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around the green – campus
– Students make art ‘disappear’ for a day to protest state funding cuts– After Jerusalem Seminar, Bethel students explore responses to injustice
– Mabee challenge met, Bethel breaks ground for Academic Center
– Service trip is a gift to givers and recipients
– Statewide hunger dialogue inspires ‘power of a few’ at Bethel
– Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright part of Bethel production of Wit
– Honor choices made and those to come, Bethel graduates told
– New solar collectors save energy, enrich student’s experience
– Alumni add expertise to 2011 Summer Science Institute
Students make art ‘disappear’ for a day to protest state funding cuts
When a group of Bethel College students were discussing their feelings about the Kansas governor’s recent decision to cut arts funding, they decided to bring it home.
So Feb. 18, they organized a Day without Art, going around campus to cover between 50 and 60 pieces of publicly displayed art with black cloth and black garbage bags.
They announced the action in convocation and invited their fellow students to call Topeka and express their opinions.
Gov. Sam Brownback issued an “executive reorganization order” Feb. 7 to make the Kansas Arts Commission into a foundation, meaning it will depend solely on private money and no longer receive state funding.
The resulting loss of $575,000 could also lead to a loss of twice that much in funding from the Mid-America Arts Alliance and the National Endowment for the Arts.
This could directly affect Bethel College – the KAC has supported the Hesston-Bethel Performing Arts Series, the Bethel College Academy of Performing Arts and the Newton Mid-Kansas Symphony Orchestra, which performs most of its concerts in Memorial Hall and includes Bethel students in its personnel.
Art major Ricardo Sanchez, senior from Moundridge and one of the organizers of Day without Art, noted that as a high school student, he participated in arts programs put on by organizations that received state funding. He now hopes to teach art after he finishes college.
“If we lose funding, all of that won’t be offered to other people,” he said. “They won’t get the opportunity to express themselves [like I did]. I fear that.”
Erica Buller, senior art major from Lenexa, also praised state-funded arts programming like Art in the Park that she grew up with in summers. “These programs are important to kids,” she said. “It was part of the reason I became an art major. They are great social programs.”
Melanie Zuercher
After Jerusalem Seminar, Bethel students explore responses to injustice
The experience of participating in the 2011 Jerusalem Seminar sponsored by Bethel College and Tabor College caused Tom Harder ’80, a Wichita pastor, to “lose my religion,” he said.
But it also renewed his faith.
Harder and his wife, Lois, co-pastors of Lorraine Avenue Mennonite Church, were two of several pastors (including Kathy Neufeld Dunn ’87, pastor of First Mennonite Church of McPherson, and Katherine and Peter Goerzen ’07, youth pastor and lead pastor, respectively, at Grace Hill Mennonite Church in rural Newton) who participated in the biennial interterm class.
The group – co-led by Patty Shelly ’76, professor of Bible and religion at Bethel, and Doug Miller, professor of biblical and religious studies at Tabor – also included 11 Bethel students, five Tabor students and 13 others from California, Kansas, Manitoba, Minnesota and Nebraska.
So deeply affected were the Bethel students by their encounters and conversations with Palestinians in Bethlehem, Hebron and Jerusalem, they decided to organize a meeting and invite anyone in the Newton-North Newton community with interest in the region and its issues to attend and talk about possible actions. The gathering, which took place Feb. 28, drew 50-60 people in addition to Shelly and most of the Bethel students from the trip. (The Tabor students had been invited but were unable to attend.)
At that meeting, Harder recalled the group’s visit to Sabeel, an ecumenical liberation theology center in Jerusalem with the purpose of working for justice, peace and liberation in Israel-Palestine.
“The director [of Sabeel] said outright that the Holy Scriptures are part of the problem,” Harder said. “That was jarring to me as a pastor who preaches from the Scripture each Sunday. Yet that is what Israel feels gives it the right to take the land from the Palestinians. So much injustice is done in the name of religion – we all use Scripture for our own ends.
“Yet God and Jesus are still present,” Harder continued, “and still weeping, as Jesus wept over Jerusalem. God still empowers people to be signs of the kingdom. I lost my religion on this trip but my faith was revitalized.”
A common theme among the students’ experiences was learning to see from different perspectives.
