around the green – campus

Art professor retires after 28 years of teaching, mentoring

Though she had never been to Kansas and knew next to nothing about Mennonites, when Gail Lutsch was looking for a college teaching job in art 28 years ago, she thought Bethel College looked promising.

“I was finishing my graduate work at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio,” she remembers. “At the College Art Association national meeting in San Francisco [that year], I saw a notice of a position at a small Christian college that emphasized peace and justice. I thought that sounded good,” even though when her friends heard she was applying at a Mennonite school, “they told me I’d go out there, marry a farmer and end up wearing long, black skirts.”

Bob Regier ’52, Bethel College art department chair from 1965-92, says, “I remember interviewing Gail in Richmond, Ind., [just a short distance from Oxford] in the spring of 1981. I was on sabbatical and stopped in Richmond to meet Gail on my way to New York. She drove to Richmond in what I thought was a somewhat untrustworthy bright orange VW to meet me at a restaurant.

“Two degrees – an M.A. in art education and an M.F.A. in studio work – was a perfect fit for the position that needed to be filled,” he continues. “A very engaging interview in that restaurant led to the offer of a contract. Gail accepted the offer and joined us in the fall of 1981. So from that moment until my retirement [in 1992], we thrived as colleagues, interacting with each other and with our third colleague Paul Friesen. Those were exciting years.”

Her first four years on the Bethel faculty, Lutsch lived in a small house just south of the Fine Arts Center now called Richert House, currently housing offices for retired faculty. As a single woman, she says, she wondered for a while if she’d really fit into this faculty society where virtually everyone was married and nearly everyone was Mennonite.

“At first, it seemed to be lacking in zaniness,” she admits. “I was used to a raucous group in graduate school. But I have made great friends. When I would go back to Ohio and people would ask me, ‘What’s it like?’, I’d say: ‘They like me and I like them.’ I never felt left out not being Mennonite. We always have all respected each other.”

In the early ’80s, the art department was in two different locations – two-dimensional (painting, drawing, printmaking and crafts, with Lutsch and Regier as the faculty) was in the Fine Arts Center, where communication arts now resides, while three- dimensional (ceramics and sculpture, Friesen’s areas) was in the basement of Memorial Hall. In 1992, the department moved to Franz Art Center, which up until then had housed the industrial arts department, and everyone was under one roof.

Lutsch’s other colleagues in the department have been Reinhild Janzen, Merrill Krabill and, currently, David Long. Over the years, she has taught Studio Fundamentals, Introduction to Visual Arts and Elementary and Secondary Art Methods, along with basic and advanced drawing, painting and printmaking, crafts (small metals, jewelry making, and fiber) and “Art History once, for Reinhild.”

In those early days, Lutsch says, with her office in the FAC, “I would help paint sets [for theater and opera productions] until the wee hours, then go out to Druber’s at 3 or 4 in the morning with Arlo and Kathryn Kasper. That feels like a long time ago – I couldn’t do that now.”

In 1988, right before her first sabbatical, Lutsch married Professor of Biology Wayne Wiens ’58 (who grew up on a farm).

In honor of Lutsch’s 28 years at Bethel, one of her former students, Rachel Epp Buller ’96 – who went on for a master’s degree and Ph.D. in art history and does adjunct teaching in Bethel’s art department – organized a show of work by other former students as well as colleagues, including Friesen and Regier (see images from the show in the “Encore” section). Proceeds from sale of the work started an art scholarship in Lutsch’s honor, which she presented to the first recipient, Kelsie Miller, a junior art major from Goshen, Ind., at the close of the school year.

Melanie Zuercher

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Spring service trip a chance to enjoy friends while making a difference

Like most other college students, those from Bethel are always looking for spring break options that allow them to have fun with friends while spending as little money as possible.

The students who went to Hopi Mission School for Bethel’s annual spring break service trip aren’t afraid to state that it filled the bill both ways – but then there were the extras.

“Honestly, spending $20 for a trip to Arizona is a chance I could hardly turn down,” said Naomi Graber, freshman from Elkhart, Ind. Allison Schrag, freshman from Newton, said, “I needed to get out of Newton, and this was the cheapest way to do it,” while Roxanne Reimer, freshman from Walton, Kan., added, “It sounded like fun to do service with a bunch of other friends.”

Graber spent 9½ months in a service assignment in Anchorage, Alaska, with the Service Adventure program, before starting college. Reimer had done short-term assignments as a high school student. And both she and Schrag were going to a place where their grandparents (Clara and Walt Reimer, Hulda and John Schrag) had served before them.

The Bethel group also spent time with someone else’s grandparents on this, the second consecutive service trip to Hopi Mission School – Doris and Jim Yoder of Newton, who have done numerous weeks-long stints at the school over the past five years, working on a number of construction projects there, and who are the grandparents of Mark Smith ’02, Bethel College residence hall director and one of the trip organizers.

