“The trees were a lot smaller when I went there,” said Hertzler, explaining that a had ripped through the small Kansas town shortly before he began his studies there. “Now, there’s all these large trees. But, I guess, 28 years of growth will do that.”

Hertzler, who also graduated from 91����Ƶ with a degree in biochemistry in 1999, visited Hesston in October with three other 91����Ƶ engineering students — Jacob Hess, Benjamin Friesen Guhr and Sean Swartley — and program director Daniel King as part of a collaboration between the two schools. The partnership was sponsored by the , which provides grants to foster relationships and strengthen ties between Mennonite institutions.

“91����Ƶ and Hesston College have a long history of collaboration in various areas,” Johann Reimer, engineering program director for Hesston College, said in a from the school. “I am so excited that we were able to forge ahead with a totally new engineering-related collaboration that provided real benefits for faculty and students alike.”

Picking a project

The partnership started this spring, when 91����Ƶ hosted a group of Hesston College engineering students and faculty members. The group from Hesston reviewed two projects that 11 91����Ƶ students in the Engineering Design II class presented and chose one to improve. They chose to redesign a trivision board the 91����Ƶ students created.

Trivision boards, often used for , are made from vertical triangular prisms aligned together in a frame. The boards can show up to three ads, with the display depending on which of the prism’s sides are facing the viewer. 

“We wanted something fun to do that isn’t super common anymore, but we wanted to add a flair to it,” said Hertzler, a student in the spring semester course. Unlike traditional trivision boards, which use a single gear to rotate all the panels at the same time, students in the class attached a motor to each prism so they could control them individually.  

King said the project was one that students from both engineering schools could equally contribute to.

“Hesston’s program is a mechatronics program — a combination of mechanical and electronics — and we have mechanical and computer engineering,” he said. “So, we came up with a project that had components of both.”

The trivision board could be used to display advertising for events or clubs on campus.

“It could show artwork,” King said. “As our students mentioned, it could also show facts about environmental sustainability.”

91����Ƶ students in the class answered questions from Hesston College students about their design decisions, and the two groups bounced ideas off each other. In addition to their collaborative work on the project, students from Hesston College toured the Harrisonburg, Virginia, campus, sat in on engineering courses and hiked in the nearby Shenandoah National Park.

Returning the favor

During their fall break in October, the 91����Ƶ engineering group traveled about 1,200 miles westward to Hesston College in south central Kansas. There, they toured the campus, attended engineering classes and were presented with a redesign of the trivision board.

Hesston students added a motion sensor to the board that could trigger the panels to rotate with a wave. They also changed the type of motor used.

“It was neat to see them tackle the problem differently,” Hertzler said, “and it was fun engaging with their questions.”

Hess, an 91����Ƶ senior who transferred from Hesston in 2021, was not part of the class that designed the trivision board in the spring, but used the trip as an opportunity to meet former professors and attend a robotics class. He said the long-distance collaboration helps simulate what it’s like to work on projects in the workforce. 

“You might have a group in one part of the country working on a project with a group in another part of the country, with completely different time zones,” Hess said.

King said the collaboration helped students focus on documenting the design process and communicating it to others. The partnership helped build relationships between faculty at both schools and showed students “that engineering is a bigger world than at just one institution,” he said.

Looking back, he said that one highlight of their trip was seeing the rockets and spacecraft at the Cosmosphere museum in Hutchinson, Kansas.

“The hiking was also fun,” he said, “but we joked that we have better hiking in Shenandoah than out in Kansas.” 

Hurst, a pastoral intern at 91����Ƶ, was one of about 30 people who came to the school’s Campus Center on Thursday to hold a prayer and candlelight vigil for victims of a shooting last week in Hesston, Kan.

Three people were killed and 14 wounded during a shooting at an Excel Industries building by a former Excel employee on Feb. 25. The man was later killed by police.

Hurst, who graduated from Hesston College and whose wife is from the town, said he feels helpless when he hears about mass shootings.

“I’m getting frustrated with this is not an unusual occurrence,” Hurst said. “We should be able to do something.”

Ken L. Nafziger, vice president of student life at 91����Ƶ, said a lot of the school’s students are from Hesston or transferred from Hesston College, which is near the Excel building in the Kansas town.

