From our Faculty & Staff

Peter Bloedel (Theatre) was granted a sabbatical to create an interdisciplinary original work for stage. The Bethany Theatre Program has become known for producing original theatrical scripts and family friendly, Christ-centered productions. The plan for this new script will be to write a Christmas play with a working title What Child Is This? The desired timeline is for the production to premiere in Fall 2024.

Mark DeGarmeaux (Languages, Music, Religion) has been involved with a number of presentations and projects. He led an organist workshop and hymn festival in Frankenmuth, Michigan, and preached in Norwegian and was organist for Rock Dell Lutheran Church 150th anniversary services in summer 2022. For the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS) Worship Committee, he prepared Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary (ELH) Made Easier (three-part settings of the liturgies, and some hymns in easier settings and easier keys), and led a Heritage of Hymns event at the ELS Synod Convention.

Benjamin Faugstad (Music) presented Understanding our Hymnary and How to Navigate the Classical Music World at an annual summer music camp at Norseland Lutheran Church. He also served as the Orchestral Clinician at the 2022 All-Conference Music Festival featuring top music students from eight participating schools at Chanhassen (Minnesota) High School. At the Lutheran Youth Association (LYA) Convention at St. George, Utah, in July, he presented three separate sessions on Battle Strategies of the Bible. Faugstad also serves on the ELS Board for Youth Outreach.

Chad Heins (Biology) maintains a Spiders of Minnesota Project on iNaturalist which has surpassed 9,000 observations. These observations were contributed by over 1,900 people across the state and accounts for 338 species of the 519 spiders that are known from Minnesota at this time. Heins also served as a consultant to the U.S. Forest Service for jumping spider surveys conducted in the Deer River District of the Chippewa National Forest in northern Minnesota. Two of Heins’ spider photographs were used for a Princeton Field Guide—Spiders of North America by Dr. Sara Rose which was published in late July 2022. Finally, Heins assisted the Minnesota DNR with a BioBlitz in June at the Cedar Rock Scientific and Natural Area in Redwood County where he served as an expert for spiders, birds, and herps. A total of 17 spider species were recorded with nine new records for Redwood County.

Jennifer Kom (Psychology) presented Gender Solid Parenting at Mount Olive Lutheran Church in the spring of 2022. Her talk focused on key concepts pertaining to gender development and strategies used to promote healthy gender development.

Ryan MacPherson (History) presented Getting the Facts Straight: How Grammar, History, and Logic Can Rescue Education from Postfactualism at a conference hosted by the Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Shawn Stafford (Religion) served as co-director of Camp Indianhead (Minnesota) in 2022. Over one hundred ELS youth attended the camp held near Henning, Minnesota. Bethany Admissions counselor Audrey Schilling gave a presentation about Bethany and vocation to the campers. Bethany Seminary President Tim Hartwig encouraged campers to prayerfully consider the public ministry by becoming pastors or teachers and gave a homily during chapel.

Elizabeth Torres (English) received a Creative Support for Individuals Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board and has essays accepted for publication in forthcoming issues of Ecotone, The McNeese Review, and Pleiades.

Denice Woller’s (Art) photography students were busy this past semester. They enjoyed using a new darkroom in Meyer Hall. Woller said the students “…loved being able to get into the darkroom and work, and many are looking forward to their next opportunity.”

Woller also integrated a real-world experience for her students during a trip to Walters Publishing in North Mankato. Walters, a Taylor company, prints yearbooks for schools across the United States including Bethany’s yearbook Fidelis. Students taking part included staff from Bethany’s student newspaper The Scroll, photojournalists, and yearbook staff. Nearly thirty students were part of the trip.

Woller noted, “All of these experiences have been very educational and fun for my students, and just a part of what we try to incorporate each semester.”

In 2021, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, a nursing program accreditation body, adopted a new model and framework for preparing nurses. Additionally, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing established a new model and format for the NCLEX licensing exam—referred to as Next Generation NCLEX—that measures specific elements of the decision-making process in the context of case studies to directly evaluate clinical judgement of graduate nurses. Sara Traylor, Director of Nursing, and nursing faculty, Deb Matzke-Lewis and Cheryl Clendenin, have been busy performing curriculum analysis and mapping to understand how these changes affect Bethany’s nursing program’s curriculum. In 2022, Traylor, MatzkeLewis, and Clendenin participated in a Next Generation NCLEX conference to learn new teaching methods and learning activities that promote clinical judgement and help students develop evidence-based connections between clinical, simulation, and classroom learning. These efforts will ensure Bethany graduate nurses are prepared to meet the new accreditation standards and continue to achieve success on the licensure exam.

Philip Wels (Theatre) has finished a feature length movie The Life of a Stage Play. Part documentary, part textbook this fast-paced film discuss all the different aspects of a theatrical production. It features faculty, staff, and students from the Bethany Lutheran College Theatre Department and showcases Snow Queen, as well as many other BLC productions. The full documentary can be watched for free on YouTube.