Over those years, Jim Yoder has overseen – in addition to many smaller projects – the construction of a school gym, a duplex to house teaching staff and, currently, a building where volunteers will stay. The Bethel students, plus Smith and fellow Bethel staff member Tim Buller ’96, worked on the volunteer center, which is nearing completion. Most did exterior painting while several tiled inside floors.

“At first, I didn’t really feel like we were making that much of a difference,” Reimer said. “But one day when I was inside tiling, a guy came in and said he thought this was a good thing and he was glad we were doing it. He was Hopi and a [mission school] board member, and it was nice to hear that he thought it was a good cause.”

In addition to Graber, Reimer and Schrag, the students who spent their spring break at Hopi Mission School were Kyle Claassen, Andover, Kan.; Aaron Gingerich, Kalona, Iowa; Annette Gingerich, Parnell, Iowa; Linda Gomes, Dhaka, Bangladesh; Clint Harris, Manhattan, Kan.; Blake Johnson, Topeka, Kan.; Will Peterson, Bonner Springs, Kan.; Paul Regier, Newton; Shawn Sullivan, Hutchinson, Kan.; Claire Unruh, Clay Center, Kan.; and Rachel Voran, Newton.

Melanie Zuercher

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Speaker challenges graduates to “cultivate caring”

Bethel College’s commencement speaker, Mark McCormick, tackled what seems to be the looming issue for the class of 2009 in the United States: the economy.

But the career journalist deliberately gave his address a title – “The Caring Economy” – that could be read several ways, and treated the topic with a twist that seemed to resonate with his audience.

McCormick was speaking to the 116th graduating class of Bethel College, with ceremonies taking place for the second year in a row outdoors in Thresher Stadium. The second-year tradition of a peal of bells from the electronic carillon atop Memorial Hall marked the much older tradition of the graduates’ march around the Green, led by the commencement speaker, administrators and faculty.

As the procession entered the stadium, Director of Church Relations Dale Schrag ’69, as he did last year, rang the bell that has marked the “opening of school” since the mid-1970s and which the 119 graduates would have heard right before the first convocation of the school year when they arrived at Bethel as freshmen or new transfers. There was also a new ritual added to commencement: touching a threshing stone, the same one freshmen touch as they are welcomed to campus at the first convocation.

As he introduced the speaker, Bethel College President Barry Bartel ’84 pointed out that most of the locals in the audience had probably heard of Mark McCormick and perhaps even read his writing but likely had not heard him speak. Until earlier this year, McCormick worked for The Wichita Eagle, for which he had written a weekly column since 2004. He was recently named executive director of the Kansas African-American Museum in Wichita.

“I’m talking about the economy in terms of everything we spend – time, money, energy,” McCormick said. “How we do that reflects our priorities and our values.

“God calls us to tithe in order to keep him first in our lives,” he continued, “to organize our priorities to keep him in front.

“Consider what our nation spends on war in relation to education. Wouldn’t it be nice to be patriotic about education as well as our military?” That line drew applause from graduates and audience.

“The world needs you,” he said to the graduates. “The city needs you. A friend needs you. No matter what your major or your training – the abandoned child, and the mother who abandoned him, need you to cultivate caring … that is broader than investments and portfolios and more vast than the Federal Reserve.

“Graduates, we need an economy that cares, and we need you.”

As they were crossing the stage to receive their diplomas, several students expressed their appreciation to McCormick for his remarks, which Schrag noted is not something that commonly happens.

Bartel conferred 40 bachelor of arts and 79 bachelor of science degrees. According to a survey of graduating seniors, 53 of the graduates intend to enter health- and social service-related careers, 15 business and seven education. Of those who responded to the survey, 56 percent plan either to enter or apply to graduate school within the next five years. At least four will follow a Bethel tradition of taking voluntary service assignments soon after graduation.

The class of 2009 comes from 14 states and 10 countries in addition to the United States: Canada, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Rwanda and Tanzania.

Parents of graduating seniors opened and closed the commencement ceremonies with prayer. Rev. Michael Chittum, pastor of First Congregational Church of Salt Lake City and father of graduate Josh Chittum, gave the invocation and Rev. Rigoberto Negrón, pastor of Iglesia Menonita del Cordero, Brownsville, Texas, and father of graduate Moraima Negrón, offered the benediction.

Melanie Zuercher

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Bethel-NMC partnership lets nursing students practice skills

After hours of reading, listening to lectures and taking tests, Bethel nursing students relish the opportunity to practice their skills outside of the classroom. Bethel’s new Shadow-a-Nurse program, developed through a partnership with Newton Medical Center, gives seniors just this opportunity.

“We spend a lot of time in class and studying textbooks,” says Laura Aronis, Wichita, “but any opportunity to practice those skills, apply the knowledge and see it all in action is always helpful.”

Through the shadowing program, students are able to see nurses put their skills into action. Seniors choose a unit and a shift, which they may or may not have experienced through regular clinical rotations, and shadow a nurse in that area for an eight-hour period.

