around the green – campus

Dedicated to dance: Young Alumnus Award winner

Young Alumnus Award winner Katrina Toews has been dedicated to dance from a young age – so much so that she made it part of her Bethel major, even though the college does not have a dance program.

Toews is a 1998 graduate with a B.A. in fine arts and elementary education. She had begun studying dance with Annette Thornton at the Newton Dance Center as a child but quit in high school. Then when she came to Bethel, she picked up entry-level ballet. “I loved it so much,” she says, “I couldn’t stand not to keep taking it, so I decided to see if I could keep studying dance at Wichita State University.” She developed her fine arts major to incorporate dance and also started a dance studio and taught ballet and jazz to help pay her way through college.

Toews went on to a masters program at American University, Washington, D.C. She earned the coveted ballet fellowship at AU and graduated in 2002 with a degree in dance education. From 2002-04, she taught at James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Va.

While Toews was at AU, The Washington School of Ballet founder Mary Day hired her as a teacher. In 2004, Toews returned to The Washington Ballet as director of education. In 2005, The Washington Ballet inaugurated its satellite campus with Toews as interim director. In 2006, she was appointed permanent director of The Washington Ballet@THEARC (TWB@THEARC; THEARC, pronounced “The Ark,” stands for Town Hall Education, Arts & Recreation Campus).

As director of TWB@THEARC, Toews works to instill the artistic vision and professionalism of The Washington School of Ballet in dance students at the satellite campus in the Anacostia neighborhood of D.C. The community in which THEARC is located has the largest underserved population in the metropolitan area (statistics show 28 percent of residents unemployed and 50 percent of children living in poverty). To create THEARC, developer William C. Smith raised $27 million to bring together nine nonprofit, health, human services, education and arts organizations on a two-building campus.

Some of Toews’ successes as director of TWB@THEARC include increasing enrollment from a projected 60 students to 285; creating a collaborative summer intensive program with artistic partners in THEARC, Levine School of Music and Corcoran ArtReach; starting a “healthy initiatives” program with Children’s Hospital; receiving the 2008 Metrodance DC Award for Best Youth Performance; and successfully writing numerous grants, most recently a $15,000 grant for live accompaniment for the ballet classes.

In addition to AU, JMU and The Washington School of Ballet, Toews has also taught at Dance Place and the Davis Center. She founded K2 Dance Company, which has performed at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, Dance Place, the Jack Guidone Theater, THEARC Theater and AU’s Greenberg Theatre. She has also danced with bosmadance, Carla & Company and Sister’s Trousers, all Washington-based companies. Her work has been described by Washington Post critics as “solidly crafted quality,” with choreography that “stands out.” She has presented on dance and education at various conferences across the United States and is a member of the National Dance Education Organization.

In her spare time, Toews enjoys traveling, most recently to Croatia. She is an active member of Hyattsville (Md.) Mennonite Church and, when she has quiet time, can be found drinking coffee and reading the Washington Post. Toews will lead a group of her students in a dance performance in Krehbiel Auditorium March 28 and will receive the Young Alumnus Award in convocation March 29.

Melanie Zuercher

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The love of singing: Distinguished Achievement Award winner

Janeal Crabb Krehbiel, the Distinguished Achievement Award winner for 2010, has spent a career teaching children to sing and to love music.

Krehbiel graduated “with distinction” from Bethel College in 1968 with a B.A. in music, and earned a master’s degree in music education from Wichita State University. She taught elementary vocal music in the Denver public schools, vocal music at Hesston High School and Grade 7, 8 and 9 music in the Lawrence public schools. Before moving to Lawrence, she served 18 years as children’s choir director at Bethel College Mennonite Church.

Krehbiel is the co-founder and director of the Lawrence Children’s Choir. Under her leadership, the choir has sung at a number of regional and national conventions for choir directors and music educators. It was the featured choir for the “World’s Largest Concert” on PBS in 1994 and, in 1998, the artist-in-residence choir for the North Carolina Summer Institute of the Choral Art. In 2000 and 2007, the choir sang the featured concert at Carnegie Hall for the FSI Festival, where Krehbiel was the conductor of the National Children’s Choir. The choir performed at St. Martin-in-the-Field and St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, in 2003, toured Germany in summer 2005 and was one of four American choirs to sing at the International Choral Festival in Missoula, Mont., in summer 2006.

