In the News

Art faculty featured in gallery

Faculty and emeritus faculty members in the Hesston College art department are the featured artists in the college’s Regier Friesen Gallery through Sept. 6.

Faculty member Hanna Eastin, ceramics instructor, is presenting stoneware sculptures. Lois Misegadis, who teaches drawing, painting, photography and graphic design and is chair of the art department, is featuring her project entitled “Honor to These,” a mixed-media collection of portraits of American heroes.

Faculty emeritus Paul Friesen, who founded the college’s art department in 1957 and for whom the building and gallery are named, has several wood sculptures on display.

A reception and chance for the public to meet the artists and hear about the inspiration for their pieces will be from 4 to 6 p.m. Sept. 6 in the gallery.

The gallery, located in the Friesen Center for the Visual Arts, is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Hesston College announces new faculty and staff appointments for fall 2013

Hesston College announces the following faculty and staff appointments for the 2013-14 year.

New faculty appointments include:

• Kyle Albrecht, aviation flight instructor, is a graduate of Hesston College and earned a Certified Flight Instructor License from the aviation program.
• Myron Diener, men’s and women’s tennis coach, is a graduate of Hesston College and earned a B.A. in math education from Goshen (Ind.) College and a M.S. in statistics from Oklahoma State University (Stillwater).
• Kathryn Glanzer, English instructor, earned a B.A. in English from Tabor College (Hillsboro, Kan.) and a M.A. in English from Emporia (Kan.) State University.
• Heidi Hochstetler, student support services, Writing Fellows co-director, College Writing instructor, is a graduate of Hesston College. She earned a B.A. in English and language arts with an education endorsement, a M.A. in education with emphasis on curriculum and instruction and an English as a Second Language endorsement from Doane College (Crete, Neb.).
• Marelby Mosquera Jensen, science and English as a Second Language instructor, is a graduate of Hesston College. She earned a B.S. in biology and environmental science from Goshen (Ind.) College.
• Ethan Koerner, theatre lighting designer, earned a B.A. in theatre arts: scenic design and acting/directing from Dordt College (Sioux Center, Iowa) and a M.A. in theatre from Bowling Green State University (Bowling Green, Ohio).
• Dr. Dan Muhwezi, sociology instructor, has a B.A. in political science and public administration from Makerere University (Kampala, Uganda) and a master of public administration and doctor of philosophy in sociology from Iowa State University (Ames).
• Travis Nickelson, nursing instructor, earned a B.S. in nursing from Chamberlain College of Nursing-Saint Louis (Mo.), a master’s in nursing education from Liberty University (Lynchburg, Va.) and an adult/gerontological nurse practitioner certificate from the University of Kansas (Lawrence).
• David Rudy, aviation flight instructor, is a graduate of Hesston College and earned a Certified Flight Instructor License from the aviation program.
• Clay Stauffer, physical education department faculty and chair, is a graduate of Hesston College and earned a B.A. in physical education/health teaching with an emphasis in athletic training from Tabor College (Hillsboro, Kan.) and an M.S. in health and human performance from Fort Hays (Kan.) State University.
• Megan Tyner, theatre technical director, earned a B.A. in theatre performance and a M.A. in communication from Wichita (Kan.) State University.

New staff appointments include:

• Jessica Alexander, co-director of campus activities, Snack Shop and Larks Nest manager, earned a B.A. in broadcast journalism with an emphasis in advertising from Oklahoma State University (Stillwater)
• Becky Armstrong, director of international student services, is a graduate of Hesston College and is projected to complete a B.A. in early childhood education from Southwestern College (Winfield, Kan.) in May 2014.
• Suzanne Burch, aviation department administrative assistant, earned a B.A. from Bethel College (North Newton, Kan.).
• Donna Diener, library assistant, is a graduate of Goshen (Ind.) College.
• Sheri Esau, Advancement office assistant, is a graduate of Bethel College.
• Jeremy Ewy, campus facilities, is a graduate of Hesston College.
• Jan Gattis, bookstore clerk.
• Janis Hastings, assistant cook.
• Jasmine Martin, co-director of campus activities, is a graduate of Hesston College and earned a B.A. in social work with a minor in psychology from Eastern Mennonite University.
• Kaitlyn Mast, admissions counselor, is a graduate of the Hesston College nursing program.
• Brent McNeil, assistant baseball coach, earned an bachelor’s degree in kinesiology and sports’ studies from Eastern Illinois University (Charleston).
• Bethany Miller, admissions counselor, is a graduate of Hesston College and earned a B.A. in liberal arts from Eastern Mennonite University (Harrisonburg, Va.).
• Stacey Mumaw, assistant cook.
• Carlota Ponds, Alumni and Church Relations administrative assistant, earned a B.A. in third-world studies from University of California-San Diego.
• Brett Prothro, Dyck Arboretum of the Plains staff, earned a B.A. from Southwestern College (Winfield, Kan.).
• Zac Remboldt, graphic designer, earned a B.A. in graphic design from Tabor College (Hillsboro, Kan.).

Photo release - Hesston College welcomes students back to campus for fall 2013

Hesston College sociology instructor and artist in residence Tony Brown joins the Hesston College Bel Canto Singers, under the direction of Bradley Kauffman, for a song during the college’s Opening Celebration service Aug. 16.

Hesston College students arrived on campus for Opening Weekend of the 2013-14 year Aug. 16. Several events were part of the annual Opening Weekend schedule, including Opening Celebration, an ice cream social, parents’ breakfast and orientation, new student orientation, freshman games, volleyball and men’s and women’s soccer scrimmages, a campus-wide picnic and Mod Olympics. Friday night’s Opening Celebration service included several pieces by Bel Canto, a welcome from President Howard Keim and Vice President of Student Life Lamar Roth, reflections on the Hesston Experience from students and recent graduates and the college’s theme verse for the year, The Lord’s Prayer, prayed in five languages and American Sign Language.

Freshman Jason Schroeder of Anthony, Kan., eats a banana as quickly as possible to end a relay race during Hesston College’s annual Mod Olympics Aug. 18 while freshman Jeshurun Shuman of Middletown, Pa., looks on.

Hesston College prepares for Opening Weekend 2013

Hesston College began welcoming students back to campus on Monday for the 2013-14 year, which will kick off with Opening Weekend Aug. 15 to 18.

Resident assistants arrived on campus Aug. 8 for training and a weekend retreat while members of the volleyball and men’s and women’s cross country and soccer teams as well as Bel Canto Singers and aviation students and members of the Jump Start program arrived Aug. 12 for practices, orientation and to begin flight training.

Registration for new and returning off-campus students begins Thursday, Aug. 15.

New and returning on-campus students will move into their dorm rooms, go through registration Aug. 16 and attend orientation sessions Aug. 17.

Opening Weekend activities include Opening Celebration at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 16, at Hesston Mennonite Church. An ice cream social for the campus community and families will follow the service.

A parent breakfast will be at 8:30 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 17, along with parent orientation sessions. The day’s festivities include a Performing Arts open house in Northlawn 109 from 11 a.m. to noon for students and parents wanting to learn what the music and theatre departments offer, a women’s soccer scrimmage at 5 p.m. on the Hesston College soccer field, a volleyball vs. alumni scrimmage at 6 p.m. in Yost Center and a men’s soccer intra-squad game at 7:30 p.m. on the Hesston College Soccer Field.

Sunday’s schedule features a 10:30 a.m. worship service with Hesston Mennonite Church with the message by Hesston College President Howard Keim focusing on the college’s theme verse for the year, The Lord’s Prayer. Other Sunday activities include Freshmen Games, a picnic for the campus community at 6 p.m. and the annual Mod Olympics at 7 p.m. on the soccer field. The local community is invited to attend Mod Olympics.