“It has a lot of impact on both our communities,” Nafziger said. “[We] felt it would be a good opportunity to … support our students who are here from Hesston or have connections to Hesston.”

Hesston College, a two-year Mennonite school, is a sister school of 91����Ƶ, with many students transferring to the university to earn a bachelor’s degree. Hesston College was locked down during the shooting. A choir from the school is set to perform in Harrisonburg over the weekend.

At Thursday’s vigil, Students sang hymns and prayed before lighting candles for the victims.

“Violence will not prevail in our communities,” said Brian Martin Burkholder, 91����Ƶ’s pastor. “And peace will endure.”

Courtney Unruh, a senior at 91����Ƶ, is from Hesston and said her sister goes to school across the street from the Excel building.

“Hesston is the place I’ve called home my entire life,” Unruh said. “I found myself in a lot of fear on Thursday.”

Nafziger said what happened in Hesston could happen anywhere, and people should be prepared.

“We can’t deny that it could potentially happen in Park View right next to 91����Ƶ,” Nafziger said. “We can’t say that it can’t happen here. We like to think it couldn’t. We no longer can act as if it couldn’t.”

Reprinted with permission from the Mar. 6, 2016 issue of the Daily News-Record. 

Gehman, a senior kinesiology major, looks forward to running every day. When he’s running, he feels free, happy, at ease in a way that he often isn’t. Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at age 4, Gehman has dealt with severe anxiety his entire life. Sometimes he can hardly make it out the door of his room. Sometimes he sits himself in the chair in Coach’s office to ride out another panic attack. Sometimes Gehman thinks that if he could just run all day, every day, that would keep things under control. But his homework won’t do itself, and he has classes to attend and all sorts of other basic life things that make that impractical.

He describes living with Asperger’s as follows: most people have buckets to hold all the little stresses and details and things that daily life throws at them. On stressful days when enough of those little things collect, the bucket overflows and the carrier is overwhelmed. Gehman has a thimble instead of a bucket. It gets full quick. When he was younger, full-blown panic attacks struck every day, leaving him breathless, terrified, stuck in place. Though he’s gotten better at fending them off, they’re never far away.

When he runs, it’s a different story. He has a bucket and it all feels easier.

‘Good but not great’ at first

Gehman was 13 the first time he went for a run – one mile from his house to the high school nearby, and one mile back. His parents made him take a walkie-talkie just in case. He didn’t need it. When he was 14, his family hosted a guest who was training for a marathon. Gehman cinched on his Velcro-strap shoes, tagged along with the guy for seven miles and was hooked.

For the next four years, he was a good but not great high school runner. After graduating from (earlier, he’d also attended a public high school), he put in another year of good but not great running at and then, transferred to Montreat College in western North Carolina. His coach there was more of a zealot for hard training and high mileage, and Gehman responded well. He qualified for the NAIA national cross country meet. In indoor track, he ran a 16:12 5k – not jaw-dropping, but certainly not pedestrian.

While Gehman’s running was going better than ever, managing his anxiety wasn’t. Transferring to 91����Ƶ, he found a more supportive environment on the track and cross-country teams for which Lewkowicz had set the expectation that “there’s a shared responsibility to care for one another.”

Lewkowicz was one of his earliest and biggest supporters. Lately, his teammates have become more and more important. Not that the thimble isn’t a problem anymore. It’s been a hard and anxious winter for Gehman. When things aren’t going well, sometimes there isn’t anything his teammates can say to fix things. What they can do, said Hannah Chappell-Dick, a standout runner on the women’s team who has qualified for nationals in both cross-country and track, is simply be present, be there, with and for him. And so that’s what they’ve done.

Overcoming anxiety and dropping time

Gehman’s performances have continued to improve. In his junior cross-country season, he made the All-Region team and barely missed qualifying for the NCAA D-III national meet. On the track the next spring, he dropped his 5k time down to 15:26. Back in cross-country last fall, he lowered his 8k personal-best to an elite 24:15 that left his good-but-not-great past in the dust. At the South/Southeast Regional meet, he took first place among the 200 best D-III runners between Virginia and Texas. It was the best race of his life. His teammates cried.

“It’s powerful to see people overcome things, and Ryan has done a lot of that this year,” said Chappell-Dick.

(On the NCAA race course the following week, Gehman felt like circuit breakers tripped inside him during the wild, stampeding chaos of the first half-mile. He finished in 237^th place, more than two minutes off his best time.)