In addition to her work with the Lawrence Children’s Choir, Krehbiel is a clinician and festival director throughout the United States. She was a member of the Chorister’s Guild Board of Directors and has been the featured clinician at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn.; Montreat (N.C.) Music Conference; Westminster Choir College, Princeton, N.J.; and the North Carolina Summer Institute of the Choral Art. She has held seminars at colleges and universities, directed camps and festivals and published many articles about choral music for children and youth.

Krehbiel is an active member of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA, for which she is a past president of the Kansas chapter), MENC (the National Association for Music Educators), Kansas Music Educators Association (KMEA) and Chorus America. She organized the Kansas Honors Children’s Choir and directs regional and all-state honors choirs for children and junior high students throughout the United States. In July 1999, Krehbiel’s colleagues in the Kansas chapter of ACDA awarded her the Harry Robert Wilson Award, recognizing her outstanding contribution to choral music, and in December 1999, she was honored as Outstanding Middle Level Music Educator for Northeastern Kansas. In March 2009, she taught and conducted in Singapore.

Janeal and Randall Krehbiel ’66 have two daughters, Heather McDonough ’96 and Melissa Krehbiel, and three grandchildren.

Krehbiel and other alumni award winners will be honored at the annual Alumni Banquet Saturday, May 22, at 6 p.m. in Memorial Hall. The Lawrence Children’s Choir will give a supplemental (not included in the season ticket package) concert in the Hesston-Bethel Performing Arts Series Sunday, June 6, at 3 p.m. at Hesston Mennonite Church; call 620-327-8158 or e-mail hbpa@hesston.edu for more information.

Melanie Zuercher

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Churchwide leadership: Outstanding Alumnus Award winner

The 2010 Outstanding Alumnus Award winner, James F. (Jim) Schrag, went from teaching to pastoring to Mennonite churchwide leadership.

The Newton native graduated from high school at Hesston Academy before completing a B.A. in history and social science at Bethel College in 1966. He taught social sciences at Clay Center Community High School from 1966-67 and then moved to Maseno, Kenya, where he taught at Emusire Secondary School for three years under Mennonite Central Committee’s Teachers Abroad Program (TAP).

Schrag earned his Master of Divinity degree at Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Ind., in 1973. He then served pastorates at Tabor Mennonite Church in rural Newton, 1973-85, and at Oak Grove Mennonite Church, Smithville, Ohio, 1985-96. In 1996, he was called to be general secretary of the General Conference Mennonite Church (GCMC), a position in which he served three years.

From 1999-2001, Schrag was the project director for the Transformation Team that guided the transition process whereby the GCMC and the Mennonite Church, both bi-national denominations, became Mennonite Church USA, as well as Mennonite Church Canada. From 2001 until his retirement Nov. 30, 2009, Schrag was executive director of Mennonite Church USA.

Schrag has served on a number of regional and national Mennonite boards and committees throughout his career, including chair of the Education Committee for Western District Conference; member of the GCMC Communications Committee; co-chair of the program committee to plan the first-ever joint GCMC-MC gathering at Bethlehem, Pa., in 1983; chair of the Bethel College Board; and member of the Presidential Search Committee for Bluff ton (Ohio) University, among others.

Schrag has been married to Judy (Nickel) Schrag ’67 for 44 years, and they have three daughters: Valerie Schrag ’95; Melissa Claassen ’97; and Rachel Sommerfeld ’01. They also have three grandchildren. Jim and Judy Schrag are members of First Mennonite Church in Newton.

Now that Jim Schrag has retired, he hopes to have more time for his hobbies of golf and photography. He is also undertaking the writing of a history of the merger of the Mennonite Church and General Conference Mennonite Church into Mennonite Church USA, 1983-2009.

Schrag and other alumni award winners will be honored at the annual Alumni Banquet Saturday, May 22, at 6 p.m. in Memorial Hall.

