The three alumni award winners for 2025 will be on campus to be honored in person April 6.
The three will receive their awards, and then join an alumni panel, starting at 11 a.m. in Krehbiel Auditorium in Luyken Fine Arts Center.
Tim Wiens, Silver Spring, Md., a 1974 social work graduate, has received the Distinguished Achievement Award, which acknowledges character and citizenship, achievement in a chosen profession or vocation, and work of benefit to humanity.
Virgil Penner, North Newton, a 1960 graduate in industrial arts, is the recipient of the Outstanding Alumnus Award, “given on the basis of character and citizenship, service to church/community or college, or other outstanding achievements, honors and recognition.”
Kristin E. Wedel, Providence, R.I., a 2008 graduate in social work, has received the Young Alumnus Award, which recognizes character and citizenship, achievement or service rendered, and honors and recognition received. The recipient must be 39 years of age or younger.
Wiens is a graduate of Inman High School and Hutchinson Community College, in addition to Bethel. In 1978, he had completed a master’s degree in social work from Catholic University, Washington, D.C., and was working as a clinical counselor in Montgomery County, Md., when his congregation, Hyattsville (Md.) Mennonite Church, called him to join a ministry they were starting.
That was the genesis of Jubilee Association of Maryland Inc., which began as a group home for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Forty years later, when Wiens retired as executive director, Jubilee had gone from one home with seven adults, three staff and an annual budget of $40,000 to 140 clients in 70 locations with 260 staff and a $12 million budget.
Wiens officially retired in 2019 and, in 2020, took a part-time position as executive director of Maryland Inclusive Housing Corporation, which develops and provides Housing Support Services (HSS). He is also a private consultant on board governance, agency growth and transformation, and providing services for people with IDD in Maryland.
Along with running and growing Jubilee over four decades, Wiens held a number of organizational leadership positions as well as church leadership roles. In 1999, Arc of Maryland named Wiens Outstanding Professional of the Year. On his retirement from Jubilee, he received a MACS Lifetime Achievement Award, in 2019.
Wiens and his spouse, Mary Jo, have two married sons and two granddaughters.
Penner is a lifelong Newtonian. He graduated from Newton High School, which included four years of art study with Marie Orr.
He taught and coached at Walton High School, 1963-64, and from 1964-71, chaired the physical education department, coached football and served as athletic director at Bethel, while also earning a master’s degree in education at Wichita State University.
From 1971-81, Penner headed up physical education departments and coached football, track and field, or both, at Wichita North, Wichita West and Wichita Heights high schools.
He began his second stint at Bethel in 1981, where he served as Annual Fund director and director of alumni relations.
In his nearly two decades at Bethel, he coordinated the capital campaign leading up to Bethel’s centennial in 1987; was involved in developing Fall Fest and inaugurating Taste of Newton; and helped create the Student Alumni Association, the African-American Alumni Association, the Parents Association and the Host Family Program, among many other events and groups that have left their own legacy.
In 2000, Penner became CEO of the Newton Chamber of Commerce. He was involved in building Meridian Center, Sand Creek Station golf course and Newton’s branch of the Greater YMCA of Wichita, among many other accomplishments of benefit to Newton.
Penner has been active in his church, Grace Hill Mennonite east of Newton, for his entire life and, as an adult, in the broader Western District Conference and Mennonite denomination.
He has served on the boards (often as chair) of Northview (now ResCare), Harvey-Marion Community Developmental Disability Organization, the Newton/North Newton Planning Commission, Newton Tourism (now Convention) & Visitors Bureau and Warkentin House.
When he retired in 2009, Penner resumed his hobby of painting, put aside for many years. He has now done more than 900 acrylic landscape paintings, and continues to create more.
Virgil and the late Kaye Penner have two children and four grandchildren.
After finishing her degree at Bethel, Wedel, a 2004 Hutchinson High School graduate, went into voluntary service in San Francisco before moving to the other side of the country. She earned her master’s degree in social work at Boston University, and solidified her interests in perinatal and reproductive mental health, OCD and anxiety disorders, and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure and response prevention (ERP).
From 2012-15, Wedel worked in various capacities as a therapist at Butler Hospital, a private, nonprofit, psychiatric and substance abuse hospital in Providence. Since 2015, she has been associated with Women & Infants Hospital, the primary teaching hospital in obstetrics, gynecology and newborn pediatrics at Brown University’s medical school.
She started out as a clinical care coordinator, serving as a therapist in the perinatal Day Hospital, the nation’s first partial hospital treating pregnant people and new parents with depression, anxiety or other emotional distress.
In 2023, Wedel took a position as a clinical manager for the OCD Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP). In this capacity, she co-designed and launched the Perinatal OCD IOP.
In 2025, Wedel began a new venture, her own counseling service, KEW Counseling, continuing to focus on the particular emotional needs of pregnancy and new parenthood.
Teaching has been another part of her work at Women & Infants Hospital. She has been a didactic lecturer in perinatal OCD; a clinical supervisor and educator in CBT and ERP; a mentor for MSW students, psychiatry residents and fellows as well as a field instructor for MSW students; and a supervisor for graduate students from major universities in the region.
Wedel and her spouse, Brian McGuirk, have two young children.
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