It has been a tough and injury-plagued winter, and Gehman sat out the conference championship on March 1. But in January, he ran a very promising indoor 5k in 15:49. He’s logging miles and building up a base. He will approach outdoor track with his usual determination.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever coached anyone who works as hard as he does,” said Lewkowicz.

Sharing his hard work

Hard work is part of any good distance runner’s life. In Gehman’s case, though, the hard physical work of training follows the heavy emotional lifting it sometimes takes just to lace up his shoes and show up at practice. He works hard in order to work hard.

After graduation, Gehman plans to race longer distances – half-marathons, marathons. His biggest love is for the quiet and calm of trail running. He thinks he’ll try to go pro. When Coach Lewkowicz lets him, he criss-crosses the rocky slopes of Massanutten Mountain with Dan Nafziger ‘13, an admissions counselor who qualified for the national cross-country meet in 2011.

Since emerging as a top-flight runner, Gehman has begun tackling another difficult challenge: talking about the obstacles he’s overcome. It hasn’t come easy, but then again, lots of things haven’t come easy for him. And perhaps, he figured, his story could inspire others who face similar challenges.

Last year, with the encouragement of Lewkowicz and the athletics department, he gave an interview to the local TV station about his life with Asperger’s syndrome. In February, he was invited to speak to a Rotary club in Salem, Virginia. Talking in front of news cameras and rooms full of people was a lot to ask of his thimble, but not enough to stop him.

After the TV interview aired, Gehman received a Facebook message from a couple who’d seen it. Their 11-year-old daughter had been diagnosed with Asperger’s, and they were curious if they might meet with him to hear more about what it’s like. They came and talked with him for an hour in the Commons. Gehman was thrilled at the opportunity to help the parents understand their daughter better. It feels great, he says. He uses the exact same words to describe his running, but there’s a difference.

“Running is something I do for me,” he says. “Talking about my disability is something I can do for other people.”

Ryan Gehman has known for nearly a decade now that running makes him feel good. He’s just now finding out that telling others about why that’s the case makes him feel even better.

The 16-member group, led by assistant professor of music , specializes in madrigals, jazz, and modern and contemporary concert literature, both secular and sacred.

91����Ƶ’s newest ensemble is comprised of the “best of the best,” said Keebaugh. “I needed singers who could learn music quickly, were strong musicians, and able to balance this time commitment among their many other involvements.”

The son of an organist and a Brethren minister, Keebaugh is an experienced choir director and a widely traveled and oft-performed composer. He earned his DMA at The Catholic University of America, and was previously choral director at Mary Baldwin College and director of choral activities at Clarke County High School.

Keebaugh praised this particular group for their dedication. “These are incredibly hard-working and passionate musicians, who are also very strong representatives of 91����Ƶ and .”

Paying tribute to musical roots, Keebaugh noted that Emulate includes nine graduates and former participants of two strong high school music programs.

Sophomore Jon Bishop joins Abby Bush and Jaclyn Kratz in representing . A tenor majoring in vocal performance and composition with a social environmental sustainability minor, Bishop calls this new group “focused” and “well-rounded.”

Junior Jeffrey Smoker, a business major who sings bass, is an experienced choral performer, having toured while at (EMHS) and. Fellow EMHS graduates in the group include Hannah Shultz, Caitlin Holsapple, Michaela Mast, Eli Wenger and Perry Blosser.

“Emulate is a group of talented singers who have been able to come together very quickly and sing challenging music,” Smoker said. “I was very impressed that by the end of our first rehearsal, we had sight-read four or five pieces, and they sounded pretty good. I am really excited to see and hear what we can do over the next few months.”

Local ties make this tour especially appealing, said senior Erin Hershey, who is among six Pennsylvania natives in the group. She and junior Luisa Miller are members of Slate Hill Mennonite Church, which hosts Emulate on March 5.

Rounding out the group are Heather Evans, of Alexandria, Virginia; Mischa De Jesus, of Kalona, Iowa; Jake Rhine, of Indianapolis, Indiana; Guilio Garner, of Harrisonburg, Virginia; and Nathaneal Ressler, of Mount Vernon, Illinois.

The Pennsylvania tour is a prelude to a longer two-week tour this summer through the midwest, with final performances at the June 30-July 5 in Kansas City, Missouri.