Melanie Zuercher

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Martin Luther King, Jr., Day

January 18 was a day of memories, celebration and inspiration on the Bethel campus as college and community marked the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Jan. 21, 1960, speech in Memorial Hall. An overflow crowd of 500-plus filled Krehbiel Auditorium, including the stage, to hear the entire 45-minute speech, restored from an almost miraculously recovered reel-to-reel tape that Randy Harmison ’61 found in his storage shed in rural eastern Kansas. (The King Center, in Atlanta, owns the copyright to the speech and has granted permission for the speech to be available at www.bethelks.edu/mlk from March 1-31. Bethel’s Mennonite Library and Archives has a copy for research use only.)

Following this, 11 alumni recalled their experiences hearing the speech (beginning with Harmison’s story of how he came to make the recording and then find it nearly 50 years later), participating in the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights, taking part in the Bethel-Spelman College (Atlanta) exchange in the early ’60s or working with Dr. King.

Before the evening program, visitors enjoyed a wide variety of artwork by Newton elementary school students, on themes of reconciliation and peacebuilding, hung on the Joliffe Auditorium walls. Evening events included music by the Newton Community Children’s Choir under the direction of Brenda Bartel ’84, and a keynote address by Vincent Harding, Denver, in which he borrowed from a favorite King theme, calling for “maladjustment” to the status quo and refusal to settle for less than justice and equality for all people.

The address capped two days of Harding’s visiting with, and listening to the stories of, many Bethel faculty, friends and students – of whom he said: “They realize they came to Bethel College not just to get a degree or a job but to become better people, to equip themselves to create a better world.”

In the picture at the top, Harding enjoys lunch hosted by Delora ’63 and Jerry Decker and Berneil ’62 and Ted ’58 Mueller at the Deckers’ home. Clockwise from Harding, who is seated at the end of the table: Micki Boling, visitor from Denver; Bethel students Zach Metzler, Sonia Barrera, Ri’Tea Acosta, Ben Santos, Albino Quinones, Sarah Unruh, Maya Kehr, John Watson, Krishna Phifer, and Cassidy McFadden; and Bethel Multicultural Student Advisor Bridget Kratzer ’06, Newton.

Melanie Zuercher

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Turning the earth to plant community

Rain couldn’t dampen the spirits of those who gathered last fall to break ground for a new cooperative venture between Bethel College and residents of North Newton.

The project, called Sand Creek Community Garden, is being planned and supported by a group from Bethel and Bethel College Mennonite Church. The garden will be located in an empty lot just east of the church and south of the Warkentin Court residence hall parking lot.

The 22 people who wielded shovels at the Nov. 9 groundbreaking included student members of Bethel’s Environmental Action Club; Bethel faculty, staff and administrators; and Bethel College Mennonite Church’s pastors and members of its Creation Care Task Force.

BCMC member Duane Friesen ’62, retired Bethel professor, North Newton resident and enthusiastic gardener, has been coordinating the community garden project. As he welcomed people to the groundbreaking, he read words from the Medieval Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich: “Be a gardener … Continue this labor and … carry it to God as your true worship.”

In mid-December, the North Newton City Council approved a grant of $500 for the Sand Creek Community Garden and will appoint a representative to its advisory board to serve along with representatives of the college and the church.

Melanie Zuercher

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Bethel names consultant in presidential search

Bethel’s Presidential Search Committee has begun work with the assistance of Academic Search Inc. and senior consultant James A. Davis. He is the long-term (20-year) past president of Shenandoah University, Winchester, Va., and has extensive experience as a tenured faculty member, department chair, academic dean and member of accrediting teams for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Davis spent two days on campus in mid-February interviewing and working with students, faculty, staff, alumni, administrators, community leaders and Bethel supporters.

The search committee is now developing a profile statement offering insights into Bethel’s history, current operations, strengths and challenges, and the particular attributes the community seeks in a new president. The profile will serve candidates, and those wishing to nominate candidates, for the position.

The Presidential Search Committee is made up of Ray Penner ’66, chair, Delora Decker ’63, Wally Dyck ’57, Berneil Rupp Mueller ’62, Donovan Nickel ’78 and Leticia Palacioz Nielsen ’83, representing the board; John McCabe-Juhnke ’78, professor of communication arts, and Allison McFarland, professor of management and marketing, representing Bethel faculty; and Sondra Bandy Koontz ’70, vice president for advancement, representing Bethel staff ; with Mel Goering ’61, Board president, as an ex officio member and Elaine Moyer, associate director for Mennonite Education Agency, as a consultant.

