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around the green – faculty and staff
– Appointed– Attended
– Performed
– Preached
– Presented
– Taught
– D.C. Wedel, Bethel’s sixth president, dies at 101
For position openings, please see www.bethelks.edu/careers
Appointed
Latasha Berry, admissions counselor. She is a December 2009 graduate of Ottawa (Kan.) University with a degree in communication studies.
Travis Graber, head football coach. He is a 1997 graduate of Bethel College with a degree in business administration with minors in economics and communication, and has a B.S. in secondary education from Kansas State University and a master of education degree in sports administration from Wichita State University. He most recently served as Thresher defensive coach and interim head coach.
Attended
Andi Schmidt Andres ’84, Kauffman Museum curator of education; David Kreider ’82, museum technician; Rachel Pannabecker ’80, museum director; Chuck Regier ’81, curator of exhibits; and Kristin Schmidt ’74, museum assistant, attended the annual meeting of the Kansas Museums Association in Hutchinson, Nov. 4-6. Kreider presented “Art Handling 101” and Pannabecker coordinated a roundtable session on “Financing Our Museums: Creative Responses to an Unstable Economy.”
Rachel Epp Buller ’96, assistant professor of art, attended the Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Culture Association (MAPACA) conference in Boston, where she presented a paper, “The Milk is the Medium: Artistic ‘Expressions’ of Maternity,” as part of a women’s studies panel on “Maternal Considerations,” Nov. 5-7.
Gary Flory, KIPCOR director, attended the symposium “Restorative Justice in Adult Criminal Courts” at the University of Missouri, Nov. 13.
Don Lemons, professor of physics, attended the annual Plasma Division meeting of the American Physical Society in Atlanta, Nov. 4-6, and presented two poster papers: “Stochastic analysis of pitch angle scattering of charged particles by transverse magnetic waves” by D. Lemons, K. Liu, D. Winske and S. Gary; and “The random path of a charged particle in a white noise magnetic field: Analysis, simulation and a physical realization” by T. Lipscombe, D. Lemons and B. Johnson.
Dave Linscheid ’75, director of alumni relations, and alumni department staff from 14 Kansas Independent College Association institutions held a day-long meeting at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Nov. 5, to exchange alumni relations ideas. The 16 attenders came from Baker University, Benedictine College, Bethany College, Central Christian College, Friends University, Hesston College, Kansas Wesleyan University, Manhattan Christian College, Newman University, Ottawa University, Southwestern College, Sterling College and Tabor College in addition to Bethel.
Chuck Regier ’81, Kauffman Museum curator of exhibits, and Rachel Pannabecker ’80, museum director, attended the Mountain-Plains Museums Association in Cheyenne, Wyo., Oct. 6-9. Regier gave two presentations: “Thinking inside the Box: New Solutions for Traveling Exhibits and Crating,” with Dee Harris of Mid- America Arts Alliance; and “Museums Building Museums,” with Christopher Orwoll of the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center.
Ada Schmidt-Tieszen ’74, professor of social work, along with Gary Flory, KIPCOR director, completed six days of training – five in June and one Nov. 30 – to prepare to facilitate face-to-face dialogue between offenders and victim survivors in crimes of severe violence. Schmidt-Tieszen and Flory were two of nine people trained in the state. They were scheduled to have their first cases assigned in January.
Kirsten Zerger ’73, KIPCOR director of education and training, participated in a conference on “Best Practices in Kansas Child Welfare Law” in Wichita, Sept. 23, sponsored by the Kansas Office of Judicial Administration, the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, Kansas CASA Association and the Supreme Court Task Force on Permanency Planning. She participated in a special workshop in Topeka, Oct. 2, addressing “Safety, Domestic Violence and Mediation,” sponsored by the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence.
Performed
Karen Bauman Schlabaugh, professor of music, collaborated as pianist with clarinetist Suzanne Tirk, performing Sept. 20 for Tirk’s faculty recital at Wichita State University and again Nov. 21 for two lecture recitals given at Michigan State University. Schlabaugh accompanied eight Bethel students at the regional competition sponsored by the National Association of Teachers of Singing held at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Oct. 30-31. She was pianist for a faculty voice recital Nov. 6, featuring Bethel voice instructor Soyoun Chun and guest tenor Joseph Perniciaro from Fort Hays State University.
Preached
Patricia Shelly ’76, professor of Bible and religion, preached on “Bringing Jonah Home,” at Hope Mennonite Church in Wichita, Oct. 18. She taught two Wednesday night sessions on “Praying the Psalms” at First Mennonite Church, Hutchinson, Oct. 21 and 28. At Bethel College Mennonite Church, Shelly taught two sessions on Judaism and Islam with the youth Sunday school class, Oct. 25 and Nov. 1.