Schedule:

March 5 – 7 p.m., Slate Hill Mennonite Church, Camp Hill, PA

March 6 – 6:30 p.m., James Street Mennonite Church, Lancaster, PA

March 7 – 7 p.m., Martinsburg Memorial Church of the Brethren, Martinsburg, PA

March 8 – 9:30 a.m. worship service, University Mennonite Church, State College, PA

“The opportunity to work with children with autism was not the result of a deliberate plan or any previous experience with autism,” says Oswald. “Grafton School in Berryville, Virginia, was just beginning the program for students with autism and I was fascinated by the children and intrigued by the opportunity to work with them individually.”

Oswald’s fascination with the emerging field of autism diagnosis, combined with the strong foundation he received as a major at 91����Ƶ, helped launch his productive career.

Raised on a Nebraska farm, Oswald chose for his first two years of college. 91����Ƶ’s innovative psychology department, led by John Hess, attracted him for his junior and senior years. A young had just started his long teaching tenure. And in one psychology class, Oswald met Jean Miller, the woman who became his wife.

Of his non-psychology professors, Oswald names Willard Swartley as “perhaps the most memorable. His Old Testament course made a lasting impression because of his commitment to scholarly integrity.”

Within the newly built , Oswald was introduced to scholarly research first-hand. “I recall the pleasure I got from spending whole days in the library tracking down sources, and reading and integrating the material I found. I no longer remember the topic, but the process made a real impression and the experience whetted my appetite for independent research.”

Whetted may be an understatement. Oswald’s 19-page curriculum vitae lists more than 12 pages of academic articles, book reviews/editorials/abstracts, books/chapters, grant-related products, and workshop presentations which he authored, co-authored or produced.

After graduating magna cum laude in 1975, Oswald received a master’s in education in school psychology from James Madison University in 1981. Two degrees from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University followed: master of science in psychology in 1987 and doctor of philosophy in psychology in 1989.

Among his peers, Oswald is known for his willingness to share knowledge and research. He is director of diagnostics and research at in Richmond, Virginia.

Of his work there, Oswald says, “91����Ƶ 15 years ago, I had the opportunity to develop an interdisciplinary diagnostic assessment clinic for young children for whom there was a question of a diagnosis of autism. The clinic was established on the principles of using the best evidence-based diagnostic tools available, working together collaboratively across disciplines, and actively seeking to integrate parents as essential and equal partners in the process.”

He has served as director of the clinic ever since, guiding it to its mid-Atlantic status as a model training site for interdisciplinary teams that wish to provide similar diagnostic services.

Oswald is also clinical professor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s department of psychiatry, mentoring psychologists-in-training.

His wife, Jean ’74, has just retired from her position as director of a preschool where she spent 20 years. Oswald is active at , leading music and worship. His hobbies are reading, bicycling, and singing.

Music unites Oswald’s 91����Ƶ years with his present life, recalling that he sang in the touring choir under Lowell Byler. “I still sing with a community chorus, One Voice Chorus. Our mission is to foster harmony between people of African-American and European-American descent.”

Oswald will be honored with the Alumnus of the Year award during Homecoming and Family Weekend 2014 at 91����Ƶ, Oct. 10-12. Celebrations include: class reunions for years ending in “4″ and “9″; community picnic on Saturday, Oct. 11, for all members of the 91����Ƶ community; sporting events; !

Distinguished Service award: 

Young Alumnus of the Year award: 

It was more like the 91����Ƶ junior high jumped over the door that looked like it had blocked his days as a collegiate athlete.

In one of the more extraordinary examples of an athlete quickly picking up a new sport, a short time after King was told he wouldn’t see much playing time on the Royals’ basketball team he went out for track and became the indoor and outdoor champion in the high jump. His season-best jump was 6-foot-6 1/4 inch, which was just 1 1-2 away from the school record.

And when I say “new sport” I mean completely new. King had never even dabbled in high jumping in middle school or high school.

“We didn’t have a track team at or at ,” said the 6-foot-5 King, with the latter being a two-year college he played basketball at before continuing his schooling at Div. III Eastern Mennonite in Harrisonburg, Va.

King was a solid basketball player at Central Christian (averaging about 12 points and seven rebounds a game as a senior) and came to be known for his high-flying slam dunks at Hesston.

