Fall Fest will be the setting for Bethel College to recognize its three alumni award winners for 2026.
This is especially appropriate because one of the awardees, Patty Shelly, is a member of the Golden Thresher 50th-reunion Class on 1976, although the award will be given posthumously.
There will be an awards presentation and luncheon for the three recipients and their invited guests with the Bethel Board of Directors, on Fall Fest Friday, Oct. 16.
Patricia J. Shelly will receive the Outstanding Alumnus Award, which will be accepted by her sister, Doris Whillock, Newton. The award is “given on the basis of character and citizenship, service to church/community or college, or other outstanding achievements, honors and recognition.”
Deborah J. Wiebe, Merced, Calif., is the recipient of the Distinguished Achievement Award, which acknowledges character and citizenship, achievement in a chosen profession or vocation, and work of benefit to humanity. Wiebe graduated from Bethel in 1981 with a degree in psychology.
Taylor McCabe-Juhnke, Columbus, Ohio, is also a Bethel psychology graduate, from 2012, and will receive the Young Alumnus Award, recognizing character and citizenship, achievement or service rendered, and honors and recognition received. The recipient must be 39 years of age or younger.
Shelly was born in Chicago and as an elementary student moved with her family to Newton, where she went on to graduate from Newton High School and to join Bethel College Mennonite Church as a teenager.
After finishing a B.A. in Bible and religion at Bethel in 1976, she earned an M.Div. in biblical interpretation from Iliff School of Theology and, later, her Ph.D. in biblical interpretation.
Shelly began teaching in the department of Bible and religion at Bethel in 1985. For most of the years between then and 2004, she also served as campus minister. From 1996-2000, she took a four-year leave of absence from teaching to serve as the Mennonite Central Committee country director for West Bank and Gaza.
She returned to teaching at Bethel in 2004 and continued until retirement in 2020. Between 1985 and 2015, she led or co-led study tours to Israel, Palestine and Jordan, usually every other year, including while she was country director for MCC.
In 2007, Shelly was part of an ecumenical religious delegation that traveled to Iran to meet with religious and political leaders, hoping to improve relations between the United States and Iran. This group also met with Iranian political leaders later that year at the United Nations in New York.
Shelly served on the board of Mennonite Church USA from 2005-17. For the final four years, she was MC USA moderator-elect (2 years) and then moderator (2 years).
Shelly retired from teaching in May of 2020. Later that year, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She died Sept. 4, 2023.
Deborah Wiebe grew up in Beatrice, Neb., and came to Bethel with a variety of interests, including math and biology, finally settling on psychology in her junior year, graduating with a B.A. in 1981.
She eventually focused on medical psychology, successfully applying for a competitive graduate program at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. She earned an M.A., an M.P.H. and a Ph.D. in medical psychology at UAB.
Upon completing her doctorate, in 1988, Wiebe took a faculty position at the University of Utah, where she stayed until 2006, achieving tenure and the rank of associate professor, before moving to the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas in 2006.
Finally, in 2013, Wiebe took a position as professor of psychological sciences at the University of California-Merced. Merced is one of the younger campuses (about 20 years old) in the UC system, and Wiebe says she has enjoyed being part of “establishing a new research university.”
Through experience practicing clinical psychology and, especially, in doing research, Wiebe has developed an interest in the psychological factors involved in coping with and managing chronic disease, particularly Type 1 diabetes (which develops most often in children and young adolescents).
While she has been part of dozens of successful grant applications over the years, two of the most recent are aimed specifically at managing Type 1 diabetes. Wiebe and her research collaborators are currently in the final year of a 4-year $4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, looking at the role social relationships play in helping young adults with Type 1 diabetes self-regulate.
Wiebe and her spouse, Stephen Wooding, an anthropologist also at UC-Merced, have one daughter, Emma Wiebe-Wooding, an artist who lives in Los Angeles.
Taylor McCabe-Juhnke was a Bethel “campus kid,” growing up in North Newton, where her father, John McCabe-Juhnke, was a professor of communication arts.
McCabe-Juhnke was part of Bethel’s forensics team but ultimately settled on psychology as a major and graduated with a B.A. in 2012, with a minor in German. She later earned a certificate in development and fundraising from the University of California-Davis.
Her turn toward the nonprofit world started right after graduation from Bethel, when she served two years with Mennonite Voluntary Service with the Madison (Wis.) Audubon Society. In that position, she gained an important, continuing mentor, Gary Funk.
McCabe-Juhnke spent time in the corporate world as a project manager in tech (software) before moving with her husband to Seattle, where she worked for United Way of King County and for the Seattle Children’s Hospital.
In 2021, McCabe-Juhnke became executive director of the Rural Schools Collaborative, a nonprofit that Funk had left the Madison Audubon Society to start.
RSC works with local, rural-serving organizations aimed specifically at education, supporting rural schools through teacher preparation, story-sharing, and fundraising help, among other ways, in 35 states, serving 2.5 million rural students.
Among McCabe-Juhnke’s accomplishments at RSC over the past five years have been increasing its annual budget from $300,000 to $2 million, increasing its digital reach to 1 million viewers, and tripling the number of partner organizations in the RSC network.
McCabe-Juhnke and her spouse, Jacob Swartzentruber, live in Columbus, Ohio.
Bethel is a four-year liberal arts college founded in 1887 and is the oldest Mennonite college in North America. Bethel is ranked #25 in U.S. News & World Report’s Best Regional College Midwest for 2026. Bethel was the only Kansas college or university to be named a Truth, Community Healing and Transformation (TCHT) Campus Center, in 2021. For more information, see www.bethelks.edu