Theatre department announces 2013-14 season lineup

The Hesston College Theatre Department has announced its season lineup for the 2013-14 academic year, including drama, comedy and opera, under the direction of theatre faculty member Laura Kraybill.

The lineup includes Twelve Angry Jurors Oct. 3 to 6, Amahl and the Night Visitors Nov. 28 and 30, student-directed one-acts Nov. 29, Tartuffe Feb. 26 to March 2 and a theatre showcase May 9 and 10.

Twelve Angry Jurors, by Reginald Rose and adapted by Sherman Sergel, will be presented as the fall drama Oct. 3 to 6. The play tells the story of a jury considering the fate of a young man accused of murdering his father. Opening just as the jurors move to deliberation, eleven of the jurors agree on a guilty verdict, with only one not guilty. Many of the jurors have reasons for discriminating against the defendant, including his race, background and one juror’s own troubled relationship with his son. Throughout the play, the lone juror with a verdict of not guilty sows reasonable doubt in the minds of the other jurors, illustrating the controversial and difficult elements of the judicial system.

The theatre and music departments will collaborate for the college’s second presentation of Amahl and the Night Visitors, an opera in one act by Gian Carlo Menotti, during the college’s annual Thanksgiving Weekend Nov. 28 and 30. The college presented the opera for the first time in 2007. The opera, based on Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Adoration of the Magi, is known as a children’s opera and tells the story of the night of Christ’s birth from the perspective of the boy, Amahl, when the three magi stop to rest at his home.

Theatre students will direct their own short plays during the annual student-directed one-acts, also during Thanksgiving Weekend, Nov. 29.

Moliere’s 17th century comedy Tartuffe will debut as the spring play Feb. 26 to March 2. The play, also known as “The Imposter,” tells the story of a pious fraud, Tartuffe, and a man and his mother who have fallen under his influence.

Hesston College Theatre will wrap up the year with a theatre showcase featuring scenes and songs from various plays and musicals during Commencement Weekend May 9 and 10.

Ticket prices for shows vary, and tickets can be purchased through the bookstore in the weeks leading up to a performance.

Disaster Management receives financial gift

The good work and learning of students in Hesston College’s Disaster Management Program was rewarded with a $6,000 contribution to the Disaster Management Scholarship Fund from Good Charity, Inc.’s Disaster Relief and Aid Fund.

The gift will provide two $3,000 scholarships for students in the Disaster Management Program for the 2013-14 year.

Good Charity is a non-profit organization based in Southfield, Mich., that offers financial help to projects and organizations that benefit the community and the nation. Their support reaches to various causes with the hope of providing assistance to many in need. For more information, visit goodcharityinc.org.

“Dealing with natural disasters takes advanced preparation, training, strategy and responsiveness,” said Brian Maiorana, president of Good Charity. “Hesston College’s Disaster Management Program prepares young men and women for these challenges. Supporting students who will be our future first responders in this way is something we are very proud of.”

The Hesston College Disaster Management Program prepares graduates for a career in the non-profit or public sector of disaster response, relief and recovery. The program was started in 2005 in partnership with Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS), a bi-national organization that serves survivors of natural disasters. Students in the program receive classroom training for disaster response management as well as hands-on experience through summer field experience placements with MDS and other relief organizations and service trips throughout the school year.

Projects have included cleanup from the 2007 Greensburg, Kan., and 2011 Joplin, Mo., tornadoes and the 2011 Minot, N.D., flooding, repairing and rebuilding homes on the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina, as well as efforts following fires and other events.

“This gift from Good Charity, as well as donations from many other individuals, businesses and foundations, shows tremendous support for the students in the program and in their future service to others,” said Russ Gaeddert, Disaster Management program director.

About 14 Hesston College students will be enrolled in the Disaster Management program during the 2013-14 year. In the program’s eight years, 48 students have graduated from the program.