Unfortunately, dunking alone won’t win a spot on a college basketball team and the Royals told the walk-on that he wasn’t likely to play much.

“After it didn’t work out with basketball, I kind of accepted the fact that I was done playing a college sport and I thought I’d just find other stuff to do like intramurals,” King said. “One of the basketball assistants shared a cubicle with a track coach and told him that I could jump pretty well. The track coaches talked me into giving the high jump a try. There was no pressure — I just wanted to see how I’d do, enjoy myself and see what happens.”

King didn’t catch on right away to high jumping and couldn’t even clear the introductory height of 5-10 at his first indoor meet in December.

“I had a coach who had jumped at Appalachain State and had some real good experience to teach me,” said King, who competes in a league that also has schools such as Roanoke, Lynchburg and Bridgewater. “I was trying to just throw myself over the bar at first, but I learned to get some arch in my jump.”

This track season is over for King as he couldn’t quite reach the 6-8 height that would have likely qualified him for the Div. III NCAA Meet. The son of Glen and Judy King is still plenty busy this month, though, as right after finals the business administration major will go to South Korea for a cross-cultural school experience.

King will have a lot to reflect on when he finally gets some down time, but one word quickly comes to mind about his newfound sport.

“Perseverance,” King said. “At the beginning, (high jumping) was coming really slowly. I kind of toughed it out and it’s really worked out.”

It’s a lesson for life in general, if people keep an open mind and aren’t afraid of some hard work, success can be found in unexpected places.

Courtesy Wooster Daily Record, April 28, 2013

Concern over college affordability in the United States is nothing new. The inflation-adjusted average annual cost of tuition, room and board for the country’s colleges and universities has more than doubled over the past 30 years, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

While the cost of attendance has actually been increasing faster at public universities over the past decade, private institutions are in general still more expensive. The National Center for Education Statistics puts the average annual cost of tuition, room and board at private, not-for-profit American universities at $36,300 for the 2010-2011 academic year.

While the -affiliated colleges and universities aren’t quite that pricey, they’re not cheap either. According to online “sticker price” figures, the average full cost of attendance this year at the five colleges/universities is $33,714. (The full cost of a 90-credit hour M.Div. degree from the two Mennonite Church USA-affiliated seminaries is currently just over $41,000.)

Price or best fit?

“Higher education as a whole has had to defend its worth and value in today’s society,” says , director of retention at 91����Ƶ (91����Ƶ), Harrisonburg, Va. “We see more and more students making their choice based on price instead of what’s a best fit for them.”

When it comes to paying for an education, however, officials at Mennonite educational institutions note that scholarships and financial aid almost always mean that the actual cost of a student’s education will be less than the sticker price.

Dan Koop Liechty, director of admissions at , notes that cost and affordability decisions are best made after prospective students have applied, been admitted and received financial assistance packages. At this point, students can make decisions based on the bottom-line cost of their educations, which are often much more comparable to attending a public institution than it first appears.

Directly related to the price of higher education is the issue of student debt, which has also been increasing. According to the , 2011 graduates who borrowed to finance their educations finished with an average debt load of $26,600. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, some consider this an unreasonable burden to place on graduates entering an uncertain job market. Others characterize it as a reasonable investment—about the cost of a new Toyota Prius—that sets college graduates on the path to a much larger payoff.

College degree as an investment

“It’s not debt that you’re using to buy consumables and putting on a credit card with a 21-percent interest rate,” says Ron Headings, vice president for enrollment management and marketing at . “It’s buying you a college degree.”

Headings adds that with prior planning and hard work during college—to maintain academic scholarships as well as earn income—students and their families can find it “fairly easy to get out of Bluffton University debt-free.”

Cost and debt aside, getting a college degree clearly remains a smart financial investment for young adults. While estimates vary, many sources now place the average increase in earnings over a 40-year career at or near $1 million compared to workers without a college degree.

Furthermore, faculty, staff and alumni of the five colleges and universities say a degree from one isn’t just any garden-variety bachelor’s degree.

Engaged profs, small classes

“At a larger school, many of the foundational classes are taught by teaching assistants,” says Matthew Schmidt, a 1994 graduate of , North Newton, Kan. “At Bethel you have full professors teaching these same classes.”

