Tonya Cross Hansel is interested in how populations are affected by trauma – whether medical, technological or climate-induced – and how social workers can help people recover.

Hansel will give the third Ada Schmidt-Tieszen Social Work Lecture at Bethel College March 20 at 11 a.m. in Krehbiel Auditorium as part of the regular convocation series. The public is invited.

Her lecture topic is “Climate Change and Severe Weather Events: Social Workers’ Present and Future Roles in Disaster Response and Recovery.”

Shanti Kauffman, Hesston, a rising senior majoring in social work, will receive one of the academic scholarships that MHS of Goshen, Ind., gives each year.

MHS (Mennonite Health Services) is a not-for-profit organization that supports Mennonite and other Anabaptist faith-grounded health and human service providers in their leadership and strategic direction. 

Four students each year are eligible to receive the Elmer Ediger Memorial Scholarship from MHS, which goes to a sophomore or junior (at the time of application) in college.

The campus food pantry, now called Thresher Food Pantry, has reopened almost exactly two years after the pandemic closed it in March 2020.

The food pantry was launched Nov. 4, 2019, when two social work students, now graduates, and a faculty member met with Vice President for Student Life Samuel Haynes to talk about a problem they had identified: student food insecurity.

Akiyaa Hagen-Depusoir and Sophia Minder had seen that hunger was an issue for some Bethel students. Their proposal, backed by others in the social work department, was to open a food pantry on campus.

The Department of Social Work kicked off Social Work Month with a virtual presentation by Je T’aime Taylor on March 1, which can be viewed on Bethel's YouTube channel.

Taylor, a Bethel social work graduate and the new executive director of the Front Porch Alliance in Kansas City, Mo., will be the speaker for Bethel’s March 1 convocation, which also serves as the first-ever Ada Schmidt-Tieszen Social Work Lecture.