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Dedicated to dance: young alumnus award winner

Young Alumnus Award winner Katrina Toews has been dedicated to dance from a young age -- so much so that she made it part of her Bethel major, even though the college does not have a dance program.

Toews will lead a group of her students in a dance performance at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, March 28, and receive the Young Alumnus Award in convocation at 11 a.m. Monday, March 29. Both events in Krehbiel Auditorium in the Fine Arts Center are free and open to the public. An offering will taken Sunday to help the group pay travel costs. Checks are to be made payable to "The Washington Ballet" with "Kansas Trip" on the memo line.

Toews is a 1998 graduate with a B.A. in fine arts and elementary education. She had begun studying dance with Annette Thornton at the Newton Dance Center as a child but quit in high school. Then when she came to Bethel, she picked up entry-level ballet. “I loved it so much,” she says, “I couldn’t stand not to keep taking it, so I decided to see if I could keep studying dance at Wichita State University.” She developed her fine arts major to incorporate dance and also started a dance studio and taught ballet and jazz to help pay her way through college.

Toews went on to a master’s program at American University, Washington, D.C. She earned the coveted ballet fellowship at AU and graduated in 2002 with a degree in dance education. From 2002-04, she taught at James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Va.

While Toews was at AU, The Washington School of Ballet founder Mary Day hired her as a teacher. In 2004, Toews returned to The Washington Ballet as director of education. In 2005, The Washington Ballet inaugurated its satellite campus with Toews as interim director. In 2006, she was appointed permanent director of The Washington Ballet@THEARC (TWB@THEARC; THEARC, pronounced “The Ark,” stands for Town Hall Education, Arts & Recreation Campus).

Martin Luther King Speech available on Bethel web site

The Jan. 21, 1960, speech at Bethel by Martin Luther King Jr. is available in audio and transcript formats March 1-31 on the Bethel Web site, by special arrangement with the King Estate in Atlanta. Web site visitors may listen to the audio and read the text online. A recording and transcript of the question-and-answer period following King’s lecture are also included.

Permission to listen to the speech and question-and-answer period or read the transcript of both has been granted for one month only. The material may not be downloaded nor printed. (License granted by Intellectual Properties Management, Atlanta, Ga., as exclusive licensor of the King Estate.)

The recently recovered recording of the speech was premiered on campus Jan. 18 when Bethel celebrated the 50th anniversary of King’s visit as a Memorial Hall Lecture Series speaker. Hundreds of people came to campus to listen to the recording; hear alumni share their experiences as audience members at King’s lecture at Bethel, as Civil Rights activists and as exchange students at Spelman College, Atlanta; dedicate a plaque in Memorial Hall; hear jazz and view an art exhibit; and hear King colleague Vincent Harding speak in the evening.

Summer research leads to international opportunity

Senior physics major Matthew Hershberger, Clay Center, knows the power of a speck of dust.

As a part of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network’s Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (NNIN REU), Hershberger spent last summer in Colorado working with structures that are less than 100 nanometers in at least one dimension.

“When you work with structures this small,” Hershberger explains, “a piece of dust landing in the wrong spot could destroy all of your work. Most of the work must be done in a special laboratory, such as the Colorado Nanofabrication Lab, designed to keep the air and working environment clean. I wore a lab coat, gloves and shoe booties every day I was in the lab.”

As part of its summer research program for undergraduates, NNIN has 14 sites around the U.S., with five or six undergraduates helping with research at each. . . .

Besides the scientific results of his research, the summer experience also resulted in a rare opportunity for Hershberger. Each year, the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network International Research Experience for Undergraduates (NNIN iREU) selects about 10 students from those who participated in the summer program to conduct research at an international location the following summer.

Hershberger has been invited to work at the Forshungszentrum Jülich, a research laboratory in Jülich, Germany, in summer 2010. “The goal of [NNIN iREU] is to develop an awareness of the global nature of research and technology in the 21st century,” he says. . . .