Schmidt, who lives in Newton, Kan., and is interim director of a clinic providing health services to medically underserved populations, says the small class sizes at Bethel created an interactive environment ideal for collaborative learning.

Additionally, engaged faculty invested in students’ well-being and emphases on critical thinking and cross-cultural skills prepare them particularly well for the future.

Strong outcomes

Two of many indications are these:

• From 2006 to 2010, 91 percent of 91����Ƶ graduates who applied to medical school were accepted, almost double the national acceptance rate of 46 percent.

• At Bethel, 95 percent of social work graduates pass their licensing exams on the first attempt, compared with a national pass rate of 78 percent.

“In a rapidly changing and highly specialized job market, a liberal arts college degree provides an essential foundation for the basic skills that are needed in a dynamic economic environment,” says John D. Roth, the author of Teaching that Transforms: Why Anabaptist-Mennonite Education Matters and a professor of history at Goshen College. “So education at Goshen College is ‘worth it’ for straightforward economic reasons alone.”

But the financial case for the value of a Mennonite college, university or seminary education only tells part of the story.

Education that transforms

Back on the financial aid page: “The key is to think of [education] in terms of value. While the cost of college may initially be a bit of a shock, step back, take a deep breath and think about the experiences and lifelong advantages a Hesston education provides.” This appeal to the value of a Mennonite education is an extremely important part of the argument.

“As Anabaptists, we are part of a tradition that measures worth in more than monetary terms,” says Rachel Swartzendruber Miller, vice president of admissions and financial aid at Hesston. “Mennonite colleges and universities not only offer course credits and degrees, we provide transformational opportunities for our students to fully discover themselves and their place in God’s mission in the world.”

Graduates of these schools frequently point to impossible-to-quantify personal growth as one of the most important parts of their educations there.

“Attending Goshen College was a seminal time in my development,” says Peter Eash-Scott, a 1999 graduate, now a stay-at-home dad in Newton “It probably is one of the most influential things that has informed who I am, what I value and who I strive to be.”

Shared, reinforced values

Spending four years in a learning environment surrounded by people who held similar values, Eash-Scott adds, provided “a safe place to explore my faith and challenge my understanding of God, myself and the faith community,” both in and out of the classroom.

Close, caring relationships between students and faculty often are another important aspect of an education at a Mennonite institution.

“The faculty and staff here are part of our community,” says Clark Oswald, associate director of admissions at Bethel. “We care for our neighbors. That’s something as Mennonites that we learn in church growing up, and at Bethel we do that. … There’s just kind of this underlying sense of ‘we’re in this together.’ ”

Michelle Roth-Cline, a 2000 graduate of 91����Ƶ, called the mentoring role of faculty “absolutely invaluable.” Now a pediatric ethicist for the , Roth-Cline says her education at 91����Ƶ prepared her for medical school as well as her classmates coming from Ivy League and other prestigious schools. At the same time, what she learned about building relationships has served her equally well.

Learning to care for people

“I learned more about how to care for other people at 91����Ƶ than I did in medical school. Simply knowing how to care for other people in this way has opened all kinds of doors both personally and professionally that I never would have imagined possible when I was choosing a college,” Roth-Cline says.

Leah Roeschley, a 2011 graduate of Bluffton, says her education there set the stage for her own spiritual growth. The opportunity to explore Mennonite faith and spirituality, combined with “space to ask questions [and] space to access and receive counsel” allows students to “claim a faith that is truly their own,” she says.

“My Mennonite education was worth it because my college experience was bracketed with values that resonated with me,” says Roeschley, a registered dietitian in Bloomington, Ill. “Those values were in the background of everything I did at Bluffton. … I left not only fully equipped for the field of dietetics, but I also left with … a deeper understanding of who I was.”

A related role played by Mennonite higher education is the development of future church leaders and members.

Developing leaders

“There is strong and long-standing research that shows that students who graduate from a Mennonite college are far more likely to participate after college in a Mennonite congregation, our denominational service agencies and leadership positions in the denominational structures. Mennonite higher education is not only a great value for students, we are of great value to our denomination,” says Koop Liechty, the admissions director at Goshen.

, director of admissions at (EMS), says that study at a Mennonite seminary puts Anabaptist “theology, history, polity and biblical understandings” at the center of the curriculum. At a non-Mennonite school, she adds, these topics—key in the development of church leaders—would often be relegated to electives.

