deliberately religious component.”
Bethel has “a coherence you wouldn’t necessarily find at any small, private college,” Goering says.
Melanie Zuercher
Distinguished Achievement Award
The Awards Committee of the Bethel College Alumni Association has named Claudia A. Limbert, Columbus, Miss., as the winner of the 2008 Distinguished Achievement Award.
Limbert was appointed by the Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning as the 13th president of Mississippi Universit for Women July 1, 2002.
Originally from Missouri, Limbert married and had four children before beginning college. She received a bachelor’s degree with majors in English, history and education from Bethel College in 1978. She earned a master’s degree in creative writing in 1980 and a doctorate in English literature in 1988, both from Boston University.
In 1988, Limbert began her career as an English and women’s studies professor at Pennsylvania State University-Shenango. She was then selected as an administrative fellow, spending the next year in leadership training under the direction of a senior vice president at Penn State-University Park.
Following that experience, she became the director of academic affairs at Penn State-DuBois. After then serving as acting campus executive officer for a short time, she was selected for the permanent position in 1998, a position she held until being appointed president of Mississippi University for Women.
Limbert has received many awards, including the prestigious Athena Award for service to women and the community by the Greater DuBois Area Chamber of Commerce, the Outstanding College Administrator of Penn State’s Commonwealth College in 2001, the Rosemary Schraer Mentor Award from Penn State University’s Commission for Women in 2000, and the Teaching Award in 1994 from Penn State-Shenango students. She also was named one of the Achieving Women of Penn State. Most recently, she was selected as one of Mississippi’s 12 Leading Business Women for 2004.
Limbert’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such publications as Country Living and House Beautiful and her scholarly work has appeared in Restoration, Philological Quarterly and The National Women’s Studies Association Journal. Her most recent work is an essay in the book Herspace: Women, Writing, and Solitude (Haworth, 2003). Her hobbies include gardening (specifically herbs and old-fashioned flowers), reading, writing, walking and spending time with her children and friends.
The Distinguished Achievement Award acknowledges character and citizenship, achievement in a chosen profession or vocation, and work of benefit to humanity. Limbert will receive the award at the Bethel College Alumni Association annual Alumni Banquet at 6 p.m., Saturday, May 24, in Memorial Hall. For reservations, contact Thresher Bookstore in Schultz Student Center, (316) 284-5205.
Melanie Zuercher
Outstanding Alumnus Award
The Awards Committee of the Bethel College Alumni Association has named Duane Goossen, Topeka, as the winner of the 2008 Outstanding Alumnus Award.
Goossen, a Republican, is current Kansas Secretary of Administration and State Budget Director in the administration of Democratic governor Kathleen Sebelius.
Goossen graduated from Bethel with a B.A. in 1978 and earned a Master of Public Administration with a specialization in public management from Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government, in 1998.
From 1978-96, Goossen was president and owner of Goossen Construction Inc. in Goessel. He served seven consecutive terms as a Kansas State Representative for District 70 from 1983-97. During that time, he chaired the House Education Committee and Appropriations Sub-Committee.
As state budget director, starting during the administration of Governor Bill Graves in 1998 and continuing to the present, Goossen has directed a 20-person office. Since 2004, Goossen has led and coordinated the Kansas Department of Administration, an 800-person cabinet agency responsible for providing state government central services in the areas of budgeting and accounting, personnel, facilities management, purchasing and information technology.
Goossen was president of the National Association of State Budget Officers, 2005-06. His current board duties include being a member of Bethel’s Committee for the Future of the College (since 2006), a member of the Kansas Health Policy Authority (2006), a member of the Governor’s Council on Homeland Security (2005) and chair of the Kansas Health Care Commission (2004). He is also an active participant in the National Association of State Budget Officers.
Goossen previously served as Kansas commissioner for the Midwest Higher Education Commission (1998-2002), a member of the Bethel College Board (1983-95, vice-chair, 1993-95), a member of the boards of directors for Newton Healthcare Corporation (1987-90) and Bethesda Home for the Aged in Goessel (1980-89), a member of the Goessel City Council (1979-82) and a Goessel volunteer firefighter.
Goossen and his family are active in Southern Hills Mennonite Church in Topeka. He is married to historian Rachel Waltner Goossen ’82. They have two children, Ben, a junior, and Elsa, a freshman, at Washburn Rural High School in Topeka.
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. Goossen will receive the award at the Bethel College Alumni Association annual Alumni Banquet at 6 p.m., Saturday, May 24, in Memorial Hall. For reservations, contact Thresher Bookstore in Schultz Student Center, (316) 284-5205.
Melanie Zuercher
Young Alumnus Award
The Awards Committee of the Bethel College Alumni Association presented Arthur W. Marks, New York, with the 2007 Young Alumnus Award at a special convocation in his honor Feb. 11. That evening, Marks gave a free concert in Krehbiel Auditorium with proceeds from a freewill offering going to the African-American Alumni Association Scholarship Fund and to help defray travel expenses for Marks and his accompanist, Laura Bergquist.
Marks, a native of Kansas City, Kan., graduated from Bethel in 1993 with a bachelor of arts degree and a double major in music and social work. After graduating, he worked as a social worker with Hospice Inc. in Wichita. He also served as minister of music at Hillside Christian Church, ran a successful voice studio connected with the Maize School District and was musical director for several choral groups in Wichita, including Stage One Singers, Emerald City Chorus and Music Theatre for Young People.
Marks made his professional singing debut in 1992 with the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra. He has performed as a soloist with the Baltimore, Des Moines and Wichita Symphony orchestras, the Vivaldi Travelling Virtuoso Orchestra from New York City and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra. He has performed on stages and classical venues in Rome, London, Berlin, Leipzig, Paris and Vienna. Last spring, Marks was the tenor soloist for the annual Masterworks concert at Bethel College, in Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana.”
In addition to performing in the classical genre, Marks can often be seen on musical theater venues and stages across the United States and abroad. He has also played the roles of Richie in A Chorus Line, Mary Sunshine in Chicago, Simon Zealotes in Jesus Christ Superstar, Mereb in Aïda, Mungojerrie in Cats and the Cat in the Hat in Seussical: The Musical. One role Marks is particularly proud of was as Ugly the Duckling in HONK!, a retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Ugly Duckling” that won the 2000 Olivier Award for “Best Musical.” Marks appears in the first American cast recording of HONK!, with Music Theatre of Wichita.
Marks recently performed in the world premiere of It Happened in Little Rock at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre, which commissioned the play for the 50th anniversary celebration of the 1957 integration of Little Rock’s Central High School by a group of students who became known as the Little Rock Nine. Marks played the part of senior Ernest Green. Among other things, participating in the production afforded Marks the opportunity to meet former President Bill Clinton and Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well as Ernest Green himself and other members of the Little Rock Nine, at the celebration this past September.
“Bethel College for me is a gift that keeps on giving,” Marks says. “When I began my years of study [there], little did I know that my experiences and the people surrounding me would have such a profound effect on my career path and choices. The many lessons I learned not only came from being in the arts, but also in the other disciplines offered on campus. Thank goodness for the liberal arts.”
Melanie Zuercher