“Here at home, all I hear on the news is about terrorist attacks on Israel, Israel as the victim,” said Emilie Doerksen, senior from Newton. “And visiting Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, gave me a completely new perspective on the Holocaust.
“There are more sides to the story than I could ever have imagined. There are two narratives, struggling with two similar, but opposite, stories of suffering.”
After an hour of sharing stories from both Jerusalem Seminar members and others, the group spent a second hour talking about possible community action in response to some of the injustices involving Palestinians.
Some of the suggestions included exploring Bethel College investments and advocating for divestment from Israel if appropriate; hosting a festival of Palestinian films; a letter-writing event aimed at lawmakers; and holding a vigil to pray for peace.
“We’re a people of faith and so are many Bethel supporters,” said Allison Schrag, senior from Newton, who suggested the prayer vigil. “Don’t underestimate the power of prayer.” Harder added, “One of the things Jesus would have us do is weep and pray.”
He also pointed to the example of two Catholic nuns who were serving with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron when the Jerusalem Seminar group visited.
“They modeled what Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount,” Harder said. “‘Love your enemy and resist evil.’ There is a need and a call to be prophetic – what makes the Jesus way different is it’s done in love.”
Melanie Zuercher
Mabee challenge met, Bethel breaks ground for Academic Center
On March 15, Bethel College informed the J.E. and L.E. Mabee Foundation of Tulsa, Okla., that Bethel donors had met their latest Mabee challenge.
The resulting funds are for the transformation of the old Science Hall into a new, state-of-the-art Academic Center.
The challenge, given by the Mabee Foundation a year ago, in April 2010, was to raise $921,424 in gifts and commitments in one year in order to receive $725,000 from Mabee. Alumni and friends not only met but exceeded the goal, giving or pledging more than $1 million.
“More than 850 donors contributed to the Academic Center project,” said Sondra Bandy Koontz ’70, vice president for advancement. “We are grateful to all of them for making this long-desired dream a reality.”
She also noted that Bethel donors “have never left a Mabee challenge on the table. Bethel’s record is safe.” This was Bethel’s sixth successful Mabee Foundation challenge, the most recent until now being for the sports stadium complex, completed in 2005.
The Academic Center – comprised of the current building plus an addition on the east side – will house the departments of Bible and religion, business, history, mathematics and computer science, nursing, social work and teacher education, including classrooms, faculty offices and labs.
The old Science Hall, constructed in 1925, is the second-oldest building on campus after the Administration Building. Earlier this year, with a successful conclusion to the challenge grant on the horizon, Bethel first lady Dalene White led a group of volunteers in clearing the building of furniture.
The official groundbreaking ceremony took place May 21 as part of Alumni Weekend activities. Bethel students, faculty, alumni and friends gathered on the building’s east side, where the absence of the fire escape stairs, and the presence of construction vehicles and piles of material inside a recently erected temporary fence showed that “teardown” in preparation for the extensive renovation had already begun.
Julia Huxman, senior from Wichita and the 2010-11 Student Senate president, said in her remarks: “My grandmother used to tell me ‘good things come to those who wait.’ While I believe there is a time and a place for those words of wisdom, and that this old Science Hall has definitely waited long enough to see renovations, I also believe that if you want something bad enough, you have to go after it with all your energy.
“I am so thrilled that Bethel College decided that renovating Old Science Hall is a priority deserving of that kind of energy,” she continued. “The last few weeks of school, students had to walk by the site every day on their way to and from the dorms, and believe me when I tell you that this loud, dusty, unattractive construction site is a beautiful addition to our campus – because it represents a healthy institution, one that is expanding and willing to take the measures necessary to uphold its standards of academic excellence by providing its students with excellent facilities.
“It is important for students to see that their campus is innovative, thriving and competitive. Breaking ground on this Academic Center is exactly the step Bethel College needed to take. These are the kinds of changes that energize students, turning them into [volunteer] student ambassadors for Admissions, the kind of changes they go home and tell their friends and family about – that Bethel has some vibrant things going on on its campus.”
Huxman thanked, on behalf of her fellow students, “every single person who played even the smallest part in making this Academic Center a reality for us. I don’t think students often realize how lucky they are to be surrounded by such concerned and caring community members, donors, alumni, faculty and staff who are willing to make a financial investment to enhance our academic experience. We will put it to good use.”