Former instructors release book revealing multi-racial ancestry

Former Hesston College instructors Sharon Cranford, Wichita, Kan., and Dwight Roth, Hesston, have released their book, “Kinship Concealed: Amish Mennonites/African-American Family Connections” (Legacy Book Publishing, 2013) – the story of Cranford’s, an African American Baptist, and Roth’s, a white Mennonite-Episcopalian, unexpected shared heritage.

Part semi-autobiographical and part historical fiction, the book documents the historical multi-racial lineage of Amish brothers Jacob and John Mast who immigrated from Switzerland to Philadelphia, Pa. Jacob, Roth’s ancestor, stayed in Pennsylvania and became the first Amish bishop ordained in the United States while John, Cranford’s ancestor, left the Amish church and moved south during the peak of slavery in America. John’s grandson, Rueben, became a slave owner in North Carolina and fathered a child with a slave girl – the child became Cranford’s great great grandfather, Charley Mast.

The duo will celebrate the book and family connections with a gathering for descendants of Jacob and John Mast on July 29 at Conestoga Mennonite Church, Morgantown, Pa., near where Jacob Mast lived and ministered more than 250 years ago.

Cranford and Roth did not know each other until they were both teaching in Hesston College’s social science department – and they definitely didn’t know about their common lineage. During a casual lunch gathering on campus in 2004, Roth’s attention was grabbed when he overheard Cranford’s tell another colleague that her great grandmother’s maiden name was Mast. He quickly noted that his mother’s maiden name was also Mast.

Roth, who taught at Hesston from 1973 to 2010, had an interest in his family’s genealogy and asked a few questions of Cranford to see if they might stem from the same Mast branch. When Cranford answered Roth’s questions correctly, the two made their way to the college library to further explore their unexpected discovery in the C.Z. Mast Geneaology book. There, their suspicions were confirmed when they found both family lines.

It was several years after their discovery that Cranford and Roth decided their family’s story needed to be told. Both set out on research trips to the areas where their families originated – Pennsylvania for the northern Amish Masts and east Texas and North Carolina for the southern Masts – to talk with relatives still living in the area and visit cemeteries and other historical family sites.

Throughout the book, Cranford and Roth use imaginative history to look into what their ancestors’ lives may have been like – their struggles, pain, fears and celebrations.

“I have felt my great great great grandmother’s presence – Charley’s mother – as I have gone through this whole process,” said Cranford. “As a slave, not much is known about her, but as a mother myself, I can empathize with what it must have been like to have her child torn away. Writing about it has calmed my spirit. Our ancestors propel us. Because of that compelling spirit, they drive what I say and feel.”

For both authors, writing their ancestors’ stories was a personal experience full of growth and understanding.

“This was a profoundly spiritual and emotional experience for me, which is why I think it is about something larger than Sharon and I meeting,” said Roth. “Our ancestors wanted this story to be told.”

Aside from telling an interesting and unexpected story, Cranford and Roth hope their book will encourage others to be open minded to the realities of bloodlines that may exist even in their own families, but in an even broader sense, to realize how connections across races exist.

“I hope our readers will recognize the strange American phenomenon about color and how tied up we are in that,” said Cranford. “I hope they will take a more internal look at ‘self” and who we all are as a people.”

Books can be purchased for $19.95, plus $5 shipping and handling, by calling 316-461-8989 or emailing scran50452@cox.net.

Local book readings, signings and opportunities for purchase will be at 12 p.m., Sept. 1, at the Black Arts Festival Senior Luncheon at McAdams Park in Wichita and at 1 p.m., Nov. 16 at Wichita Public Library, Central Library branch.

Local estate gives for the future

Hesston College and the Dyck Arboretum of the Plains recently received generous financial gifts from the Harold and Evie Dyck Estate that will help both organizations in securing their future viability.

The Dycks’ estate was distributed following Evie’s death in April. Harold preceded her in death in 2007.

“We are grateful that Harold and Evie recognized the importance of organizations like Hesston College and the arboretum as a benefit to the community and as a way to serve many,” said Yvonne Sieber, Hesston College vice president of Advancement and Dyck Arboretum board member.