The committee seeks nominations and suggestions made directly to members or according to the instructions in the profile statement, posted on Bethel’s Web site.

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Urban pastor shares vision with Bethel students

When Cyneatha Millsaps visited Bethel College for the first time last fall, she found a whole network of connections had preceded her.

Millsaps, the lead pastor at Community Mennonite Church in Markham, Ill., is on a mission to share her vision – of what the church (both her congregation and the broader Mennonite denomination) can and should be – with young people. And the best place to find them, she says, is on the campuses of the Mennonite Church USA colleges.

She visited Bluff ton (Ohio) University last spring, and last fall combined a visit to Hesston College for the annual Anabaptist Vision and Discipleship Series conference Oct. 30-Nov. 1 with three days as pastor-in-residence at Bethel, Nov. 2-5.

“She said she always wondered why folks at Community Mennonite Church thought Bethel was such a special place,” says Dale Schrag ’69, Bethel campus pastor. “She assumed it was simply because [the late] Larry Voth ’58 – a former pastor of Community Mennonite and former director of development here at Bethel for whom Voth Hall was named – loved Bethel College, and Community Mennonite loved Larry Voth.”

But, Schrag says, while that connection is true enough, Millsaps also experienced “something more, something very special” during her time at Bethel.

That may be due in part to another connection Millsaps discovered, to the Mennonite community she credits as the place where her vision for church first began to germinate. Millsaps grew up in south central Elkhart, Ind., only a couple of miles from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. As a child, she knew nothing of AMBS, but was very much aware of a group that had coalesced there and then organized Fellowship of Hope, an intentional Christian community, in her neighborhood.

One of the Fellowship of Hope children was Ruth Harder ’01, with whom Millsaps became reacquainted several years ago when both women were students at AMBS. Harder is now associate pastor of Bethel College Mennonite Church.

Millsaps grew up in a home where her mother suffered from mental illness, she told the Bethel students, faculty and staff who gathered for the weekly Wednesday chapel service. More than once, Fellowship of Hope members brought groceries or paid rent when Millsaps’ mother was unable to provide.

Perhaps even more important, Millsaps says, Fellowship of Hope gave her an idea of what the church as the body of Christ should be and do in the world. “We saw the best of that community,” she says. “We didn’t see the hard stuff, even though we knew it was there. We saw the beauty of God and the beauty of people, working together.

“I was formed by these Mennonites, even though they didn’t know that’s what they were doing,” she continues. Millsaps completed her undergraduate education at another Bethel College, this one in Mishawaka, Ind., with degrees in psychology and sociology, spent 10 years working for iFiT (individuals & Families in Transition) Inc. and in January 2006 became president and CEO of Family Services of Elkhart County Inc.

“I knew I was already doing ministry, even though I was part of a denomination [Baptist] that would never give me that title,” she says. “I felt I needed to grasp this a little bit more, either by going to seminary or getting a master’s degree in public administration.” So she picked the two institutions closest to home with the programs she wanted, AMBS and Indiana University at South Bend (IUSB), and sent in her applications.

“I said, ‘Whichever I hear from is the one God wants.’ I never heard back from IUSB.”

In a theology class at AMBS, Millsaps first heard about “the priesthood of all believers.” “I suddenly realized this was what I had been talking about for years, but I had never had a word for it,” she says. “I said, ‘I’m not crazy – this is real.’ At AMBS, I came home to what I’d been believing for years [about what the church should be].”

And in 2007, she found herself in a place she had never expected – pastoring a Mennonite church on the south side of Chicago, in a community where most residents are African-American and many live in poverty, and a congregation where the majority of attenders are either over 50 or under 25, about evenly split racially between black and white.

“My vision has two parts,” she says. “One part is what I have for any church community I want to be part of as a leader – an active community of believers engaging the world around us in a positive, non-threatening way, [like] what I saw with Fellowship of Hope.”

The other part, she says, is for Community Mennonite Church specifically. “It speaks directly to the needs of our community: Literacy and education for our children, assistance for the homeless and those barely surviving.”