Along with Huxman and Student Senate Vice President Naomi Graber, senior from Elkhart, Ind., representing the Bethel student body, those wielding shovels at the Academic Center groundbreaking were Perry D. White, Bethel president; Allen Jantz ’84, associate professor of education, Allison McFarland, professor of business, and Patty Shelly ’76, professor of Bible and religion, all faculty who will have departments and offices in the Academic Center; Larry Friesen ’67, just-retired professor of social work, and Keith Sprunger, professor emeritus of history, representing two more departments that will be housed in the building; Mel Goering ’61, Santa Fe, N.M., board chair, and Joe Friesen ’60, Towanda, for the Bethel College Board of Directors; Becki ’78 and Gary Dick ’80, Baldwin City, and Milton Claassen ’54, Newton, representing the many donors who have contributed or pledged to the project; Koontz and Fred Goering ’72, director of development; and Duane Hickerson and Rudi Sauerwein, the project architect and contractor, respectively.
Also speaking were McFarland on behalf of the faculty and President White, with Shelly offering a prayer.
Melanie Zuercher
Service trip is a gift to givers and recipients
Take some Bethel College students who have grown up doing service projects, mix with a chance to spend a week in Cajun country on the cheap and what do you have?
A spring break service trip appreciated by all concerned.
And for the icing on that cake, add two students interested in church ministry and two congregations’ generous Mennonite-Your-Way hospitality.
Bethel’s Service Corps, a student organization, works at local projects, such as the annual Service Day, throughout the school year and also sponsors the spring break service trip, with funds designated to pay the way – all but $30 apiece – of the students who go.
Last year, the trip was to Community Mennonite Church in Markham, Ill. This year, the group decided they would participate in Mennonite Disaster Service’s long-term project in Cameron Parish in Louisiana’s southwest corner.
Natasha Orpin, junior from Moundridge, who participated in two churchsponsored service trips as a high school student, and Leah Bartel, junior from Golden, Colo., both went to Markham last year and found it a great way to spend the break.
“Markham was a really good experience,” Orpin says. “And this year, too, I wanted to use my [break] time well, by helping others.”
For Caleb Regehr, senior from Whitewater who with Bartel was co-chair of Service Corps, this was his first spring break service trip as a Bethel College student. It was so good, he says, he regrets not doing it in previous years.
Markus Plitzko, Sankt Agustin, Germany, was at Bethel this year as part of its exchange with the Bergische-Universität in Wuppertal. As much as he enjoyed his year in Kansas, he says, he was also eager for chances to get out and see more of the country.
In addition, he says, “It’s good to do something for others rather than just going to South Padre [Island, Texas] to party on the beach for spring break. When you give something to others, you get so much more out of it.”
Both on the way there and back, the Bethel group experienced hospitality from Mennonite congregations.
They drove to Inola, Okla., on the first night and stayed in the Eden Mennonite Church, where some members greeted them with cookies, fruit and snacks. Coming back, they stopped overnight in Houston, where two families from Houston Mennonite Church hosted the group in their homes.
When Chad Childs ’99, then vice president for Student Life and the Service Corps faculty sponsor, had been setting up the trip and talking with Houston Mennonite’s pastor, Marty Troyer, he discovered that Troyer would be away for the weekend. Troyer wondered if the Bethel group had “any students interested in ministry.”
In fact, they did – Regehr, who was a Ministry Inquiry Program pastoral intern at San Antonio Mennonite Church last summer, and Orpin, who is at Mountain View Mennonite Church in Kalispell, Mont., with MIP this summer. The two planned a joint sermon based on the lectionary texts in Genesis 12 and John 3.
It was Orpin’s first-ever sermon, and she confessed to being “nervous” but grateful for a small congregation (around 60 in attendance). “I didn’t say anything radical or profound, but it came from the heart,” she says.
On the trip back, the group spent another night at Eden Mennonite Church in Inola and attended worship with the congregation the next morning before heading back to North Newton.
“It made me proud to be a Mennonite,” Bartel says, “that you can call up a church and even if they don’t know you, they’ll host you.”
In addition to Bartel, Childs, Orpin, Plitzko and Regehr, the Bethel group included seniors Linda Gomes, Dhaka, Bangladesh, Annika Janzen, Fresno, Calif., Jennie Warkentine, Wichita, and Peter Wintermote, Hillsboro; junior Jinwan Dai, Tianjin, China; and sophomores Joe Kondziola, North Newton, and Alex Wynn, Colwich. The MDS work group for the week also included four men from two local Mennonite churches – Kent Erb ’95, Charles Graber ’66, Dick Koontz ’72 and Miner Seymour ’91.