“Any nursing program has a prescribed number of clinical activities that students must complete prior to graduation,” says Phyllis Miller, Bethel College director of nursing. “We wanted to give our students an opportunity to have a clinical experience uniquely focused in their area of interest and see firsthand the role of the registered nurse in a community hospital and how the nurse cares effectively for a group of patients.”

Students select all sorts of nursing areas within the Newton hospital, from ICU to surgery to labor and delivery.

Brittany Scogin, Derby, chose the emergency room (ER). “Because of the size of our nursing class and the other nursing schools, ER time can be limited,” Scogin explains. “Right now, for our class, most people only get to have one day in the ER at St. Francis, which is where we are for regularly scheduled clinicals.

“I wanted to get more experience in this field, to see if it was an area that really interested me for a career.”

Miller notes that having a strong partnership with area health-care facilities is important to the nursing department, adding, “Bethel College and Newton Medical Center share a rich piece of history, with the beginnings of Bethel’s nursing program occurring with the establishment of the nursing program at Bethel Deaconess Hospital, one of the founding institutions of Newton Medical Center.

“We are exploring ways of working cooperatively together and the Shadow-A-Nurse program is one of those initiatives.”

In addition to the nursing experience, Scogin appreciates the way the hospital staff welcomed her. “I can’t say enough about the staff there,” she says. “It is important to have a welcoming staff that really allows students to be active in the care for the patients. That is what, I feel, made the day for me.”

Other senior nursing students who completed the Shadow-a-Nurse program were Frederick Agbomanyi, Wichita; Carrie Ashford, Newton; Michelle Baldwin, Marion; Marla Bell, Wichita; Luz Bragg, Wichita; Marissa Branson, Wichita; Nadia Dayo, Wichita; Shana Eaves, Hutchinson; Lindsey Elder, McPherson; Peni Ens, Hillsboro; Rodney Freeland, North Newton; Munna Godfrey, Wichita; Brittany Wiens Goertzen, Hutchinson; Cane Griffiths, Newton; Trista Hanley, Bel Aire; Eleazar Harelimana, Wichita; Manuel Hernandez, Wichita; Katie Hougham, Burrton; Amy Hulse, Peabody; Daami Izu, Wichita; Salma Juma, Wichita; Michael Kagiri, Wichita; Violet Karani, Wichita; Lynnet Maidhi, Wichita; Matthew Meehan, Abilene; Amanda Mindrup, Newton; John Muchina, Newton; Nicholas Mwangi, Bel Aire; Punyawati Neupane, Wichita; Jane Njagi, Wichita; Justin Novinger, Wichita; Nnenna Olugu, Wichita; Fridah Orina, Wichita; Brandi Peterie-Shipman, Florence; Leslie Poelstra, Derby; Sunita Pudasaini, Newton; Holly Ralstin, Wichita; Breanna Sauerwein, Newton; Monica Seidl, Wichita; Wendy Shumard, Wichita; Kristin Sorensen; Jacy Suttlemyre, Salt Lake City; Esther Waitherero, Wichita; Amanda Watts, Wichita; and David Young, McPherson.

Krista Graber

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Good chemistry: Bethel lab assistant “retires” at 90, after 25 years

The first week of May marked two milestones for Paul Renich of Hesston – he turned 90, and he turned in his Bethel College keys.

Renich is a 1942 graduate of Bethel and has a master’s degree and Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Kansas. He spent a career in teaching and administration at Kansas Wesleyan University in Salina (where he served as both dean and president) and Haskell Junior College, now Haskell University, in Lawrence.

After Renich retired from academia in 1984, he and his wife, Roberta, also a Bethel graduate (they met in a Bethel chemistry lab), built a passive solar home in Newton. And for the past 25 years, Renich has volunteered in Bethel’s chemistry department.

For about the first eight years, he says, he would teach classes to help ease transitions as older faculty retired and new members joined the department. For the past number of years, Renich has been coming to campus on Tuesdays and Thursdays – so faithfully you could set a calendar by him, according to Richard Zerger ’69, professor of chemistry, who has taught at Bethel since 1995 – to help out with the Introductory Chemistry, Chemistry I and Chemistry II labs.

Renich would make the unknowns, reagents and solutions for qualitative analysis. “That’s been a huge contribution,” Zerger says. “The students learn a lot of descriptive chemistry by seeing colors and reactions, and not just reading theory. Many schools have stopped doing [qualitative analysis] because of all the work involved [in making the solutions].”

More recently, Renich cut back to only Tuesdays at Bethel because he sold his old Ford and Roberta uses the other car for her volunteer job on Thursdays. Many past chemistry students remember the Ford – it had no catalytic converter, so they would test its exhaust fumes for pollutants.

And on May 7, Renich handed in all his keys. The Chemistry II students, Zerger and Professor of Chemistry Gary Histand marked Renich’s last lab with cupcakes, a group photo and several individual expressions of thanks.

Melanie Zuercher

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Pictured above: Touching the threshing stone after entering the stadium was a new tradition at commencement this year, creating bookends for students who touched the stone at opening convocation as freshmen. Here Malcolm Rhymer and David Roberts take their turns.