Robert Yutzy, KIPCOR coordinator of congregational ministries, preached at Lombard (Ill.) Mennonite Church, Oct. 4 and Nov. 15.
Presented
Stan Eitzen ’56, visiting professor of sociology, gave a talk titled “Inequality and the Unraveling of the Social Fabric” to the Senior Symposium at Lynchburg (Va.) College, Sept. 28. He also gave a talk to the sociology majors titled “Autobiography and the Sociological Imagination.”
Gary Flory, KIPCOR director, presented a continuing legal education program for the Kansas Bar Association in Wichita, Nov. 20, titled “Structuring Facilitated Dialogue in Public Disputes.”
John McCabe-Juhnke ’78, professor of communication arts, spoke at a special session for all eighth graders at Santa Fe Middle School in Newton, Oct. 22. The students, who had viewed the 1957 motion picture version of 12 Angry Men in social studies classes, had submitted questions about McCabe-Juhnke’s experience of staging the play at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility.
Kirsten Zerger ’73, KIPCOR director of education and training, Robert Yutzy, KIPCOR coordinator of congregational ministries, and Gary Flory, KIPCOR director, helped design the Moundridge “Healthy Community Initiative,” held Nov. 6. As part of that initiative, they worked with all Moundridge High School students and faculty in the morning and all seventh- and eighth-grade students and faculty in the afternoon on the topic of “what encourages students to thrive in the Moundridge schools and community and what causes students to wither.” The topic was selected based on data generated by the Caring Communities Survey of students given by the State of Kansas.
Kirsten Zerger ’73, KIPCOR director of education and training, Barbara Schmidt ’65, manager of KIPCOR’s Community Mediation Center, and Jennifer Foster, chief court services officer of the Ninth Judicial District of the State of Kansas, led a workshop on “Working with High Conflict Families: From Chaos to HOPE” at the Kansas Association of Court Service Officers 2009 Fall Conference in Salina, Oct. 15. Zerger also led a workshop on “The Changing Face of Kansas: Managing 21st- Century Cultural Diversity.”
Duane K. Friesen ’62, Edmund G. Kaufman Professor Emeritus of Bible and Religion, presented the paper “Practicing Incarnation: A Contemporary Political Model” at the Bluffton (Ohio) College conference “Anabaptist Convictions after Marpeck,” June 26-28.
Taught
Duane K. Friesen ’62, Edmund G. Kaufman Professor Emeritus of Bible and Religion, taught “Christian Encounter with World Faiths” at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary- Great Plains Extension during the 2009 fall semester.
D.C. Wedel, Bethel’s sixth president, dies at 101
When David “D.C.” Wedel died Jan. 13, Bethel College lost a man who bridged most of the college’s history. Wedel, 101, Bethel’s sixth president (1952-59), was just two months shy of his 102nd birthday. He once reminisced that he had “shaken the hand of every Bethel president but the first one” (Cornelius H. Wedel, no relation). He also recalled being among those who carried the bricks that the mason used to build the walls of (Old) Science Hall, completed in 1925, the year Wedel graduated from Bethel Academy.
Wedel, originally from Goessel, graduated from Bethel College in 1933 and earned a B.D. degree from Colgate Rochester Divinity School, Rochester, N.Y., in 1936. From 1936-46, he served as pastor of First Mennonite Church in Halstead with a brief hiatus to be director of the Civilian Public Service camp in Marietta, Ohio, in 1941.
In 1946, then Bethel president Edmund G. Kaufman invited Wedel to come to the college as acting dean while the current dean took a sabbatical.
Following that, Wedel went to Denver to get his doctorate in Christian education from Iliff School of Theology. He wrote his dissertation on “The contribution of C.H. Wedel to Mennonite education.” D.C. Wedel also wrote a history of Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church, The Story of Alexanderwohl, published in 1974 by the Goessel Centennial Committee. He was named Bethel Outstanding Alumnus for 1982.
Following his term as Bethel president, Wedel served as an administrator at Southwestern College, Winfield, from 1959-67, and then served several years as associate director of development at Bethel.
While most of his career was spent in college administration, Wedel was also either interim or associate pastor at several Mennonite churches in Kansas and Pennsylvania.
In retirement, Wedel was an avid gardener whose beautiful lawn was known all over North Newton. When frail health forced Wedel’s move to Bethesda Home, he lost neither his interest in life nor his sense of humor. “The reason I’m still alive,” he told well-wishers gathered to celebrate his 100th birthday in 2008, “is because God is afraid of me asking too many questions.”
David C. Wedel was born March 16, 1908, in Goessel to Rev. Cornelius C. Wedel and Kathrina Unrau Wedel. In 1936, he married Martha Quiring ’33, who died in 1998. Survivors include two daughters, Judith and Mark Arthur, Russell, and Eleanor ’59 and Arnold ’59 Heckendorn, Sun City, Ariz., six grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.