More forensics competitors qualify for nationals

Matt Stucky, senior from Moundridge, a member of the Bethel forensics team, qualified for his third event in national competition in the Kansas Individual Events State Tournament, hosted by Barton County Community College in Great Bend Feb. 20.

Bethel came home from the state tournament with three state champions, its ninth student to qualify for nationals and the second-place team sweepstakes trophy.

Stucky, who qualified for nationals in After Dinner Speaking and Impromptu Speaking last fall, is the state champion in Extemporaneous Speaking. He will compete at the American Forensic Association-National Individual Events Tournament (AFA-NIET) in all three events.

Julia Huxman, sophomore from Wichita, is the state champion in communication analysis, and Julia Miller, freshman from Hesston, is the state champion in poetry interpretation. Huxman has qualified for nationals in Persuasive Speaking and Miller in Programmed Oral Interpretation.

Die Fledermaus to be comedic collaboration

The Bethel production of Johann Strauss’ operetta “Die Fledermaus (The Bat)” promises to be one big party, packed full of laughs.

Bethel’s music and theater departments will present “Die Fledermaus” at 7 p.m. March 4 and March 6 in Krehbiel Auditorium of the Fine Arts Center. (The time and dates are different than announced earlier.)

“It’s a comic operetta and it’s going to be funny,” said Timothy Shade, instructor of instrumental music. “We’re laughing already in rehearsals.”

“Die Fledermaus” is a maze of mischief and music. The plot revolves around Viennese Ball-master Dr. Falke, played by Ryan Goertzen, junior from Goessel, and his friend Gabriel von Eisenstein, played by Joshua Powell, senior from Basehor.

Falke devises the central hoax on Eisenstein, who had left an inebriated Falke in the public marketplace dressed as a bat (fledermaus) a year before. Now Falke wants revenge. Eisenstein’s wife Rosalinda, played by Kelsey Easterday, senior from Manhattan, and her chambermaid Adele, played by Kelly Reed, senior from Edinburg, Texas, add to the drama and drunken debauchery.

KBCU features student programs, serves local cable station

The spring semester broadcast schedule for Bethel radio station KBCU is now available online, along with information about the station.

A 150-watt station that provides education and experience in communications and broadcasting, KBCU is operated and staffed by students, who host various programs each semester. The station broadcasts from the Fine Arts Center 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Listeners may tune in to KBCU-FM 88.1 locally or online.

KBCU programming also serves as audio background to information posted on the Newton Channel (Cox Cable channel 7). The channel is primarily a television bulletin board service on which Bethel and local government and law enforcement agencies, public and private educational institutions, non-profits, service groups and social and recreational clubs may announce one-time or special events or programs (not regularly scheduled activities). Bethel is already responsible for posting the messages.

The Newton Channel is a partnership between Bethel, the City of Newton, USD 373 Newton Public Schools and Newton Medical Center. It operates 24 hours a day when other programming is not scheduled.

Lectures and exhibits focus on art from the heart of South America

Reinhild K. Janzen ’63, Newton, will give an illustrated lecture, “Looking at Paraguayan Art,” at 3:30 p.m. March 14 for Kauffman Museum’s Sunday-Afternoon-at-the-Museum series. The program is one of three being offered in conjunction with the exhibition “Images of Paraguay” being hosted through May 23 by Kauffman Museum and Carriage Factory Gallery.

Charles L. Stansifer, professor emeritus from the University of Kansas, will give “A Commentary on Paraguayan History: Geography, Culture and Politics” at 3 p.m. March 21 at the Carriage Factory Gallery.

The third program is at 3:30 p.m. April 25, again at Kauffman Museum. Calvin Redekop, Harrisonburg, Va., will present “Paraguayan Utopia and Reality: A Case Study of Mennonite Settlements and Indigenous Displacement and ‘Victimization.’”

The joint exhibition features art and artifacts from public and private collections across the state. Kauffman Museum’s show includes Paraguayan artifacts donated by Bethel alumni, including Ernst Harder, Edwin Harms, Herbert and Mariam Schmidt, and Robert and Myrtle Unruh.