Melanie Zuercher
Statewide hunger dialogue inspires ‘power of a few’ at Bethel
Bethel College is proof that just because you’re small doesn’t mean you can’t get things done.
Take Rick McNary ’95 of Potwin, founder and CEO of the charity Numana, Inc. In less than two years, Numana has set up events from San Francisco to Philadelphia in which more than 125,000 people packaged more than 21 million meals to be sent to the most desperately hungry around the world.
This past March Numana, in conjunction with Universities Fighting World Hunger (based at Auburn University in Alabama and a partner of the United Nations World Food Programme) hosted the first Kansas Hunger Dialogue at the Overland Park Convention Center – a gathering that inspired Bethel’s student body president to organize an action involving some of her fellow students.
Invitations to the two-day conference went to all 42 private and public institutions of higher learning in Kansas, asking them to send representatives of their student body and administration. Half of them did so – from Bethel, that was Julia Huxman, senior from Wichita and Student Senate president, and the college president, Perry D. White.
The goal: to have participants engage in a dialogue to identify and at least start to dismantle systems that perpetuate hunger. One way was through the sharing of stories about current antihunger initiatives on college campuses in Kansas.
Although she didn’t know it until she arrived at the conference, Huxman was on the docket as a student speaker who would describe her college’s anti-hunger activities. However, the three-year qualifier for the national forensics tournament rose to the challenge.
“We don’t have an anti-hunger organization at Bethel, so I told stories about how we engage in dialogue,” she says. “Sometimes that’s in places like convocation, like when the interterm group that went to Haiti and the Dominican Republic in January talked about their experience – a chance to share with the entire student body.
“I talked about our Numana packaging event [in February 2010] and how the interterm group was able to follow through on the delivery of the food in Haiti,” she continues. “I told about another interterm group that went to Mexico in January and was given the equivalent of a day’s wages and told to go to the market and try to buy food to feed a family, and they weren’t able to do it.”
These kinds of experiences, Huxman says, “put a face on hunger” and help make a broad concept more concrete and personal. And it’s Bethel’s small size, she adds, that makes them possible.
Huxman notes how impressed she was with the Hunger Dialogue’s main speakers, Margaret Ziegler, deputy director of the Congressional Hunger Center, a nonprofit anti-hunger training center in Washington, D.C., and Tony Hall, former Ohio Congressman and former ambassador to the UN, now executive director of the Alliance to End Hunger.
A few days after the Hunger Dialogue, Huxman and White met to debrief the experience. They had learned that Tony Hall was planning to start a fast on March 28 to bring attention to proposed federal cuts in international food aid programs.
So Huxman sent an e-mail to Bethel students, inviting them to fast for a meal or a whole day and to let her know if they were doing it and for how many meals. In response, Bethel’s food service, Aladdin, Inc., would make a donation to Numana equivalent to the cost of the number of skipped meals.
Huxman admits it was a last-minute idea and only a handful of students participated – and the actual cost of meals to students is low. However, about 30 students skipped one or more meals on March 28, resulting in a donation to Numana of $180, or 600 Numana packaged meals.
“I had people e-mail me to say thank you for doing this, that it was a great thing to bring awareness,” Huxman says. “You feel like you can’t do much as one person, but you really can.”
Longer term, she says, Bethel will probably organize another Numana meal-packaging event, maybe next fall. “Where we are with our resources, [it’s most effective to] keep sending students to other countries and places in our own country that put a face on hunger,” she adds. “It’s more than just sending food – it’s about understanding the roots of hunger and why it happens.
“People at the Hunger Dialogue were touched by the stories I told. It’s not as encouraged at larger universities to travel overseas. Those interterm opportunities are invaluable.”
“We believe it is the college students of this generation that will solve the hunger problems of the world,” McNary says. “That’s [why] we planned the Kansas Hunger Dialogue, to give an opportunity for colleges and universities to work together with their students to impact the world.”
Melanie Zuercher
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright part of Bethel production of Wit
Teacher and playwright Margaret Edson advised her Bethel College listeners not to take notes as she spoke for about 40 minutes without consulting a written script.