The Dycks donated the land for the arboretum to Hesston College in 1981 to be a place in the community where people of all ages could enjoy nature, find a peaceful place for reflection and encourage a greater understanding and appreciation of the prairie.

Thousands of people visit the arboretum each year for education events, entertainment or simple enjoyment of nature. Its location next to Schowalter Villa and a block south of the college makes it a convenient place to unify people across the age spectrum.

Likewise, Hesston College has about 450 students every year. In 2012-13, students represented 29 states and 15 countries. The students alone add to the local economy, increasing it even more as prospective students and their families visit, and during major events on campus that bring alumni, families and friends back to Hesston.

Although the arboretum is a part of Hesston College, the organizations operate as individual entities with separate budgets and their own board of directors.

“Harold and Evie’s vision of a place to appreciate the natural beauty of Kansas was ahead of its time,” said Scott Vogt, arboretum director. “One of their legacies is the arboretum and that legacy is established in the plants, landscapes, buildings and educational programs. They are an example of generosity and graciousness.”

Both the arboretum and Hesston College rely on charitable giving from donors to secure a long-term future and to continue being an asset to the community.

“We appreciate all the ways in which the community supports both the arboretum and the college – through annual giving, estate gifts and prayers,” said Sieber.

Hesston College Bel Canto Singers and MEDA create opportunities for inclusion

Hesston College and Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA) will both benefit from the sales of the Hesston College Bel Canto Singers’ new CD. The proceeds will be split evenly to provide student scholarships at Hesston and, through MEDA, assist small businesses in Latin America.

During the 2012-13 year, the Bel Canto Singers program, “Songs of a Wayfarer,” touched singers and audiences alike with its moving depiction of the immigrant experience of sojourn, isolation and solace, woven together with excerpts from the college’s common read, “Enrique’s Journey” (Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007) by Sonia Nazario. The book is the true story of a young Honduran boy’s solo journey to reunite with his mother in the U.S. The 21-voice ensemble was so moved by the program, they decided to let the powerful message live on and benefit others by recording a CD, the proceeds of which will benefit the Hesston College Inclusion Scholarship and MEDA’s financial inclusion programs in Latin America.

In October 2012, Nazario, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author visited Hesston College to talk about her research for “Enrique’s Journey. In her presentation, she mentioned microloans as a simple way for the average person to help offset the economic destitution that provokes some Latin American parents to flee for the United States, leaving their children behind as Enrique’s mother did.

Kauffman watched the response to the program over the months and his desire to do something beyond creating connections to the idea of journeying grew.

“In presenting this program, I found a heightened level of emotional response from both students and audience members that I haven’t seen before,” Kauffman said. “Nazario’s words are compelling, and integrating and allowing a piece of music to converge with that kind of narrative created an unusually strong response.”

Inspired by Nazario’s recommendation of microloans, research turned up MEDA’s work – a timely and fitting opportunity for the group’s partnership. Both Hesston College and MEDA are Anabaptist/Mennonite-based entities, so Kauffman was familiar with the group’s work and in agreement with their ethos and practices.

MEDA works with local partners in low-income countries to improve access to capital and markets for small and medium enterprises – often family owned –to grow their business and create jobs. MEDA says these smaller businesses are the backbone of a nation’s gross domestic product, but they are often squeezed out of the market because of their struggle to receive loans from commercial banks, while microfinance institutions cater to very small companies.

The Hesston College Inclusion Scholarship was created through the college’s ongoing work with inclusion and diversity. As a campus that is home to students from 27 states, 15 countries and more than 20 religious backgrounds, Hesston College has been taking intentional steps toward being a welcoming campus to all students. The scholarship’s purpose is to improve diversity at Hesston College by mirroring the increasing racial and ethnic diversity within Mennonite Church USA. Students from underrepresented groups within the denomination will be priority recipients.

The “Songs of a Wayfarer” can be purchased for $15 through the Hesston College Bookstore by calling 620-327-8105 or going to books.hesston.edu.