To accomplish this, she says, will take “people to come and be with us,” so CMC is working on tangible ways to attract young adults, such as providing housing options and helping with job searches.

At Bethel – and earlier at Bluff ton – she had discussions with several students who heard a call in Millsaps’ words. “I’ve been struggling with ‘what’s next,’” says Kelsie Miller, senior from Goshen, Ind. “Things I thought I might do have been challenged. This opportunity seems to be bringing together all the things I want to do.”

“This sounds good to young people because they’re disillusioned with the church,” Millsaps says, “and when they see [the church] actively working for social justice, they’re intrigued by that. They’ve been brought up in churches that talk about Jesus and the good he did, and that also talk about being thankful for God’s gifts so we write a check. It’s not enough.

“The established church has to understand,” Millsaps continues, “that we’ve talked a really good game and this generation is going to push us to do something. Our colleges have taught them well, and given them the arguments – they can stand toe-to-toe on theology. I think it’s great.”

Melanie Zuercher

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Class addresses personal finance for students, community members

Responding to national data that shows a lack of basic financial knowledge among college-age students, the Bethel College business department has developed a new course.

Allison J. McFarland, professor of management and marketing, explains that Personal Financial Literacy is being offered as part of the Management and Marketing Special Topics course rotation.

“The Business and Economics Department offers many courses that prepare students to assume leadership positions in business and industry,” she says. “This is the first course we have included in the schedule that focuses on personal financial management.”

Explaining why the business department added this course to its offerings, McFarland points to research done by Charles Schwab & Co. which indicates that only 34 percent of parents have taught their teens how to balance a checkbook. Just 29 percent have explained how credit card fees and interest work.

“The market turmoil and credit crisis of 2008 underscored the critical need for improved financial literacy in the United States,” McFarland continues. “While there are many causes of the economic problems facing the country, it is undeniable that a lack of financial literacy is a contributing factor. Far too many Americans entered into home and other loan agreements that they didn’t understand and ultimately could not afford.

“The lack of basic skills such as how to create and maintain a budget, understand credit, appreciate the difference among insurance plans, comprehend the risks and rewards of investing in the stock market, realize the cost of debt – especially credit card debt – or save for the future are preventing millions of Americans from taking advantage of our economic system.”

She adds, “Key to improving the financial literacy of all Americans is ensuring that our young people have more exposure, at all stages of their educational journey, to formal financial literacy training.”

This course, open to all students regardless of major and with no prerequisites, is designed for those who have little or no background in business, finance or money management. Among the topics covered will be financial statements, taxes, savings, large purchases, credit, loans, insurance, investments and retirement.

Hannah (Born) Reber, junior from Newton, enrolled in the spring semester course and thinks it will be helpful. She got married in January and, she says, “I am realizing all of the financial obligations that I will be responsible for.

“I have a basic knowledge of finance, but I struggle with some ‘adult’ things like choosing insurance policies and understanding retirement,” she says. “I am hoping that this class will help to clarify those and other financial issues that will probably arise in the near future.”

“The benefit of a course like this is that students can gain information to help them make sound financial decisions at every stage of their life,” says McFarland.

Acknowledging the effect of current economic conditions on the greater Newton community, Bethel made an exception to its normal auditing policy by opening this specific class to community members free of charge.

“Although financial literacy is a constant need,” says McFarland, “there may be members of our community who could immediately benefit from the content of this course.”

Krista Graber

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Discovery Adventure Course

Jan. 20-21, Bethel staff and alumni volunteers, directed by Tom Leahy, an adventure course consultant from Lafayette, Colo., built Bethel’s Discovery Adventure Course. On Jan. 22, Residence Life and athletics staff joined with four physical education teachers from Newton USD 373 and the staff of Next Element Consulting of Newton to begin learning how to use the course.

Leahy, who is in his 31st year working with adventure courses (as a designer, builder, facilitator and trainer of facilitators), was impressed with the group he had to work with over three days at Bethel. “This was a really neat bunch of people,” he said. “The maintenance staff couldn’t do enough – they were totally helpful and present. Everybody worked really well together.

“It was astounding, the willingness of people to pitch in and help,” he added. “Maybe that’s because of the caliber of people that Bethel attracts, both staff and supporters.”

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