Speaking in the May 6 convocation, the Atlanta resident said, “Whatever is presented today is breath. You will receive it … and carry it inside your body. If it’s worth remembering, you will remember it.”
Edson had come to campus to see Annette Thornton, John McCabe-Juhnke ’78, Joyce Cavarozzi and eight student actors breathe life into her Pulitzer prize-winning play Wit on the Krehbiel Auditorium stage May 5-7. She opened the door to future face-to-face interactions with the community when she said, “I hope it’s only the beginning of my relationship with Bethel College.”
Reading and writing are to speech as maps are to the physical landmasses they represent, she said. Reading – decoding written words – is like the job of a musician playing a musical score. Edson likened her play script to a “recipe” to be performed.
“I’m handing over a skeleton,” Edson said of her script. “The text is a skeleton. The performance is the flesh.”
She continued, “I want you to think of Scripture that same way.”
Jesus spent a lot of time in silence, listening to others, she said, though much of that is not reported in the Bible. Christians, who participate in a text-based religion, need to “get up and put into action” – in other words, breathe life into – the written teachings of Jesus, Edson said.
“Take Scripture and turn it into something useful. Do not be overburdened with theory and doctrines [but instead] get into action. Take your learning and bring it to life. Turn it into something that is you.”
The Kansas State Nurses Association offered two continuing education credits to nurses who watched the play and participated in a discussion time with Edson. Around 30 nurses enrolled. Edson also talked to a group of Bethel’s third-year nursing students Saturday morning.
Young people don’t often think about dying, so the play helps students look at it, said Phyllis Miller, director of nursing, and Wit director Megan Upton-Tyner added, “Storytelling helps prepare nurses.”
The multi-layered play lets Vivian Bearing, Ph.D., tell how oncology research doctors read her “like a book,” seemingly more interested in how treatment of her stage four ovarian cancer could advance their research than in Vivian’s well-being as a person suffering both from her illness and the treatment meant to suppress it.
At Bethel, Annette Thornton played Vivian, reprising the role from a staged reading in 2010 that Edson saw and was impressed by. McCabe-Juhnke, Bethel professor of communication arts, played Dr. Harvey Kelekian, Vivian’s oncologist, and Cavarozzi, a retired professor at Wichita State University and veteran actress, played Vivian’s former professor and mentor E.M. Ashford.
Student actors were Lacey Parker, senior from Lone Tree, Iowa, as Thornton’s understudy (since her practice time at Bethel was very limited); Seth Dunn, senior from Fresno, Calif., as Jason; Renee Reimer, senior from Sioux Falls, S.D., as Susie; and Jacob Brubaker, sophomore from Miami, Ariz., Cody Claassen, sophomore from Whitewater, Naomi Graber, senior from Elkhart, Ind., Clint Harris, senior from Manhattan, Julia Miller, junior from Hesston, and Marike Stucky, sophomore from Moundridge, in the roles of medical fellows, graduate students and medical technicians.
Nathaniel Yoder, senior from Kalona, Iowa, composed an original score for the drama. After the May 6 performance, Edson said, “I thought this production was beautiful,” adding, “I’ve never seen music used so effectively.”
Edson said she didn’t let Vivian “have her own way” throughout the whole play, since the playwright intended to redeem her character by the end of Wit.
“I had to hit her over the head to [get her to] take one deep breath,” Edson said. “Wit is about how hard some of us seem to work to keep ourselves from the grace of God.”
Susan Miller Balzer
Honor choices made and those to come, Bethel graduates told
The Hon. Kimberly J. Mueller, federal judge for the Eastern District of California, quoted from Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” as she addressed the 94 members of Bethel College’s Class of 2011 on May 22.
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood … I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
Sworn in Dec. 21, 2010, Mueller is the first woman to be appointed federal judge for the Eastern District of California. She grew up in Grinnell, Iowa, although she was born in Newton and spent her earliest years in North Newton while her parents, Ted ’58 and Berneil Rupp Mueller ’62, were finishing studies at Bethel College.
Mueller has her undergraduate degree in history of religions from Pomona (Calif.) College and her law degree from Stanford University.