Ron Guengerich, a 1974 graduate of (AMBS), says his education gave him a lifelong love of scholarship and the church while bringing the Bible alive as “a challenging and transforming ‘word.’ ” Now the pastor of Silverwood Mennonite Church in Goshen, he says he left well prepared for work within the church and eager to continue advanced study of the Old Testament.

Given the relatively low pay offered to people entering church leadership and ministry positions, Amstutz says EMS is concerned with the growing cost of attendance and believes all levels of the denomination need to “find ways to help support students financially.”

There is also a converse question of worth to consider: What would be the price of not having strong educational institutions?

“It’s impossible to put a money value on effective and visionary leadership for the church,” says Sara Wenger Shenk, president of AMBS. “Most of us don’t get it that healthy communities thrive … because they have compassionate, competent and confident leaders.”

Building community

“Thank God for those who remember that the cost of ignorance and immaturity given full sway in local congregations is far greater than an investment in those who are ready to become masters of the craft,” she says.

According to those interviewed for this article, the sum of an educational experience at a Mennonite educational institution is greater than its individual parts, with academic growth and personal development building upon and informing each other.

“We feel very strongly about our value and the high quality of education that we provide to our students,” says Good. His statement is echoed by his counterparts at other institutions. “At 91����Ƶ, students receive an education in which they are challenged to move beyond their comfort zone, to think critically about the world around them, to strengthen their core values and beliefs and to be leaders and forces for change and justice in their communities.”

Courtesy The Mennonite, Jan. 1, 2013

, , and have each signed a memo of understanding with 91����Ƶ’s (91����Ƶ) . Each college/university has agreed to do an initial screening of students who apply to the institution and then recommend IEP to those who could benefit from the one-semester, or more, English language immersion experience.

Two years ago, IEP Director approached MEA Senior Director with the idea of making IEP available to the other Mennonite colleges/universities. Moyer was excited about the potential for this type of collaboration and encouraged Roth to pursue the idea.

Over a period of time, Roth met individually with admissions, enrollment and academic staff of the four colleges/universities.

“I believe very strongly in Mennonite education and the work MEA does to bring educators together. I was grateful for the opportunity to share how IEP could work on their behalf and was pleased by their openness and eagerness to work together,” said Roth.

Moyer believes that this collaboration among Mennonite higher education is one that our missional church can also celebrate.

“The world community is relating in new ways; there is an openness to learn from each other,” said Moyer. “The Anabaptist view of God’s love for all people is being modeled in relationships that go beyond our borders. The faith and values that Mennonite education teaches is significant for our neighbors both near and far.”

91����Ƶ’s IEP began in 1989 to support its international students who needed English language skills in order to study in an American academic setting. Classes focus on language skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing and grammar through cultural immersion and much personal attention. The program emphasizes the value of cultural diversity even as it helps students understand North American academic rules, methods of study and expectations. Currently, 45 to 55 students, representing 15 to 20 different countries, are enrolled in each IEP session.

By Melvin Mason, Daily News-Record

Luis Padilla had a glow of success on Sunday.

With hard work, prudent savings and a little help, Padilla, 40, earned a bachelor

Eighteen faculty members from undergrad Bible and religion programs in colleges related to Mennonite Church USA met on campus Sept. 25 and 26.

At this first meeting of faculty representing the five institutions now relating to MCUSA, conversation focused on mission, academic work and church relations. The group also spent time in worship and fellowship.

Speaking from personal experiences, five faculty addressed the topic, “Standing with one foot in the Church and one foot in the Academy: My experiences as a Bible/Theology/Religion/Philosophy professor in an MCUSA school.” Duane Friesen, Bethel College; J. Denny Weaver, Bluffton University; Nancy R. Heisey, 91����Ƶ; Marion Bontrager, Hesston College and Keith Graber Miller, Goshen College, made presentations.

In a Sunday morning worship led by Hesston professor Michelle Hershberger, participants meditated on the story of Jesus teaching in the temple from John 7 and created symbols of their questions for God. A brainstorming session raised possibilities for facilitated student exchanges among schools, further gatherings to focus concretely on pedagogical questions and the idea of a published collection of participants

Luke Hartman is dumping the hardcourt for the classroom.

The former basketball coach