As she was preparing to address the Class of 2011, Mueller said, she discovered she had some distant cousins in that class, including Cassie Miller of Vancouver, Wash., David and Jesse Mueller of Halstead, Kelly Reed of Edinburg, Texas, and Zach Frey of Goessel.
“I wondered what you are feeling today, graduating into these complex and challenging times,” she said, “so I’ve asked some of you directly.
“What I’ve heard from you is a mix of relief, excitement, nervousness and anticipation. You value the new independence you’ve gained through your time at Bethel. More than any book learning that’s been acquired, you value the relationships you’ve forged … Through personal interactions, you’ve developed skills, expanded horizons and enhanced values that will stand you in good stead for the rest of your lives.
“Your having invested yourself in this special place is its own reward, and you are now equipped to keep on reaping a full harvest,” she continued. “You can assure yourselves that you have graduated from one of the finest small colleges in the country. If you choose, with a Bethel education, you can make all the difference.
“With a Bethel degree in hand, you no doubt have more than just ‘two paths diverging in a yellow wood’ from which to choose. And your bags are well-packed. You have learned new things and made great, lifelong friends. … Whichever road you choose to take from here, years from now that choice, in Frost’s words, will have ‘made all the difference.’ And between now and then, you will be making all the difference the world asks of you and that you, in response, choose to make.”
Bethel President Perry D. White conferred 53 bachelor of arts and 41 bachelor of science degrees. The Class of 2011, said Brad Born ’84, vice president for academic affairs, comes from 14 states, with two students from Nepal. According to a survey of graduating seniors, “at least nine,” Born said, “will follow a long-standing Bethel tradition of entering voluntary service upon graduation.”
Anita Yoder Kehr, who recently moved to North Newton from Goshen, Ind., and the mother of Class of 2011 member Mayeken Kehr, gave the invocation while Caleb Regehr, another member of the Class of 2011, offered the benediction.
Melanie Zuercher
New solar collectors save energy, enrich student’s experience
Bethel College’s latest venture in energy-saving technology will make a small step toward a greener planet – but may have a more profound impact on at least one student’s future.
Bethel maintenance and technology staff, under the management of Les Goerzen ’76, director of facilities and technology, continue to use their own expertise, willingness to research and ability to improvise to find small, affordable ways to cut energy usage.
The latest, launched at the beginning of this month, was installation of solar collectors on the roof of Voth residence hall.
The installation consists of four vacuum tube-style collectors with 30 tubes per collector. The collectors are intended to provide enough energy to heat “water for domestic use” to serve the apartment of the resident director in Voth Hall. Previously, Voth’s large boilers would have had to run to heat water for showers, dishwashing or laundry just for the apartment.
Under the supervision of Bethel maintenance worker Roger Reimer ’78, Eric Goering, senior natural sciences major from McPherson, began last January to assemble the frames for the solar collectors. The task was part of his self-designed interterm class, which he describes as “an energy conservation apprenticeship.”
In addition to the frame assembly, Goering did other prep work for the solar heating system. He worked with Bethel’s master plumber, Fred Unruh, on the plumbing needed for the collectors to heat the water and for the water to be delivered. Goering also installed and programmed energy management equipment in the college maintenance shop as part of his January class work.
Another aspect of Goering’s “apprenticeship” was some research that will lead to the next small energy-saving project. “I live in one of the mods in Warkentin Court and my bed is against one of the outside walls,” he says. “In the winter, I can feel the 10-degrees colder air washing over me.”
So he proposed insulating Warkentin by injecting foam into the block walls, figuring out how it could be done and getting bids. While, Bethel can’t afford to do all 22 mods at once, maintenance will be insulating the walls of eight of them this summer – including Goering’s.
In mid-April, Goering and several other students spent Service Day mounting the solar collector frames on Voth Hall’s roof. Goering and Reimer finished installing and insulating the collectors in June.
The design for the collectors, Reimer says, originated when, “two summers ago, we took one of [former faculty member] Emerson Wiens’ ’60 solar collectors, built in a manufacturing technology class in the ’70s, and hooked it up to Voth to see what it would do. It wasn’t big enough.”
Reimer then called Access Energy of Newton to come out and give a bid for installing solar collectors on Voth Hall. The price was out of Bethel’s range – instead, the college bought the 120 collectors through Access.
Then, “Adam Akers ’03 [technology staff person], Eric and I designed the operation – the plumbing, the interface to the building. We had the tanks and pumps in the building already – we integrated the collectors into our existing mechanical and computer control systems.”
“I’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t,” Goering says, “and conceptually how to make things work and make them financially feasible. I learned about integrating what you have – to think through what you have and what you need, and apply [your own expertise] rather than buying the [commercial installation].”
The price of collectors, tanks and pumps came to about $8,500, a fraction of what commercial installation would have cost, Reimer says.
“‘Appropriate’ technology means it leads to what you’re trying to accomplish,” he says. “It pays off because you’re spending what you can afford.
“We have to use alternative energy sources in economically appropriate ways,” he continues. “We have to make economic sense. Plus, this provided an educational opportunity for a student.”
Goering, who has worked for three years with audio-visual and information technology staff Akers and Nathan Eigsti ’07, as well as with maintenance, notes that he had few concrete ideas about what he’d do with a college education when he came to Bethel. “But now I’ve seen and done a lot of applicable, hands-on stuff,” he says.
Melanie Zuercher
Alumni add expertise to 2011 Summer Science Institute
Bethel’s Summer Science Institute had another banner year, with the distinction in 2011 of having three science alumni on the institute faculty.
The institute turned 12 this year with, like last year, a capacity 32 students. The 2011 faculty included Gary Lyndaker ’68, Gravois Mills, Mo. (a graduate in mathematics), Richard Platt ’85, Avenue, Md. (psychology and philosophy), and Darrell Wiens ’72, Cedar Falls, Iowa (biology).
Lyndaker recently retired as an information technology specialist for the state of Missouri following eight years as IT director for the state Departmentof Mental Health. Platt is associate professor of psychology at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where he has taught for 18 years, and Wiens is professor of biology at the University of Northern Iowa, where he has been for 22 years.
“We’ve had maybe one or two alumni as part of the Summer Science Institute faculty over the years,” says Dwight Krehbiel ’69, professor of psychology and institute co-director. “This year, for a variety of reasons, many of our own faculty weren’t able to do the institute. So I started thinking of dedicated alumni who would likely be good teachers.”
The teaching experience of the three alumni faculty has been mostly limited to college-age students at the undergraduate (and, for Wiens, graduate) level. All three were intrigued by the chance to work with high schoolers.
They noticed that the younger students are “maybe a little more easily distracted,” says Platt, than their college counterparts – but not by very much. And the fact that this is a group self-selected by their interest in science makes a difference.
“I had a couple I feel quite certain will be biologists,” says Wiens. Lyndaker adds, “I have taught college undergraduate who were no stronger, or even less strong, than these students. Overall, they are really engaged and tuned in – like Darrell, I had a couple I think will be mathematicians.”
The three enjoyed this short break from the usual summer routines as well as the chance to give something to their alma mater.
“For me, it’s broadening my teaching experience, teaching a group I haven’t worked with before,” says Platt. “The students are getting a little flavor of psychology research and learning about memory. And for Bethel, it’s an excellent opportunity to give prospective students a feel for Bethel, to experience the sciences here.”
“I feel strongly that I got a good education in the sciences at Bethel, and I would hate to see that fall off,” says Lyndaker, who is a member of Bethel’s STEM (Science, Technology, pre-Engineering and Mathematics) Advisory Council. “Math and science are more important than ever in the 21st century.
“I enjoy being involved with Bethel,” he adds. “It was a big part of my life. I made strong friendships and still have contact with faculty and ex-faculty. I don’t have a lot of money, so this is a way to contribute more, in terms of my time.”
The Summer Science Institute showed Wiens that “students are increasingly coming from urban areas.” The institute students were largely from the Wichita, Kansas City and Dallas areas, with several from Nebraska (Omaha and smaller communities) and elsewhere in Kansas. “Also, high school students, especially the best ones, are being more selective about where they go to college.
“Bethel has a strong academic program and small class sizes and in the Summer Science Institute, they get to see and experience that directly, along with the value system that Bethel holds.
“And for me,” he adds, “I enjoy being an evangelist for developmental biology and teaching it to young people every chance I get.”
“STEM at Bethel is a model for what works and can work at a small school,” says Lyndaker. “Solicit advice and support from alumni; reach out to high schools and [two-year] colleges. These kinds of things will help Bethel survive and thrive.”
Melanie Zuercher